Alfred Rosenberg was sentenced to death by hanging. He was charged with the solicitation of slave labor -- in violation of the Geneva Convention of Why Hjalmar Schacht was included in the list of defendants is unclear. His dislike of the Versailles Treaty, his belief that the German military should once again be strong and his support of the Anschluss were well known, but these are hardly "war crimes.
Likewise, Schacht had never concealed his antisemitism and his agreement that Jews should be excluded from governmental and civil service positions. Immediately, the new Chancellor invited German troops to enter Austria. The Anschluss was under way. In that position he was instrumental in the formation of the Lublin Plan for the deportation of Jews from the Reich cf. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Vol. In May, , Hitler appointed him Reich Commissioner of the Occupied Netherlands to pave the way for the annexation of that country.
In late and , Seyss-Inquart was active in the Aryanization of Jewish property and the deportation of Dutch Jews to the extermination camps in Poland. Artur Seyss-Inquart was charged on all four counts and was sentenced to death by hanging.
You were not only a member of the Nazi Party after , but you held high rank in the Party, did you not? Temporarily in I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories.
Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in Notes of the conference I had with Hitler about this are available.
SPEER: Party titles had just been introduced, and they were so complicated that I cannot tell you at the moment what they were. My title was Hauptdienstleiter or something of the kind. SPEER: Before I joined in the various Party rallies here in Nuremberg because I had to take part in them as an architect, and of course besides this I was generally present at official Party meetings or Reichstag sessions.
Albert Speer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released from Spandau Prison on September 30, Speer died in As Editor-in-Chief of the venomous antisemitic paper, Der Stuermer , Julius Streicher disseminated hatred and the most virulent strain of anti-Jewish sentiment to be found in all of Germany.
And, yet, his role in inciting the extermination of Jews was significant enough, in the judgment of the prosecutors, to include him in the indictment. Julius Streicher was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence of Neurath has been criticized as relatively harsh. His case was little different from that of Papen and Schacht, both of whom were acquitted.
The Tribunal seemed unimpressed with his claim that he remained in his position in Czechoslovakia to prevent that country from being taken over completely by the SS cf. Conot, Constantin von Neurath was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
However, the prosecution had serious difficulties linking Papen to conspiracy to initiate an aggressive war. In that position, he was intimately involved in almost all of the actions to wage "aggressive war.
He had recommended and supported the deportation of Jews from France and Italy to the camps in the east and urged their extermination. Joachim von Ribbentrop was sentenced to death by hanging.
On Count One, planning and preparing for aggressive war, the evidence was slight at best. Shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany in , he and his Nazi government began implementing policies designed to persecute German-Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state. Over the next decade, these policies grew increasingly repressive and violent and resulted, by the end of World War II , in the systematic, state-sponsored murder of some 6 million European Jews along with an estimated 4 million to 6 million non-Jews.
Joseph Stalin , the Soviet leader, initially proposed the execution of 50, to , German staff officers. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill discussed the possibility of summary execution execution without a trial of high-ranking Nazis, but was persuaded by American leaders that a criminal trial would be more effective.
Among other advantages, criminal proceedings would require documentation of the crimes charged against the defendants and prevent later accusations that the defendants had been condemned without evidence. There were many legal and procedural difficulties to overcome in setting up the Nuremberg trials.
First, there was no precedent for an international trial of war criminals. There were earlier instances of prosecution for war crimes, such as the execution of Confederate army officer Henry Wirz for his maltreatment of Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War ; and the courts-martial held by Turkey in to punish those responsible for the Armenian genocide of However, these were trials conducted according to the laws of a single nation rather than, as in the case of the Nuremberg trials, a group of four powers France, Britain, the Soviet Union and the U.
Among other things, the charter defined three categories of crimes: crimes against peace including planning, preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements , war crimes including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war and crimes against humanity including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds. It was determined that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes.
The city of Nuremberg also known as Nurnberg in the German state of Bavaria was selected as the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was relatively undamaged by the war and included a large prison area. The format of the trial was a mix of legal traditions: There were prosecutors and defense attorneys according to British and American law, but the decisions and sentences were imposed by a tribunal panel of judges rather than a single judge and a jury.
The chief American prosecutor was Robert H. Jackson , an associate justice of the U. Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied powers supplied two judges—a main judge and an alternate. Aside from the fact that the notion is new, is it not fundamentally unjust? The crime of conspiracy was originally developed by the Court of Star Chamber on the theory that any unlicensed joint action of private persons was a threat to the public, and so if the action was in any part unlawful it was all unlawful.
