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Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
Key Lecture Points:
• On October 1, 1946 verdicts were handed down for the first Nazi war criminals tried by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany—11 prominent Nazis were sentenced to death and ten were hanged in Nuremberg on October 16 (Goering, Hitler’s air force chief, killed himself with smuggled cyanide the night before the executions). On October 25, 1946 the United States Military Government for Germany established Military Tribunal I, which tried 23 Nazi physicians in the first of twelve more trials to be held in Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949. The defendants at these trials were Nazi physicians, Nazi soldiers, SS officers, concentration camp personnel, and industrialists and other wartime profiteers.
• Aside from judging and punishing war criminals, the Nuremberg trials provided the (partial) basis for the establishment of a body of international law dealing with the rules of war and international criminals. The Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, the UN Convention on Genocide, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights are the most significant outgrowths of the Nuremberg trials. Further, the recent creation of the International Criminal Court has its roots in recommendations of Nuremberg participants.
• More specifically, the Nuremberg Principles, legal principles established by the Tribunals, provided a basis for our understandings of “crimes against peace”, “war crimes”, and “crimes against humanity”, all of which are recognized today as crimes under international law. Further, the revelations about Nazi treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians that came out during the Nuremberg trials provided the impetus for the 3rd and 4th Geneva Conventions, dealing with the treatment of POWs and of civilians during wartime.
For More Information:
• On the Nuremberg Trials: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm
• On the Geneva Conventions: http://www.genevaconventions.org
Books For Further Reading:
• Sands, Phillipe, ed. From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice. Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2003. 206 pages.
Description: This book is an edited collection of essays written by experts in the field of international criminal law; the essays examine the evolution of international criminal justice, beginning with Nuremberg. It is slightly academic in style, yet appropriate for specialists and non-specialists alike.
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• Taylor, Telford. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. Little, Brown and Co., 1993. 703 pages.
Description: Told by the lead prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, this insider’s account of the trial is the “definitive work on the subject” according to Publisher’s Weekly.
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