When did the Nuremberg trials take place?
Euthanasia trials
The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial took place from December 9, 1946 to August 20, 1947 at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice before an American military court. Its primary purpose was to prosecute Nazi doctors for their involvement in torturous medical experiments performed in German concentration camps during the war; prosecuting those who had participated in the euthanasia programme was of secondary importance to the Americans. Thus, only four of the twenty-three defendants were charged with murdering the mentally ill as part of the euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt Blome. All of them except for Blome were convicted and executed.
Placebo-controlled study
From the time of the Hippocratic Oath questions of the ethics of medical practice have been widely discussed, and codes of practice have been gradually developed as a response to advances in scientific medicine.
The Nuremberg Code, which was issued in August 1947, as a consequence of the so-called Doctors' Trial which examined the human experimentation conducted by Nazi doctors during World War II, offers ten principles for legitimate medical research, including informed consent, absence of coercion, and beneficence towards experiment participants.
Superior orders
The Dostler case became a precedent for the principle that was used in the Nuremberg Trials of German generals, officials, and Nazi leaders beginning in November 1945: using superior orders as a defense does not relieve officers from responsibility of carrying out illegal orders and their liability to be punished in court. The principle was codified in Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, and similar principles were found in sections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Guidelines for human subject research
In the early 1940s in Germany doctors conducted Nazi human experimentation on unwilling test subjects; one way of describing the procedures could be to call it medical torture. After the Allied Forces won World War II, United States authorities who held the Nuremberg Palace of Justice used that building to host the Doctors' Trial in which Nazi researchers were charged with crimes against humanity for unethical research practices. After the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials many people felt compelled to create laws to codify some research guidelines to protect research participants and define acceptable relationships between researchers and research participants.
Principlism
The Belmont Report’s cause of origin can be traced back to December 9, 1946 when the American Military Tribunal started criminal proceedings against 23 German physicians and administrators for war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the trials, the Nuremberg Code was drafted for the establishment of standards for judging individuals who conducted biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. The Nuremberg Code in its final form was established in 1948 and was the first international document that advocated voluntary informed consent for participants of research on human subjects.
War crimes trial
The Dostler case became precedent for the Nuremberg trials of German generals, officials, and Nazi leaders beginning in November 1945 that using Superior orders as a defense does not relieve officers from responsibility of carrying out illegal orders and liable to be punished in court. This principle was codified in Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles and similar principle were found in sections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Nuremberg trials
Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practising it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest."
IG Farben Trial
The twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). The IG Farben Trial was the second of three trials of leading industrialists of Nazi Germany for their conduct during the Nazi regime. (The two other industrialist trials were the Flick Trial and the Krupp Trial.)
Adolf Heusinger
An internee from 1945 to 1947, Heusinger testified during the Nuremberg Trials.
Transitional justice
The origins of the transitional justice field can be traced back to the post-World War II period in Europe with the establishment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the various de-Nazification programs in Germany and the trials of Japanese soldiers at Tokyo Tribunal. What became known as the "Nuremberg Trials", when the victorious allied forces extended criminal justice to Japanese and German soldiers and their leaders for war crimes committed during the war, marked the genesis of transitional justice. The field gained momentum and coherence during the 1980s and onwards, beginning with the trials of former members of the military juntas in Greece (1975), and Argentina (Trial of the Juntas, 1983). The focus of transitional justice in the 1970s and 1980s was on criminal justice with a focus on human rights promotion. This led to a worldwide focus and progressive rise of human rights regime culminating in the establishments of international human rights laws and conventions.
Lüneburg
Even before the Nuremberg Trials took place, the first war crimes trial, the so-called Belsen Trial ("Bergen-Belsen-Prozess"), began in Lüneburg on 17 September 1945 conducted against 45 former SS men, women and "kapos" (prisoner functionaries) from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps. 
After World War II, Lüneburg became part of the new state of Lower Saxony. But the dilapidated state of its buildings led to various plans to try to improve living conditions. One proposition that was seriously discussed was to tear down the entire "Altstadt" and replace it with modern buildings. The ensuing public protest resulted in Lüneburg becoming the focal point for a new concept: cultural heritage conservation. Since the early 1970s the town has been systematically restored. A leading figure in this initiative since the late 1960s has been Curt Pomp: against much opposition from politicians and councillors he founded and championed the Lüneburg "Altstadt" Working Group ("Arbeitskreis Lüneburger Altstadt") for the preservation of historic buildings. His engagement was rewarded with the German Prize for Cultural Heritage Conservation and the German Order of Merit. Today Lüneburg is a tourist attraction as a result of the restoration and important sectors of the town's economy also depend on tourism.
Milch Trial
The Milch Trial (or officially, The United States of America vs. Erhard Milch) was the second of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Doctors' trial
The Doctors' trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of German doctors that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
International criminal law
Some precedents in international criminal law can be found in the time before World War I. However, it was only after the war that a truly international crime tribunal was envisaged to try perpetrators of crimes committed in this period. Thus, the Treaty of Versailles stated that an international tribunal was to be set up to try Wilhelm II of Germany. In the event, however, the Kaiser was granted asylum in the Netherlands. After World War II, the Allied powers set up an international tribunal to try not only war crimes, but crimes against humanity committed under the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Tribunal held its first session in 1945 and pronounced judgments on 30 September / 1 October 1946. A similar tribunal was established for Japanese war crimes (the International Military Tribunal for the Far East). It operated from 1946 to 1948.
Subsequent Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg process initiated 3,887 cases of which about 3,400 were dropped. 489 cases went to trial, involving 1,672 defendants. 1,416 of them were found guilty; less than 200 were executed, and another 279 defendants were sent to life in prison. By the 1950s almost all of them had been released.
