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PREFACE |
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In April 1949, judgment was rendered in the
last of the series of 12 Nuernberg war crimes trials which had begun in October
1946 and were held pursuant to Allied Control Council Law No. 10. Far from
being of concern solely to lawyers, these trials are of especial interest to
soldiers, historians, students of international affairs, and others. The
defendants in these proceedings, charged with war crimes and other offenses
against international penal law, were prominent figures in Hitler's Germany and
included such outstanding diplomats and politicians as the State Secretary of
the Foreign Office, von Weizsaecker, and cabinet ministers von Krosigk and
Lammers; military leaders such as Field Marshals von Leeb, List, and von
Kuechler; SS leaders such as Ohlendorf, Pohl, and Hildebrandt; industrialists
such as Flick, Alfried Krupp, and the directors of I. G. Farben; and leading
professional men such as the famous physician Gerhard Rose, and the jurist and
Acting Minister of Justice, Schlegelberger.
In view of the weight of
the accusations and the far-flung activities of the defendants, and the
extraordinary amount of official contemporaneous German documents introduced in
evidence, the records of these trials constitute a major source of historical
material covering many events of the fateful years 1933 (and even earlier) to
1945, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The Nuernberg trials under
Law No. 10 were carried out under the direct authority of the Allied Control
Council, as manifested in that law, which authorized the establishment of the
Tribunals. The judicial machinery for the trials, including the Military
Tribunals and the Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, was prescribed by
Military Government Ordinance No. 7 and was part of the occupation
administration for the American zone, the Office of Military Government
(OMGUS). Law No. 10, Ordinance No. 7, and other basic jurisdictional or
administrative documents are printed in full hereinafter.
The
proceedings in these trials were conducted throughout in the German and English
languages, and were recorded in full by stenographic notes, and by electrical
sound recording of all oral proceedings. The 12 cases required over 1,200 days
of court proceedings and the transcript of these proceedings exceeds 330,000
pages, exclusive of hundreds of document books, briefs, etc. Publication of all
of this material, accordingly, was quite unfeasible. This series, however,
contains the indictments, judgments, and other important portions of the record
of the 12 cases, and it is believed that these materials give a fair picture of
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