The Nuremberg Trials (1945-1949)

Representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the London Charter, creating an International Military Tribunal to try the major leaders of defeated Nazi Germany. The charter defined four counts: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The agreement followed months of dispute among the Allies, whose proposals had ranged from a Soviet show trial to British calls for summary execution of the top Nazis.

Location: London, United Kingdom

The prosecution filed the indictment against 24 individuals and six German organizations, including the SS, the Gestapo, and the Nazi Party leadership corps. Robert Ley died by suicide in custody before the trial opened, and Martin Bormann was tried in his absence, leaving 22 defendants to stand trial. The charges covered the planning of aggressive war, atrocities in occupied Europe, and the extermination of the Jews.

Location: Berlin, Germany

The International Military Tribunal opened in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, one of the few large public buildings left intact in Germany. All defendants pleaded not guilty except the absent Bormann. Chief United States prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, on leave from the Supreme Court, argued in his opening statement that the four nations had "stayed the hand of vengeance" to submit evidence to the judgment of law, a claim later contested by critics who described the proceedings as victors' justice.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany

After 403 open sessions conducted in four languages, the tribunal closed the hearing of evidence and counsel's speeches. The prosecution had relied heavily on the German government's own records, including Einsatzgruppen reports and deportation documents, supported by 37 prosecution witnesses; the defense called 83 witnesses. The documentary record assembled at Nuremberg became a permanent archive of the Nazi regime's crimes.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany

The tribunal delivered its judgment, sentencing twelve defendants to death, including Hermann Goring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel; Rudolf Hess, Erich Raeder, and Walther Funk received life imprisonment; Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach received twenty years; Karl Donitz received ten. Three defendants, Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche, were acquitted. The SS, SD, Gestapo, and Nazi Party Leadership Corps were declared criminal organizations, while the cabinet and the military high command were acquitted.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany

Soviet judge Iona Nikitchenko recorded a dissenting opinion, disagreeing with the three acquittals, with the refusal to declare the cabinet and high command criminal, and with Rudolf Hess's prison sentence. The acquittals were cited by defenders of the tribunal as evidence of genuine judicial process, while contemporaries in several countries argued that the criminalization of aggressive war after the fact violated the principle that a person can only be punished under existing law. The tribunal's treatment of these objections left the debate over the trials' legitimacy unresolved.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany

Ten of the eleven condemned men were hanged in the Palace of Justice prison. Hermann Goring took cyanide the night before, on 15 October; Martin Bormann, sentenced in absentia, was never executed and was confirmed dead only decades later. The sentences closed the main proceedings of the International Military Tribunal.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany

The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 95, affirming the principles of international law recognized in the tribunal's charter and judgment. The "Nuremberg Principles" were later codified by the International Law Commission in 1950 and informed the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the statutes of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Location: Lake Success, New York, United States

A United States military tribunal convicted Karl Brandt and other physicians in the Doctors' Trial, the most prominent of the twelve subsequent Nuremberg trials conducted under Control Council Law No. 10, sentencing seven defendants to death. The case exposed medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and its judgment annexed the Nuremberg Code, the first international statement requiring voluntary consent from human research subjects. The subsequent proceedings also tried judges, industrialists, Einsatzgruppen commanders, and Foreign Ministry officials, with the last case concluding in 1949.

Location: Nuremberg, Germany