Friedrich Flick
The Flick trial was one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Trials of the military, political, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, held after the Nuremberg trials (the "Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal"), the most well-known trials which tried 22 of the most important captured Nazis. Like the other trials, the Flick trial took place at the Palace of Justice.
Nuremberg Diary
Nuremberg Diary () is Gustave Gilbert's account of interviews he conducted during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring, involved in World War II and the Holocaust. Gilbert, a fluent German speaker, served as a prison psychologist in Nuremberg, where he had close contact with those on trial. The text is the verbatim notes Gilbert took immediately after having conversations with the prisoners, information backed up by essays he asked them to write about themselves. The diary was first published in 1947, again in 1948, and reissued in 1961, just before the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
John Amen
During the Nuremberg trials, he served as the Associate trial counsel, chief interrogations division office for the United States Chief of Counsel in war criminal trials at Nuremberg from 1945 to 1946.
Flick Trial
The United States of America vs. Friedrich Flick, et al. or Flick trial was the fifth of twelve Nazi war crimes trials held by United States authorities in their occupation zone in Germany (Nuremberg) after World War II. It was the first of three trials of leading industrialists of Nazi Germany; the two others were the IG Farben Trial and the Krupp Trial.
Topography of Terror
This exhibition was presented on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials and comprised around 110 photo and 50 text documents as well as 15 audio stations. It outlined the genesis, process, ambition and importance of the trial led by the Allies at Nuremberg focussing on the accused, whose culpability for the war crimes is demonstrated.
Hans-Joachim Riecke
Riecke was arrested on 23 May 1945 and interned until March 1949. At the Nuremberg trials he testified in April 1946 at the trial of Alfred Rosenberg as a defence witness in favour of the accused. During the Ministries Trial ("Wilhelmstraßen-Prozess"), one of the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, he appeared in February 1948 as a witness for the prosecution against Richard Walther Darré. 
From 1952 to 1970 Riecke was an official and head of the Economics Department of the Alfred C. Toepfer Company, which operated, among other areas, in global trade in agricultural products, particularly grain. After that, Riecke was vice executive until 1976 of the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S., which also provided substantial financial support to the Toepfer company, and from 1976 to his death in 1986 an honorary member of this Foundation.
Euthanasia trials
The first euthanasia trial was held by the United States in October 1945 to prosecute doctors and nurses at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre for killing Polish and Russian workers sick with tuberculosis in summer 1944. Euthanasia was a tangential issue at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, held by the United States from December 1946 to August 1947, as only four of its twenty-three defendants were charged with participation in the euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt Blome. Brandt, Brack, and Hoven were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed; Blome was acquitted.
Nuremberg trials
Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Martin Bormann was convicted in absentia (he had, unknown to the Allies, died while trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945), and Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution. The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.
Otto Kranzbühler
In 1964, Kranzbühler published a De Paul University law review article entitled "Nuremberg Eighteen Years Afterwards" in which he provided a unique first hand critique of the Nuremberg proceedings. In evaluating the Nuremberg Trials, Kranzbühler found it necessary to consider not only the cases against the highly publicized political and military defendants before the International Military Tribunal but also the 12 subsequent purely American trials which were directed against the activities of the SS (Schutzstaffel) military generals and field marshals, industrial leaders, jurists, medical doctors, and diplomats. Kranzbühler considered both the internationally governed trial and the American governed trials because he believed they were all based on a "common idea of the American prosecution" – that members of the elite, regardless of their criminal participation, would be held responsible for the actions carried out by Hitler and his aides. With this in mind, Kranzbühler commented on the procedural and legal inadequacies at Nuremberg.
Trial of Erich von Manstein
Manstein was taken prisoner by the British in August 1945. He testified for the defence of the German General Staff and the Wehrmacht supreme command (the OKW), on trial at the Nuremberg trials of major Nazi war criminals and organisations in August 1946. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the British cabinet decided in July 1948 to prosecute Manstein and several other senior officers who had been held in custody since the end of the war.
Buchenwald Trial
The Buchenwald Trial or United States of America vs. Josias Prince of Waldeck et al. (also referred as Case 000-50-9) was a war crime trial conducted by the United States Army as a court-martial in Dachau, then part of the American occupation zone. It took place from April 11 to August 14, 1947 in the internment camp of Dachau, where the former Dachau concentration camp had been located until late April 1945. In this trial, 31 people were indicted for war crimes related to the Buchenwald concentration camp and its satellite camps, all of whom were convicted. The Buchenwald Trial was part of the Dachau trials, which were held between 1945 and 1948.
Self-experimentation in medicine
There are many reasons experimenters decide to self-test, but amongst the most fundamental is the ethical principle that the experimenter should not subject the participants in the experiment to any procedure they would not be willing to undertake themselves. This idea was first codified in the Nuremberg Code in 1947, which was a result of the trials of Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg trials accused of murdering and torturing victims in valueless experiments. Several of these doctors were hanged. Point five of the Nuremberg Code requires that no experiment should be conducted that is dangerous to the subjects unless the experimenters themselves also take part. The Nuremberg Code has influenced medical experiment codes of practice around the world, as has the exposure of experiments that have since failed to follow it such as the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
Nazi human experimentation
After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the Doctors' Trial, and revulsion at the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics. The Nazi physicians in the Doctors' Trial argued that military necessity justified their torturous experiments, and compared their victims to collateral damage from Allied bombings. But this defense, which was in any case rejected by the Tribunal, cannot apply to the twin experiments of Josef Mengele, which were performed on children and had no connection to military necessity.
Nuremberg Trials (film)
The Nuremberg Trials is a 1947 Soviet-made documentary film about the trials of the Nazi leadership. It was produced by Roman Karmen, and was an English-language version of the Russian language film "Суд народов" ("Judgment of the Peoples" or "Judgment of the Nations").
