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The Trial at Nuremberg
During World War II the Allies were determined that both Hitler and the men around him should be punished for starting World War II and the crimes they had committed while they were waging it. These crimes included the extermination of the Jewish people of Europe known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. After some debate it was decided that the fairest way to proceed was the public trial of the men and organizations who committed the crimes.
At the most famous of these, the Nuremberg Trial, 22 individual Nazi officials, and seven groups that had been organized to carry out the Nazi programs, were placed on trial for their crimes. Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. Additionally Robert Ley was charged as a defendant but committed suicide before the trial, and Gustav Krupp, who was named in the indictments, was found to be medically unfit to stand trial. Many of the leading Nazis, such as Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, were not present at the Nuremberg Trial because they has committed suicide at the end of the war.
The first step was to agree upon the rules for the trial. They adopted a combined procedure of the four Allies (the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union). The defendants were given the right to be represented by counsel, call witnesses, and present evidence in their own behalf. They were not given the right to a jury trial which was part of the law only in Great Britain and the United States. Finally, after all the evidence was presented, the defendants were permitted to make statements to the court without being sworn or cross-examined.
The next step was the indictment, a statement of the charges against each defendant. The Allies charged the defendants with four types of crimes: conspiracy against peace, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Allies stated that the Nazis, when they started the war, had deliberately broken the treaties that Germany had signed. The Holocaust was included as part of the crimes against humanity. Not all of the defendants were charged under all counts of the indictment. Doenitz, Raeder, and Schacht were not accused of participating in the Holocaust.
The trial was held before a panel of judges selected by the Allies called the Tribunal and presided over by a British judge named Lord Lawrence. The Allies presented their evidence which consisted almost entirely of the words and documents of the Nazis themselves. During the investigation that led up to the trial, the U.S. and British investigators had discovered literally tons of documents which proved the charges against the defendants. The decision was made, therefore, to rely on the words of the defendants themselves in the trial. Certain witnesses were presented to flesh out the evidence. This is especially true in the case against the concentration camps where witnesses ranging from a member of the French parliament -- who had been imprisoned as a slave laborer at Auschwitz -- to an American army officer who had been imprisoned at Buchenwald testified. Several Nazi officers also testified about how the Holocaust occurred.
Although the French and the Soviets were originally supposed to present the case on the crimes against humanity, the Americans and British had presented a lot of evidence about the Holocaust when they presented evidence. In fact, by the time the Soviets started to present their case one of the judges, Lord Birkett of Great Britain, was restless because he thought the testimony was unnecessary -- the case had been proven over and over again.
The final phase of the trial was the defendants' cases. The defendants actually took more time in the court than the prosecutors. Although the defenses varied most either stated that they not involved in the Holocaust or did not know it was happening. All of the defendants testified at length and presented witnesses. One of the most important witnesses about the Holocaust, Rudolf Höß (or "Hoess"), the commandant of Auschwitz, was actually called as a witness for the defense.
The judges had a hard time deliberating about whether the defendants were guilty and what punishments should be meted out to those who were guilty. The French judge, DeVabres, was not convinced that any of the defendants should be found guilty on the charge of conspiracy because that concept was not found in French or German law.
In the final Judgment, three defendants, Von Papen, Schacht, and Fritzche, were acquitted entirely. Eleven others were acquitted of some of the charges against them and Hess was acquitted of the charges of participating in the Holocaust and other war crimes. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death. Bormann was never found and Goering committed suicide. The others were hung on October 16, 1946.
The Nuremberg Trial was the only trial of Nazi war criminals that was conducted by an international tribunal. Later, other Nazi war criminals were placed on trial, many in the same court-room where the Nuremberg Trial had occurred. Each of these trials, however, was conducted by a single country. The Americans, for example, tried the defendants who had performed cruel medical experiments on prisoners; the British tried the men who had run Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.