{"id":2982,"date":"2019-04-07T19:50:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T19:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2026-02-13T08:36:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:36:58","slug":"nuremberg-trials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/nuremberg-trials\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuremberg Trials: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of important military tribunals that were held from 1945 to 1946 to bring several Nazi<\/a> officials to justice for atrocities committed during World War II<\/a> and the Holocaust<\/a>. The trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany, and were conducted by the Allied Powers of: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. The Nazi officials faced charges such as war crimes<\/a>, crimes against humanity<\/a>, and genocide<\/a>. The Nuremberg Trials were a significant step forward in dealing with international crimes. For instance, they set the foundation for modern international law and institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NUREMBERG TRIALS – BACKGROUND<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Holocaust is one of the most important events of the 20th century and occurred alongside the major events of World War II in Europe.  The event that is most often associated with the end of both the Holocaust and World War II is the Nuremberg Trials, which saw the Allied nations impose justice on many high ranking Nazi officials for their roles in carrying out both events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holocaust is perhaps the most significant genocide in human history and involved the deaths of over 11 million people, including 6 million Jewish people.\u00a0 The brutality of the\u00a0concentration camps and death camps\u00a0shocked the Allied leaders and led to calls for justice against the Nazis based on the concepts of \u2018war crimes\u2019 and \u2018crimes against humanity\u2019.\u00a0 A \u2018war crime<\/a>\u2019 is defined as an act carried out during a war that is beyond what is considered acceptable.\u00a0 For example, while fighting and killing enemy soldiers during battle would be considered normal aspects of war, the extermination of groups of people based upon their ethnicity would not.\u00a0 As such, the events of the Holocaust and the Nazi\u2019s role in carrying them out are referred to as a war crime.\u00a0 A \u2018crime against humanity<\/a>\u2019 is defined as a deliberate act that causes human suffering or death.\u00a0 In short, the horrible conditions and treatment that the Jewish, and others, faced during the Holocaust certainly displayed human suffering and death.\u00a0 Not only did over 11 million die as a result of the actions of the Nazis, but the people also suffered horrible conditions in the\u00a0ghettos<\/a>\u00a0and concentration camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Holocaust\"
Jewish prisoners arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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During\u00a0World War II, the Allied powers met several times to discuss post-war Europe and how to bring the Nazis to justice.\u00a0 For example, three significant conferences were held including: the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the\u00a0Yalta Conference<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Potsdam Conference<\/a>\u00a0in 1945. In general, the leaders initially disagreed on how to carry out justice.\u00a0\u00a0Winston Churchill\u00a0of Britain and\u00a0Joseph Stalin<\/a>\u00a0of the Soviet Union favored summary executions, meaning the officials would be killed without a trial.\u00a0 Whereas, U.S. President\u00a0Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/a>, and later\u00a0Harry S. Truman<\/a>, were in favor of a formal trial to ensure the collection and presentation of evidence in order to prove guilt.\u00a0 Eventually, the other leaders agreed with the American approach and the nations set out to establish the system of trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NUREMBERG TRIALS – SUMMARY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The trials were established in the German city of Nuremberg for several reasons.\u00a0 First it had the Nuremberg Palace of Justice which was large and could accommodate all of the necessary judges and prisoners.\u00a0 Second, Nuremberg was the spiritual birthplace of the Nazi Party<\/a> and the site of the creation of the\u00a0Nuremberg Laws<\/a>.\u00a0 The Allies considered it fitting that the Nazi Party would see its official end in the same place that it saw its beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the establishment of the trials, it was decided that France would also play a central role.  As such, each of the four Allied countries (United States, Britain, Soviet Union and France) appointed a set of judges and a prosecutor.  The Nazis were defended mainly by German lawyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nuremberg Trials began on November 19th, 1945 with indictments against twenty four captured Nazis and different Nazi organizations, including: Nazi leadership, the SS, the Gestapo<\/a>, and the SA.\u00a0 The first charge was that the Nazis participated in a conspiracy to wage war and end the peace following World War I<\/a>.\u00a0 The second charge was that the German leadership planned and carried our wars of aggression.\u00a0 The third charge was for war crimes and the fourth charge was for carrying out crimes against humanity.\u00a0 Of the twenty four Nazis tried at the Nuremberg Trials only five were found not guilty.\u00a0 The other nineteen were convicted and either sentenced to prison terms, including life in prison, or given a death sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nuremberg