Nuremberg trials
While Sir Geoffrey Lawrence of Britain was the judge chosen as president of the court, the most prominent of the judges at trial arguably was his American counterpart, Francis Biddle. Prior to the trial, Biddle had been Attorney General of the United States but had been asked to resign by Truman earlier in 1945.
Nuremberg trials
On 20 April 1942, representatives from the nine countries occupied by Germany met in London to draft the "Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes". At the meetings in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union, agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the trial was established by the London Charter, which was agreed upon by the four so-called Great Powers on 8 August 1945, and which restricted the trial to "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries"
Judgment at Nuremberg
The film is notable for its use of courtroom drama to illuminate individual perfidy and moral compromise in times of violent political upheaval; it was one of the first drama films not to shy from showing actual footage filmed by American and British soldiers after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Shown in court by prosecuting attorney Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), the scenes of huge piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits were considered exceptionally graphic for a mainstream film of at the time.The world premiere was held on December 14, 1961 at the "Kongresshalle" in West Berlin. 300 journalists from 22 countries were in attendance, and earphones offering the soundtrack dubbed in German, Spanish, Italian and French were made available. The reaction from the audience was reportedly subdued, with some applauding at the finish but most of the Germans in attendance leaving in silence.
Superior orders
One of the most noted uses of this plea, or defense, was by the accused in the 1945–1946 Nuremberg trials, such that it is also called the "Nuremberg defense". The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the main victorious Allied forces after World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany. These trials, under the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal that set them up, established that the defense of superior orders was no longer enough to escape punishment, but merely enough to lessen punishment.
Crimes against humanity
After the Second World War, the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal set down the laws and procedures by which the Nuremberg trials were to be conducted. The drafters of this document were faced with the problem of how to respond to the Holocaust and the grave crimes committed by the Nazi regime. A traditional understanding of war crimes gave no provision for crimes committed by a power on its own citizens. Therefore, Article 6 of the Charter was drafted to include not only traditional war crimes and crimes against peace, but also "crimes against humanity", defined as
Under this definition, crimes against humanity could only be punished insofar as they could be connected somehow to war crimes or crimes against peace. The jurisdictional limitation was explained by the American chief representative to the London Conference, Robert H. Jackson, who pointed out that it "has been a general principle from time immemorial that the internal affairs of another government are not ordinarily our business". Thus, "it is justifiable that we interfere or attempt to bring retribution to individuals or to states only because the concentration camps and the deportations were in pursuance of a common plan or enterprise of making an unjust war". The judgement of the first Nuremberg trial found that "the policy of persecution, repression and murder of civilians" and persecution of Jews within Germany before the outbreak of war in 1939 were not crimes against humanity, because as "revolting and horrible as many of these crimes were, it has not been satisfactorily proved that they were done in execution of, or in connection with," war crimes or crimes against peace. The subsequent Nuremberg trials were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 which included a revised definition of crimes against humanity with a wider scope.
Project MKUltra
The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed upon the world that experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which to judge German scientists who experimented with human subjects... [I]n defiance of this principle, military intelligence officials ... began surreptitiously testing chemical and biological materials, including LSD.
Judgment at Nuremberg
A key thread in the film's plot involves a "race defilement" trial known as the Feldenstein case. In this fictionalized case, based on the real life Katzenberger Trial, an elderly Jewish man had been tried for having a "relationship" (sexual acts) with an Aryan (German) 16-year-old girl, an act that had been legally defined as a crime under the Nuremberg Laws, which had been enacted by the German Reichstag. Under these laws, the man was found guilty and was put to death in 1935. Using this and other examples, the movie explores individual conscience, collective guilt, and behavior during a time of widespread societal immorality.
Nuremberg trials
= The Trial =
The International Military Tribunal was opened on 19 November 1945 in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command", comprising several categories of senior military officers. These organizations were to be declared "criminal" if found guilty.
Harold Sebring
After receiving his law degree, Sebring practiced law in Miami and Jacksonville, Florida. He was appointed judge for the Eight Judicial Circuit from 1933 to 1943 and served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1943 to 1955. After World War II, President Harry S. Truman appointed Sebring to sit on the bench for the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, along with Walter B. Beals, Johnson T. Crawford, and
Victor C. Swearingen. Sebring did not want to resign from the Florida Supreme Court and he was granted a leave of absence; the other justices appointed a new lower-court judge each month to serve in Sebring's place during his absence. While in Nuremberg in 1946 and 1947, Sebring was a judge on the Doctors' Trial, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials. He returned to service on the Florida court, and was later elected chief justice by his colleagues, serving from 1951 to 1953.
Nuremberg trials
Other trials conducted after the first Nuremberg trial include the following:
Nuremberg Moot
The Nuremberg Moot is an international moot court competition. Held partially at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice and organised by the International Nurmemberg Principles Academy and University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, this competition now attracts around 60 teams from around the world annually. Participants make submissions as though they are before the International Criminal Court.
Nuremberg trials
Some accounts argue that Truman had appointed Biddle as the main American judge for the trial as an apology for asking for his resignation. Ironically, Biddle was known during his time as Attorney General for opposing the idea of prosecuting Nazi leaders for crimes committed before the beginning of the war, even sending out a memorandum on 5 January 1945 on the subject. The note also expressed Biddle's opinion that instead of proceeding with the original plan for prosecuting entire organizations, there should simply be more trials that would prosecute specific offenders.
Judgment at Nuremberg
Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American courtroom drama film directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann and starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift. Set in Nuremberg in 1948, the film depicts a fictionalized version of the Judges' Trial of 1947, one of the twelve U.S. military tribunals during the Subsequent Nuremberg trials.
Dachau trials
Unlike the International Military Trials in Nuremberg that prosecuted the major Nazi war criminals under the jurisdiction of the four Allied Occupying Powers, the Dachau tribunals were held exclusively by the United States military between November 1945 and August 1948. The proceedings were similar to the 12 post-1946 Nuremberg trials that were also conducted solely by the United States.
