The Trial at Nuremberg

During World War II the Allies were determined that both Hitler and the men around him

should be punished for starting World War II and the crimes they had committed while

they were waging it. These crimes included the extermination of the Jewish people of

Europe known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. After some debate it was decided that the

fairest way to proceed was the public trial of the men and organizations who committed

the crimes.

At the most famous of these, the Nuremberg Trial, , and that had been organized to carry

out the Nazi programs, were placed on trial for their crimes. Martin Bormann was tried in

absentia. Additionally Robert Ley was charged as a defendant but committed suicide

before the trial, and Gustav Krupp, who was named in the indictments, was found to be

medically unfit to stand trial. Many of the leading Nazis, such as Hitler, Himmler, and

Goebbels, were not present at the Nuremberg Trial because they has committed suicide at

the end of the war.

The first step was to agree upon the rules for the trial. They adopted a of the four Allies

(the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union). The defendants were

given the right to be represented by counsel, call witnesses, and present evidence in their

own behalf. They were not given the right to a jury trial which was part of the law only in

Great Britain and the United States. Finally, after all the evidence was presented, the

defendants were permitted to make statements to the court without being sworn or

cross-examined.

The next step was the , a statement of the charges against each defendant. The Allies

charged the defendants with four types of crimes: conspiracy against peace, crimes against

peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Allies stated that the Nazis, when

they started the war, had deliberately broken the treaties that Germany had signed. The

Holocaust was included as part of the crimes against humanity. Not all of the defendants

were charged under all counts of the indictment. Doenitz, Raeder, and Schacht were not

accused of participating in the Holocaust.

The trial was held before a panel of judges selected by the Allies called the and presided

over by a British judge named Lord Lawrence. The Allies presented their evidence which

consisted almost entirely of the words and documents of the Nazis themselves. During the

investigation that led up to the trial, the U.S. and British investigators had discovered

literally tons of documents which proved the charges against the defendants. The decision

was made, therefore, to rely on the words of the defendants themselves in the trial. Certain

witnesses were presented to flesh out the evidence. This is especially true in the case

against the concentration camps where witnesses ranging from a member of the French

parliament -- who had been imprisoned as a slave laborer at Auschwitz -- to an American

army officer who had been imprisoned at Buchenwald testified. Several Nazi officers also

testified about how the Holocaust occurred.

Although the French and the Soviets were originally supposed to present the case on the

crimes against humanity, the Americans and British had presented a lot of evidence about

the Holocaust when they presented evidence. In fact, by the time the Soviets started to

present their case one of the judges, Lord Birkett of Great Britain, was restless because he

thought the testimony was unnecessary -- the case had been proven over and over again.

The final phase of the trial was the defendants' cases. The defendants actually took more

time in the court than the prosecutors. Although the defenses varied most either stated

that they not involved in the Holocaust or did not know it was happening. All of the

defendants testified at length and presented witnesses. One of the most important

witnesses about the Holocaust, Rudolf Höß (or "Hoess"), the commandant of Auschwitz,

was actually called as a witness for the defense.

The judges had a hard time deliberating about whether the defendants were guilty and

what punishments should be meted out to those who were guilty. The French judge,

DeVabres, was not convinced that any of the defendants should be found guilty on the

charge of conspiracy because that concept was not found in French or German law.

In the final , three defendants, Von Papen, Schacht, and Fritzche, were acquitted entirely.

Eleven others were acquitted of some of the charges against them and Hess was acquitted

of the charges of participating in the Holocaust and other war crimes. Twelve of the

defendants were sentenced to death. Bormann was never found and Goering committed

suicide. The others were hung on October 16, 1946.

The Nuremberg Trial was the only trial of Nazi war criminals that was conducted by an

international tribunal. Later, other Nazi war criminals were placed on trial, many in the

same court-room where the Nuremberg Trial had occurred. Each of these trials, however,

was conducted by a single country. The Americans, for example, tried the defendants who

had performed cruel medical experiments on prisoners; the British tried the men who had

run Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The trials continued for several years until the American, British,

and French turned the work over to German courts. As late as 1965, defendants were still

being tried in Germany for the crimes they committed during the Holocaust.

The Nuremberg trials were more controversial when they happened then they are today. It

was a new idea and new procedures had to be established. Some were uncomfortable with

the idea of trying men for starting the war when there had never been a trial like this

before. Others have been bothered by the death sentence given to Julius Streicher and the

light sentence given to Albert Speer. Today there are very few legal scholars who accept

the technical arguments about whether the trial should have been held. Even those

reputable scholars who disagree base their objections on their legal philosophy. All agree

that the Tribunal took its job seriously and gave the defendants a fair trial.

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