The analogies of the municipal law of conspiracy therefore seem out of place in considering for international purposes the effect of joint political action. After all, in a government or other large social community there exists among the top officials, civilian and military, together with their financial and industrial collaborators, a kind of over-all working arrangement which may always be looked upon, if its invidious connotation be disregarded, as a "conspiracy.
To take a case which is perhaps not so obvious, is everyone who joins a political party, even one with some illegal purposes, to be held liable to the world for the action that every member takes, even if that action is not declared in the party platform an was not known to or consented to by the person charged as a wrongdoer?
To put upon any individual such responsibility for action of the group seems literally to step back in history to a point before the prophet Ezekiel and to reject the more recent religious and democratic teachings that guilt is personal. Turning now from the legal basis of the indictment, I propose briefly to consider whether, quite apart from legal technicalities, the procedure of an international military tribunal on the Nuremberg pattern is a politically acceptable way of dealing with the offenders in the dock and those others whom we may legitimately feel should be punished.
The chief arguments usually given for this quasi-judicial trial are that it gives the culprits a chance to say anything that can be said on their behalf, that it gives both the world today and the world tomorrow a chance to see the justice of the Allied cause and the wickedness of the Nazis', and that it sets a firm foundation for a future world order wherein individuals will know that if they embark on schemes of aggression or murder or torture or persecution they will be severely dealt with by the world.
The first argument has some merit. The defendants, after hearing and seeing the evidence against them, will have an opportunity without torture and with the aid of counsel to make statements on their own behalf. For us and for them this opportunity will make the proceeding more convincing. Yet the defendants will not have the right to make the type of presentation that at least English-speaking persons have thought the indispensable concomitant of a fair trial.
No one expects that Ribbentrop will be allowed to summon Molotov to disprove the charge that in invading Poland Germany started an aggressive war. No one anticipates that the defense, if it has the evidence, will be given as long a time to present its evidence as the prosecution takes. And there is nothing more foreign to those proceedings than either the presumption that the defendants are innocent until proved guilty or the doctrine that any adverse public comment on the defendants before the verdict is prejudicial to their receiving a fair trial.
The basic approach is that these men should not have a chance to go free. And that being so, they ought not to be tried in a court of law.
As to the second point, one objection is purely pragmatic. There is a reasonable doubt whether this kind of trial, despite the voluminous and accessible record it makes, persuades anyone. It brings out new evidence, but does it change men's minds? Most reporters say that the Germans are neither interested in nor persuaded by these proceedings, which they regard as partisan. They regard the proceedings not as marking a rebirth of law in Central Europe but as a political judgment on their former leaders.
The same attitude may prevail in future because of the departure from accepted legal standards. A more profound objection to the second point is that to regard a trial as a propaganda device is to debase justice.
To be sure, most trials do and should incidentally educate the public. Yet any judge knows that if he, or counsel, or the parties regard a trial primarily as a public demonstration, or even as a general inquest, then there enter considerations which would otherwise be regarded as improper.
In a political inquiry and even more in the spread of propaganda, the appeal is likely to be to the unreflecting thought and the deep-seated emotions of the crowd untrammeled by any fixed standards.
The objective is to create outside the courtroom a desired state of affairs. In a trial the appeal is to the disinterested judgment of reasonable men guided by established precepts. The objective is to make inside the courtroom a sound disposition of a pending case according to settled principles. The argument that these trials set a firm foundation for a future world legal structure is perhaps debatable. The spectacle of individual liability for a world wrong may lead to future treaties and agreements specifying individual liability.
If this were the outcome and if, for example, with respect to wars of aggression, war crimes, and use of atomic energy the nations should agree upon world rules establishing individual liability, then this would be a great gain. But it is by no means clear that this trial will further any such program. At the moment, the world is most impressed by the undeniable dignity and efficiency of the proceedings and by the horrible events recited in the testimony. But, upon reflection, the informed public may be disturbed by the repudiation of widely accepted concepts of legal justice.
It may see too great a resemblance between this proceeding and others which we ourselves have condemned. If in the end there is a generally accepted view that Nuremberg was an example of high politics masquerading as law, then the trial instead of promoting may retard the coming of the day of world law.
Quite apart form the effect of the Nuremberg trial upon the particular defendants involved, there is the disturbing effect of the trial upon domestic justice here and abroad. Indeed our complaisance may mark the beginning of an age of reaction in constitutionalism in particular and of law in general. Have we forgotten that law is not power, but restraint on power? On June 26, Robert Jackson flew to London to meet with delegates from the other three Allied powers for a discussion of what to do with the captured Nazi leaders.