Ethics committee
One of the most fundamental ethical principles in human experimentation is that the experimenter should not subject the participants in the experiment to any procedure they would not be willing to undertake themselves. This idea was first codified in the Nuremberg Code in 1947, which was a result of the trials of Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg trials accused of murdering and torturing victims in valueless experiments. Several of these doctors were hanged. Point five of the Nuremberg Code requires that no experiment should be conducted that is dangerous to the subjects unless the experimenters themselves also take part. The Nuremberg Code has influenced medical experiment codes of practice around the world, as has the exposure of experiments that have since failed to follow it such as the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
Krupp Trial
These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). The Krupp Trial was the third of three trials of German industrialists; the other two were the Flick Trial and the IG Farben Trial.
Judges' Trial
The Judges' Trial (; or, the Justice Trial, or, officially, The United States of America vs. Josef Altstötter, et al.) was the third of the 12 trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Tuskegee syphilis experiment
In the period following World War II, the revelation of the Holocaust and related Nazi medical abuses brought about changes in international law. Western allies formulated the Nuremberg Code to protect the rights of research subjects. In 1964 the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki specified that experiments involving human beings needed the "informed consent" of participants. But no one appeared to have reevaluated the protocols of the Tuskegee Study according to the new standards and in light of treatment available for the disease which is fatal 8–58% of the time. On July 25, 1972, word of the Tuskegee Study was reported by Jean Heller of the Associated Press; the next day "The New York Times" carried it on its front page, and the story captured national attention. Peter Buxtun, a whistleblower who was a former PHS interviewer for venereal disease, had leaked information after failing to get a response to his protests about the study within the department. He gave information to the "Washington Star" and "The New York Times". John R. Heller Jr. of PHS, who in later years of the study led the national division, still defended the ethics of the study, stating, "The longer the study, the better the ultimate information we would derive." Author James Jones editorialized about Heller, suggesting that his opinion was, "The men's status did not warrant ethical debate. They were subjects, not patients; clinical material, not sick people."
Judgment at Nuremberg
The film centers on a military tribunal led by Chief Trial Judge Dan Haywood (Tracy), before which four German judges and prosecutors (as compared to 16 defendants in the actual Judges' Trial) stand accused of crimes against humanity for their involvement in atrocities committed under the Nazi regime. The film deals with non-combatant war crimes against a civilian population, the Holocaust, and examines the post-World War II geopolitical complexity of the actual Nuremberg Trials. An earlier version of the story was broadcast as a television episode of "Playhouse 90". Schell and Klemperer played the same roles in both productions.
Laura Knight
In the aftermath of the war Knight proposed to the War Artists' Advisory Committee the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a subject. The Committee agreed, and Knight went to Germany in January 1946 and spent three months observing the main trial from inside the courtroom. The result was the large oil painting, "The Nuremberg Trial". This painting departs from the realism of her wartime paintings, in that, whilst apparently realistically depicting the Nazi war criminals sitting in the dock, the rear and side walls of the courtroom are missing, to reveal a ruined city, partially in flames.
Berlin Diary
In 1947, End of a Berlin Diary continued and finished the story of the Third Reich, from July 20, 1944, to the Nuremberg Trials.
Hostages Trial
The Hostages Trial (or, officially, The United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et al.) was held from
8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 and was the seventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Human subject research
Nazi Germany performed human experimentation on large numbers of prisoners (including children), largely Jews from across Europe, but also Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs and disabled Germans, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were forced into participating; they did not willingly volunteer and no consent was given for the procedures. Typically, the experiments resulted in death, trauma, disfigurement or permanent disability, and as such are considered as examples of medical torture. After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the Doctors' Trial, and the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code. During the Nuremberg Trials, 23 Nazi doctors and scientists were prosecuted for the unethical treatment of concentration camp inmates, who were often used as research subjects with fatal consequences. Of those 23, 15 were convicted, 7 were condemned to death, 9 received prison sentences from 10 years to life, and 7 were acquitted.
Nuremberg trials
A precedent for trying those accused of war crimes had been set at the end of World War I in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials held in May to July 1921 before the "Reichsgericht" (German Supreme Court) in Leipzig, although these had been on a very limited scale and largely regarded as ineffectual. At the beginning of 1940, the Polish government-in-exile asked the British and French governments to condemn the German invasion of their country. The British initially declined to do so; however, in April 1940, a joint declaration was issued by the British, French and Polish. Relatively bland because of Anglo-French reservations, it proclaimed the trio's ""desire to make a formal and public protest to the conscience of the world against the action of the German government whom they must hold responsible for these crimes which cannot remain unpunished.""
Konstantin von Neurath
The Allies of World War II prosecuted Neurath at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Otto von Lüdinghausen appeared for his defence. The prosecution accused him of "conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes and crimes against humanity". Neurath's chief defence strategy was predicated on the fact that his successor and fellow defendant, Ribbentrop, was more culpable for the atrocities committed in the Nazi state.