Events from the Nuremberg Trials. (January of 1946)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In general, the lawyers of the Nazi defendants argued a similar defense.  First, they argued that the Nuremberg Trials were not legitimate since the \u2018charges\u2019 they were upholding did not exist before the \u2018crimes\u2019 were committed.  Further, they argued that the court had no authority over the defendants and insisted that the Allies were only seeking to punish the Nazis because they viewed themselves as the victors of the war.  Next, the Nazis argued that they were simply following the orders of their commanding officers and should not be held accountable for what was official policy of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most famous and highest ranking, of the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials was Hermann Goering<\/a>.\u00a0 Goering was a prominent Nazi leader who was the head of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and was set to replace Hitler as the next in command of Nazi Germany.\u00a0 He was found guilty of all four charges and sentenced to death; however, he committed suicide with a cyanide pill on the night before his execution.\u00a0 Ten other Nazi officials were sentenced to death with all of them being hanged.\u00a0 The trials concluded in September of 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nuremberg
Hermann Goering under cross-examination during the Nuremberg Trials.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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At the end of World War II several Nazis committed suicide in order to avoid being captured and facing justice for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.\u00a0 For example,\u00a0Adolf Hitler<\/a>\u00a0committed suicide with his wife, Eva Braun, On April 30th, 1944 as the Soviet Army surrounded Berlin during the final stages of the\u00a0Battle of Berlin<\/a>.\u00a0 Other high ranking Nazis also committed suicide, including: Heinrich Himmler<\/a> and Joseph Goebbels<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200bWhile others avoided the Nuremberg Trials by fleeing at the end of World War II, many of them were hunted down and captured.  For example, Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo department dealing with Jewish affairs fled to Central America.  During the war he was responsible for organizing the transportation of the Jewish to the death camps from the ghettos.  He was captured in Argentina by Israeli Nazi-hunters and was eventually put on trial in Israel 1961 and executed in 1962.  His trial was modeled after the earlier Nuremberg Trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the main Nuremberg Trial, which ended in 1946, there was a series of twelve more trials that took place between 1946 and 1949.\u00a0 These trials were focused on particular issues, including: Nazi Doctors, Judges, Einsatzgruppen<\/a>, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Adolf
Adolf Eichmann was responsible for organizing the transportation of the Jewish to the death camps from the ghettos during the events of the Holocaust.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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NUREMBERG TRIALS – SIGNIFICANCE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Nuremberg Trials were a significant event in the history of World War II and the Holocaust.\u00a0 They were the first such \u2018international\u2019 trials and established a model for future trials.\u00a0 For example, in the 1990s, following the genocide in Rwanda<\/a>, a similar international court was established to try war criminals from that country.\u00a0 As well, the Nuremberg Trials helped establish a renewed interest in human rights issues.\u00a0 For instance, the United Nations<\/a> was established in 1946 with the goal of preventing similar future conflicts.\u00a0 Furthermore, the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> in 1948 with the goal of restoring faith in basic human rights and to avoid future related war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held after World War II to prosecute top Nazi leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. This article details the history and significance of the Nuremberg Trials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":33,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,51,45,105,47],"tags":[61,15,101,106,56,22],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-war-ii","category-genocide","category-holocaust","category-internationalism","category-nazi-germany","tag-genocide","tag-history","tag-holocaust","tag-internationalism","tag-nazi-germany","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5168,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions\/5168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}