Every nation had its own criminal statutes and its own views as to how the trials should proceed. Jackson devoted such considerable time to explaining why the criminal statutes relating to wars of aggression and crimes against humanity that he proposed drafting would not be ex post facto laws. Jackson told negotiators from the other nations, "What we propose is to punish acts which have been regarded as criminal since the time of Cain and have been so written in every civilized code.
After ten days of discussion, the shape of the proceedings to come became clearer. The trying court would be called the International Military Tribunal, and it would consist of one primary and one alternate judge from each country. The adversarial system preferred by the Americans and British would be used.
The indictments against the defendants would prohibit defenses based on superior orders, as well as tu quoque the "so-did-you" defense. Delegates were determined not to let the defendants and their German lawyers turn the trial into one that would expose questionable war conduct by Allied forces.
The plan for the trials didn't sit well with all of Jackson's fellow justices. Justice William O. Douglas complained that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. He argued that the laws to be applied were created after the fact "to suit the clamor of the time.
Jackson believed that the war crimes trials should be held in Germany. Few German cities in , however, had a standing courthouse in which a major trial could be held.
One of the few cities that did was Nuremberg, site of Zeppelin Field and some of Hitler's most spectacular rallies. It was also in Nuremberg that Nazi leaders proclaimed the infamous Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jews of their property and basic rights.
Jackson liked that connection. Over the objection of the Soviets who preferred Berlin , Allied representatives decided to conduct the trial in Nuremberg. On August 6, the representatives signed the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, establishing the laws and procedures that would govern the Nuremberg trials.
Six days later, a cargo plane carrying most of major war trial defendants landed in Nuremberg. Allied military personnel loaded the prisoners into ambulances and took them to a secure cell block of the Palace of Justice, where they spent the next fourteen months. Judges for the IMT met for the first time on October The American judge was Francis Biddle , who was appointed to the job by Harry Truman--perhaps out of a feeling of guilt after the President dismissed him as Attorney General.
Robert Jackson pressured Biddle, who desperately wanted the position of chief judge, to support instead the British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence. Jackson thought the selection of a British as president of the IMT would ease criticism that the Americans were playing too large a role in the trials.
Votes from the Americans, British, and French elected Lawrence chief judge. With a November 20 opening trial date approaching, Nuremberg began to fill with visitors. A prosecutorial staff of over Americans plus additional hundreds from the other three powers assembled and began interviewing potential witnesses and identifying documents from among the , captured for the prosecution case.
German lawyers, some of whom were themselves Nazis, arrived to interview their clients and began trial preparation. Members of the world press moved into the Grand Hotel and whatever other quarters they could find and began writing background features on the upcoming trial. Nearly a thousand workers rushed to complete restoration of the Palace of Justice. On the opening day of the trial, the twenty-one indicted war trial defendants took their seats in the dock at the rear of the sage green draped and dark paneled room.
Behind them stood six American sentries with their backs against the wall. At 10 a. All rise. The tribunal will now enter. Sir Geoffrey Lawrence rapped his gavel. The trial began with the reading of the indictments. The indictments concerned four counts. All defendants were indicted on at least two of the counts; several were indicted on all four counts. Count One, "conspiracy to wage aggressive war," addressed crimes committed before the war began. Count Two, "waging an aggressive war or "crimes against peace" , addressed the undertaking of war in violation of international treaties and assurances.
Count Three, "war crimes," addressed more traditional violations of the laws of war such as the killing or mistreatment of prisoners of war and the use of outlawed weapons. Count Four, "crimes against humanity," addressed crimes committed against Jews, ethnic minorities, the physically and mentally disabled, civilians in occupied countries, and other persons. The greatest of these crimes against humanity was, of course, the mass murder of Jews in concentration camps--the so-called "Final Solution.
The next day Robert Jackson delivered his opening statement for the prosecution. Jackson spoke eloquently for two hours. He told the court, "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.
That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes power has ever paid to reason. The prosecution case was divided into two main phases. The first phase focused on establishing the criminality of various components of the Nazi regime, while the second sought to establish the guilt of individual defendants.
The first prosecutorial phase was divided into parts. The prosecution presented the case that the Austrian invasion constituted an aggressive war, then proceeded over the course of two weeks to show the same for invasions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.
Prosecution proof on the counts of conspiring to wage and then waging an aggressive war consisted mainly of documentary evidence. Documentary evidence had one big disadvantage--it was boring. Hour upon hour of various letters and other communications being read into the record caused the press to flee in droves. The Allies worried that excessive reliance on documentary evidence was undermining their goal of educating the public about the horrors inflicted by the Nazi regime.
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