Andrew Conway Ivy
Ivy was considered “one of the nation’s top physiologists” and “the conscience of U.S. Science” at the time of the Nuremberg trials in 1946, according to an article in "Time" magazine. At the Nuremberg trials, the German physician, Dr. Werner Leibbrant was interrogated on the stand and it became evident that the Germans questioning him were attempting to identify parallels between the medical research they did during the war and the human subjects research taking place in the states especially at Stateville, Illinois. This was unexpected for the United States front, and the biggest challenge for disputing these attempts was that there were no concrete guidelines and/or written documentation for the ethics of human medical experimentation. After Ivy initially appeared at the Nuremberg courtroom in January 1947 and heard these proceedings, he went back to Illinois and asked the state Governor, Dwight H. Green, to set up a committee with him as the lead to assess the ethicality of the prisoner experiments that took place at Stateville. The governor agreed and sent out letters to potential candidates to join him on the committee. The committee search resulted in six members, and it was collectively called the “Green committee”. During the questioning of Ivy at the stand in June 1947 at the trials, the same attorney who had questioned Leibbrant to get his point across regarding the equivalence of the U.S. human experimentation at Stateville, also probed Ivy, but with more focus on the Green committee. After the trials, Ivy had returned to Illinois and wrote a letter to his fellow Green committee members to tell them the details of the testimony. For the next few months, the Green committee met and worked on a final report to submit to the governor regarding their determination of ethics at Statesville. Their major conclusions were that the “all subjects [prisoners at Stateville] have been volunteers in the absence of coercion in any form.” The report was submitted to The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The report was published in February 1948 and it represented an important support for future prisoner experimentation in the United States. The conclusions drawn in the report, which praised the practices taking place in the research at Stateville, denounced all criticism of the work and would encourage it more. Additionally, Ivy would generate new ethical guidelines for human research including the embryonic code of August 1946 which supported the use of animal experiments for protecting human life and the November 1947 statement which pleaded for physiologists and doctors to be against antivivisectionists in order to promote medical progress and human welfare. Altogether, the important points of his principles for human experimentation included 1) a need for consent, 2) carefully designing and planning experiments based on the results of animal experimentation in order to benefit society, and 3) performing these experiments by trained personnel to avoid mishaps and injuries that may result in a disability for the subject.
Nuremberg principles
Previous to the time of the Nuremberg Trials, this excuse was known in common parlance as "Superior Orders". After the prominent, high-profile event of the Nuremberg Trials, that excuse is now referred to by many as the "Nuremberg Defense". In recent times, a third term, "lawful orders" has become common parlance for some people. All three terms are in use today, and they all have slightly different nuances of meaning, depending on the context in which they are used.
Allied Control Council
Shortly after the commencement of the Nuremberg Trial, the council enacted Law no. 10 (20 December 1945), which authorized every occupying power to have its own legal system to try war criminals and to conduct such trials independently of the International Military Tribunal then sitting at Nuremberg. Law no. 10 resulted from disagreements arising among the Allied governments regarding a common policy on war criminals and marked the beginning of the decline in inter-Allied cooperation to that effect. Following the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals in October 1946, inter-Allied cooperation on war crimes totally collapsed.
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served as models for:
Landsberg Prison
Between 1945 and 1946, the prison housed a total of 110 prisoners convicted at the Nuremberg trials, a further 1416 war criminals from the Dachau trials and 18 prisoners convicted in the . (These were military tribunals conducted by the American forces in Japan between August 1946 and January 1947 to prosecute 23 German officials who had continued to assist the Japanese military in Shanghai after the surrender of Nazi Germany.)
Nuremberg (2000 film)
Nuremberg is a 2000 Canadian/United States television docudrama, based on the book "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial" by Joseph E. Persico, that tells the story of the Nuremberg trials.
Tanya Savicheva
According to several sources, one of the documents presented by the Allied prosecutors during the Nuremberg Trials was the small notebook that once belonged to Tanya, but there appears to be no proof of this, and an argument against its veracity is that if the diary had been really presented at the Nuremberg Trials it would have never left the court archives. Nina Savicheva and Mikhail Savichev returned to Leningrad after World War II. Mikhail had continued fighting until 1944, sustaining injuries which led to him being discharged and transported back to Leningrad. Tanya's diary is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History, with a copy also on display at the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.
Nuremberg trials
Thomas Dodd was a prosecutor for the United States. There was an immense amount of evidence backing the prosecutors' case, especially since meticulous records of the Nazis' actions had been kept. There were records taken in by the prosecutors that had signatures from specific Nazis signing for everything from stationery supplies to Zyklon B gas, which was used to kill the inmates of the deathcamps. Thomas Dodd showed a series of pictures to the courtroom after reading through the documents of crimes committed by the defendants. The showing consisted of pictures displaying the atrocities performed by the defendants. The pictures had been gathered when the inmates were liberated from the concentration camps.
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial, is a BBC documentary film series consisting of three one-hour films that re-enact the Nuremberg War Trials of Albert Speer, Hermann Göring, and Rudolf Hess. They were broadcast on BBC Two in 2006 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the trials. In 2015, American Heroes Channel aired the film under an alternate title, "Nuremberg: Nazi Judgement Day".
Horace Hahn
When Justice Jackson resigned his position as prosecutor after the first (and only) trial before the IMT and returned to the U.S., Colonel Telford Taylor was promoted to Brigadier General and succeeded him on October 17, 1946, as Chief Counsel for the remaining twelve trials before the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals. In these trials at Nuremberg, 163 of the 200 defendants who were tried were found guilty in some or all of the charges of the indictments. It is not known if Captain Hahn assisted Taylor during these trials.
James T. Brand
In 1947 Justice Brand was appointed by the War Department to the War Crimes Tribunal to be convened in Germany after World War II. There he was one of four judges of Nazi War Crimes at the Judges' Trial, the third in a set of twelve trials collectively known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials. The trial began in March 1947 with Brand as a member of a three-person Military Tribunal, but on June 19, 1947 he became the Presiding Judge when Carrington T. Marshall resigned for health reasons.
Katzenberger Trial
The Katzenberger Trial was a notorious Nazi show trial. A Jewish businessman and leading member of the Nuremberg Jewish community, Lehmann (Leo) Katzenberger, was accused of having an affair with a young "Aryan" woman, and on 14 March 1942 was sentenced to death. The presiding judge at the trial, Oswald Rothaug, was later tried at the Nuremberg trials (see Judges' Trial) and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Katzenberger Trial later formed the basis of a subplot in the 1961 film "Judgment at Nuremberg".
Nuremberg trials
Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hans Krebs and Joseph Goebbels had all committed suicide in the spring of 1945 to avoid capture. Heinrich Himmler attempted to commit suicide, but was captured before he could succeed; he committed suicide one day after being arrested by British forces. Krebs and Burgdorf committed suicide two days after Hitler in the same place. Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated by Czech partisans in 1942. Josef Terboven killed himself with dynamite in Norway in 1945. Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina to avoid Allied capture, but was apprehended by Israel's intelligence service (Mossad) and hanged in 1962. Hermann Göring was sentenced to death, but committed suicide by consuming cyanide the night before his execution in defiance of his captors. Miklós Horthy appeared as a witness at the Ministries trial held in Nuremberg in 1948.
Curtis Shake
In early 1947, Shake was appointed presiding judge over the IG Farben trial, one of the war crimes
that U.S. authorities held in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. Shake, a widower at the time, went to Nuremberg alone. The Farben trial began on August 27, 1947, and concluded in mid-June 1948. The case was primarily based on the Farben defendants' "knowing participation" in "Nazi plans for conquest," even before the war began, and for the Farben firm's use of slave labor in manufacturing synthetic rubber during the war. The company’s production site used laborers from the adjacent German concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. Shake presided over the tribunal, which rendered its verdicts on July 29–30, 1948, more than a year after the trial began. Ten of the defendants were acquitted on all counts; the remaining thirteen received prison sentences that ranged from two to eight years, considered mild punishments compared to the gravity of the indictments.
Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study
In the 1946 Nuremberg trials in Germany, the International Military Tribunal prosecuted leaders of former Nazi Germany for war crimes and events of the Holocaust, in particular, experimentation on human subjects. The Stateville malaria experiments were used as a critical point of defense for the Nazis, who argued similarities between their prisoner experimentation and the United States’ at Stateville Penitentiary. Andrew Ivy, a physician from Chicago, testified as an expert witness in the trials. He was asked to differentiate Nazi malaria experiments at the Dachau concentration camp and the Stateville Penitentiary malaria experiments. There were key distinctions, such as a higher rate of subject fatalities and lack of voluntary consent in the Nazi experiments. However, the procedures, motives and premise of the studies were arguably similar. The U.S. supported Ivy’s claims of fundamental differences, and publicized them as a justification for continuing the Stateville experiments. The international Nuremberg Code of human experimentation ethics, which resulted from the trials, contained clauses directly violated by the Stateville experiments. The U.S. never formally ratified the code, however, calling into question the ethics of prison experimentation and the Stateville Penitentiary malaria experiments in particular.
Thomas J. Dodd
Both Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the U.S., and Dodd insisted upon a fair and legal trial to prosecute the Nazi war criminals. Dodd accepted Jackson's offer to join him in Germany. Dodd expected the position to last only several months, but he wound up spending 15 months there. Dodd suggested Heidelberg as the location for the International Military Tribunal, since it had survived the war almost completely unscathed, but Nuremberg was eventually chosen. In October 1945, Jackson named Dodd to his senior Trial Board for the Nuremberg Trials, and later in 1946, named him Executive Trial Counsel, putting him in the number-two position at the trials. In the summer of 1946, Jackson appointed Dodd as the acting Chief of Counsel while he returned to DC. Dodd finally returned to the U.S. in October 1946. He described the delegation as "an autopsy on history's most horrible catalogue of human crime."
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. This movement was brought about because during the trials, there were conflicting court methods between the German court system and the U.S. court system. The crime of conspiracy was unheard of in the civil law systems of the Continent. Therefore, the German defense found it unfair to charge the defendants with conspiracy to commit crimes, while the judges from common-law countries were used to doing so.
Virginia Holocaust Museum
The Nuremberg Trials were the first international trials of major Nazi war criminals. As such, they served as a major source of documents and testimony for early Holocaust scholarship. The "Nuremberg Courtroom" exhibit gives visitors the chance to see a full recreation of Room 600 at the Palace of Justice, used during the International Military Tribunals, and to experience the gravity of the trials. The Nuremberg Courtroom exhibit was opened to the public by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine during a ceremony in April 2008.
Einsatzgruppen
After the close of World War II, 24 senior leaders of the "Einsatzgruppen" were prosecuted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1947–48, part of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials held under United States military authority. The men were charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in the SS (which had been declared a criminal organization). Fourteen death sentences and two life sentences were among the judgments; only four executions were carried out, on 7 June 1951; the rest were reduced to lesser sentences. Four additional "Einsatzgruppe" leaders were later tried and executed by other nations.
Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code () is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation created as a result of the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War.
Pohl trial
The Pohl trial against the Nazi German administration of the "Final Solution" (also known as the WVHA Trial and officially "The United States of America vs. Oswald Pohl, et al") was the fourth of the twelve trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. The twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, although both courts presided in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. They are known collectively as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
Human subject research
In 1947, German physicians who conducted deadly or debilitating experiments on concentration camp prisoners were prosecuted as war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials. That same year, the Allies established the Nuremberg Code, the first international document to support the concept that "the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential". Individual consent was emphasized in the Nuremberg Code in order to prevent prisoners of war, patients, prisoners, and soldiers from being coerced into becoming human subjects. In addition, it was emphasized in order to inform participants of the risk-benefit outcomes of experiments.
Nuremberg trials
Henry Morgenthau Jr., US Secretary of the Treasury, suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany; this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany and the summary execution of so-called "arch-criminals", i.e. the major war criminals. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked generating widespread condemnation by the nation's newspapers. Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternative position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.
Military history of Germany
Among the legacies of the Nazi era were the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-1949. These established the concept of war crimes in international law and created the precedent for trying future war criminals.
Judgment at Nuremberg
Haywood must weigh considerations of geopolitical expediency and ideals of justice. The trial takes place against the background of the Berlin Blockade, and there is pressure to let the German defendants off lightly so as to gain German support in the then-early and growing Cold War against the Soviet Union. All four defendants are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Neuengamme concentration camp
On 18 March 1946, the trial of fourteen officials of the main Neuengamme concentration camp began before a British military tribunal, at the Curiohaus building in Hamburg, Germany, the first of thirty-three trials that would be held over a period of the next two years brought by the British against staff of the camp and its satellites. Former prisoners from six countries testified during the trial regarding the executions committed in the camp, including those of Soviet POWs murdered with poisonous gas, "medical" experiments conducted on inmates, and the brutal treatment and appalling conditions of the prisoners in general.
Walter Schreiber
On 30 April 1945, while caring for wounded in a makeshift hospital in Berlin, he was taken prisoner of war by the Red Army and transported to the Soviet Union. On 26 August 1946, Schreiber appeared as a surprise witness at the Nuremberg Trials, giving evidence in support of the Soviet Chief Prosecutor, Roman Rudenko, against, Hermann Göring and Kurt Blome, who had been in charge of German offensive biological weapons development. A recording of his testimony at the trial can be found at the online archive of the Imperial War Museum. The transcript became part of the Nuremberg proceedings against German major war criminals. Dr. Schreiber, whose long-standing record against the use of offensive biological warfare and human experimentation was well established, was himself never charged or considered for prosecution on war crimes charges.
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg Trials employed four official languages: English, French, German and Russian. In order to address the complex linguistic issues that clouded over the proceedings, interpretation and translation departments had to be established. However, it was feared that consecutive interpretation would slow down the proceedings significantly. What is therefore unique in both the Nuremberg tribunals and history of the interpretation profession was the introduction of an entirely new technique, extempore simultaneous interpretation. This technique of interpretation requires the interpreter to listen to a speaker in a source (or passive) language and orally translate that speech into another language in real time, that is, simultaneously, through headsets and microphones. Interpreters were split into four sections, one for each official language, with three interpreters per section working from the other three languages into the fourth (their mother tongue). For instance, the English booth consisted of three interpreters, one working from German into English, one working from French, and one from Russian, etc. Defendants who did not speak any of the four official languages were provided with consecutive court interpreters. Some of the languages heard over the course of the proceedings included Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Polish.
Hitler's Obersalzberg Speech
Three documents were grouped together during Nuremberg Trials which contained Hitler's speech on 22 August 1939 (1014-PS, 798-PS, and L-3,) and only the document L-3 contained the Armenian quote. Documents 1014-PS and 798-PS were captured by the United States forces inside the OKW headquarters but these documents did not contain the Armenian quote. On May 16, 1946, during the Nuremberg War Tribunals, a counsel for one of the defendants, Dr. Walter Siemers requested from the president of the trial to strike out the document 1014-PS, but his request was rejected by the president. Document L-3 was brought to the court by an American journalist, Louis P. Lochner.
Nuremberg and Vietnam
Telford Taylor, was once the Chief Counsel Prosecutor at the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg, Germany from 1946–1949. In that capacity, Taylor helped to establish the laws by which Nazi war criminals would be tried for their crimes.
Ernst von Weizsäcker
Weizsäcker was arrested on 25 July 1947 in Nuremberg and was put on trial in the Ministries Trial, also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, after the location of the German Foreign Office in Berlin. The Ministries Trial was one of 12 trials conducted by Nuremberg Military Tribunals in the U.S. occupation zone. These American military tribunals started before and finished during the Berlin blockade confrontation with the Soviets and proceeded without participation of the USSR; they were also much milder in conduct and outcome than the first series of war crimes trials in 1946. No European judges were involved in the trial. Weizsäcker's supporters claimed that he had been closely associated with the anti-Nazi resistance and a moderate force at the Foreign Office during the war; Winston Churchill called his sentence a "deadly error".
Johnson T. Crawford
Johnson Tal Crawford was a district judge in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, United States from 1936 to 1946. He was appointed as member of Military Tribunal I by Harry S. Truman
and judged both the Doctors' trial (along with Walter B. Beals, Harold Sebring, and
Victor C. Swearingen) and the RuSHA Trial as part of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials at Nuremberg. The collective judgement from the Doctors' trial led to the establishment of the Nuremberg Code. His papers are held in the Linscheid Library of East Central University.
Nuremberg Plate
The Nuremberg Plate (German: "Nürnberger Teller" also "Nürnberger Scheibe") was an apparatus for the interrogation through torture. This instrument of torture was used during late Middle Ages and early modern times for enforcement of confessions.
Judgment at Nuremberg
"Judgment at Nuremberg" centers on a military tribunal convened in Nuremberg, Germany, in which four German judges and prosecutors stand accused of crimes against humanity for their involvement in atrocities committed under the Nazi regime. Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) is the Chief Trial Judge of a three-judge panel that will hear and decide the case against the defendants. Haywood begins his examination by trying to learn how the defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) could have sentenced so many people to death. Janning, it is revealed, is a well-educated and internationally respected jurist and legal scholar. Haywood seeks to understand how the German people could have turned blind eyes and deaf ears to the crimes of the Nazi regime. In doing so, he befriends the widow (Marlene Dietrich) of a German general who had been executed by the Allies. He talks with a number of Germans who have different perspectives on the war. Other characters the judge meets are US Army Captain Byers (William Shatner), who is assigned to the American party hearing the cases, and Irene Hoffmann (Judy Garland), who is afraid to provide testimony that may bolster the prosecution's case against the judges.
Franconia
Following the unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, Bavarian Franconia became part of the American zone of occupation; whilst South Thuringia, with the exception of smaller enclaves like Ostheim, became part of the Soviet zone and the Franconian parts of today's Baden-Württemberg also went to the American zone The most important part of the Allied prosecution programme against leaders of the Nazi regime were the Nuremberg Trials against leaders of the German Empire during the Nazi era, held from 20 November 1945 to 14 April 1949. The Nuremberg Trials are considered a breakthrough for the principle that, for a core set of crimes, there is no immunity from prosecution. For the first time the representatives of a sovereign state were held accountable for their actions. In autumn 1946, the Free State of Bavaria was reconstituted with the enactment of the Bavarian Constitution.
Guatemala syphilis experiment
"It is clear from the language of the report that the U.S. researchers understood the profoundly unethical nature of the study. In fact the Guatemalan syphilis study was being carried out just as the “Doctors' Trial” was unfolding at Nuremberg (December 1946 – August 1947), when 23 German physicians stood trial for participating in Nazi programs to euthanize or medically experiment on concentration camp prisoners."
Unethical human experimentation
After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the Doctors' Trial, and the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics. During the Nuremberg Trials, 23 Nazi doctors and scientists were tried for the unethical treatment of concentration camp inmates, who were often used as research subjects with fatal consequences. Of those 23, 16 were convicted (15 were convicted for the unethical treatment, while one of them was only convicted of SS membership), 7 were condemned to death, 9 received prison sentences from 10 years to life, and 7 were acquitted.
Freiherr von Blomberg family
Blomberg and his wife were subsequently exiled for a year to the isle of Capri. Spending World War II in obscurity, Blomberg was captured by the Allies in 1945, after which time he gave evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. Blomberg died while in detention at Nuremberg in 1946.
20th-century events
Following the end of the war, the Allies famously prosecuted numerous German officials for war crimes and other offenses in the Nuremberg Trials. Although Adolf Hitler had committed suicide, many of his cronies, including Hermann Göring, were convicted. Less well-known trials of other Axis officials also occurred, including the Tokyo War Crime Trial.
Claus Schilling
In the course of the Dachau Trials following the liberation of the camp at the close of the war, Schilling was tried by a U.S. General Military Court, appointed at November 2, 1945, in the case of "The United States versus Martin Gottfried Weiss, Wilhelm Rupert, et al". The defendants, 40 doctors and staff, were charged and convicted of offenses of the violations of laws and usages of war in that they acted in pursuance of a common design, did encourage, aid, abet, and participate in the subjection of Allied nationals and prisoners of war to cruelties and mistreatments at Dachau Concentration Camp and its subcamps. According to the August H. Vieweg testimony, the patients used in the malaria experiments were Poles, Russians, and Yugoslavs. That time there was no formal code of ethics in medical research to which the judges could hold the accused Nazi doctors accountable. The "scientific experiments" exposed during the trials lead to the Nuremberg Code, developed in 1949 as a ten-point code of human experimentation ethics.
Charles F. Wennerstrum
Wennerstrum was born in Cambridge, Illinois and studied at Drake University, where he graduated in law in 1914. Elected county attorney of Lucas County in 1916, he served as a lieutenant of the U.S. Army in World War I. From January 1, 1941, until December 31, 1958, he served on the Iowa Supreme Court, where he was chief justice for two years. During that time, he also served as the presiding judge in the Hostages Case at the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in Nuremberg, Germany in 1947/48, where some Generals of the German army were tried for having committed war crimes.
Nuremberg trials
This article primarily deals with the first trial, which was conducted by the IMT. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT), which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial.
Robert Kurt Woetzel
Woetzel’s doctoral dissertation, on the legality of the Nuremberg trials, was published as "The Nuremberg Trials in International Law". His main purpose in "The Nuremberg Trials" was to defend the basis of the Nuremberg trials in international law, opposing legal scholars who had argued that the trials were "ex post facto" and illegal. However, he also expressed the hope that the Nuremberg trials would eventually lead to the establishment of an international criminal court.
Bernd von Brauchitsch
In May 1945, Brauchitsch, in accordance with Göring's orders, approached the 36th U.S. Division of the 7th American Army, as a negotiator. As a representative of Göring, he informed the Americans that Göring believed the war was over, and he was ready to surrender. Brauchitsch was then held in captivity, from which he was released in 1948 (the same year his father died). In March 1946, he was interrogated at the Nuremberg Trials as a witness to major war crimes as well as his own personal experience of Göring and top Nazi chieftains.
Price v. United States
The main photographic archive had been used in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials and was shipped to the United States "around the time of the Berlin Airlift" (1948–1949). On June 25, 1951, the Attorney General, acting pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917, 50 U.S.C.App. § 1–33, vested in himself all rights in the photographs and photographic images "to be held, used, administered, liquidated, sold, or otherwise dealt with in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States." The archive was later transferred to the United States National Archives.
Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation
The Nuremberg trials began in November 1945. Schneerson sent Léon Poliakov who had recently joined CJDC as a historian to Nuremberg as an expert researcher, along with an assistant, Joseph Billig. They founded Jewish World War II historiography alone with no training. Many documents in evidence at Nuremberg ended up in the Center, and became the kernel of their photo and document archives. These, in turn, were used in France in the post-war years in many war crime trials, such as those of Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon and others. The Center was also responsible for bringing a key document to light, the original order for the 1944 roundup of Jewish refugee children of Izieu who were later deported to Auschwitz and killed upon arrival.
Hitler's Generals on Trial
"Hitler's Generals on Trial" details the High Command Trial, officially known as "War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals", which was part of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials. "Hitler's Generals on Trial" focuses on two goals set out for the trials. The first, a didactic goal, which attempted to use the trials as a learning experience for the German nation regarding the depth of the complicity of their armed forces, the Wehrmacht, in the criminality of the Nazi regime. The second goal involved obtaining justice for the victims by punishing those involved.