The Nuremberg trials (German: Die Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.

The first and best known of the trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Sir Norman Birkett, one of the British judges present throughout.^[1] Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946,^[2] the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. Martin Bormann had, unknown to the Allies, died in May 1945 and was tried in absentia. Another defendant, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels had both committed suicide in the spring of 1945 to avoid capture. Heinrich Himmler attempted to commit suicide, but was captured before he could succeed; he committed suicide one day after being arrested by British forces.^[3][4] Heinrich Müller disappeared the day after Hitler's suicide, the most senior figure of the Nazi regime whose fate remains unknown. Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated by Czech partisans in 1942. Josef Terboven killed himself with dynamite in Norway in 1945. Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina to avoid capture but was apprehended by Israel's intelligence service (Mossad) and hanged in 1962. Hermann Göring was sentenced to death but, in defiance of his captors, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide the night before his execution.

Primarily treated here is the first trial, conducted by the International Military Tribunal. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT), which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial.

The categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that would be followed afterward by the United Nations for the development of an international jurisprudence in matters of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression, and led to the creation of the International Criminal Court. For the first time in international law, the Nuremberg indictments also mention genocide (count three, war crimes: "the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.")^[5]

A precedent for trying those accused of war crimes had been set at the end of World War I in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials held in May to July 1921 before the Reichsgericht (German Supreme Court) in Leipzig, although these had been on a very limited scale and largely regarded as ineffectual. At the beginning of 1940, the Polish government-in-exile asked the British and French governments to condemn the German invasion of their country. The British initially declined to do so; however, in April 1940, a joint declaration was issued by the British, French and Polish. Relatively bland because of Anglo-French reservations, it proclaimed the trio's "desire to make a formal and public protest to the conscience of the world against the action of the German government whom they must hold responsible for these crimes which cannot remain unpunished."^[7]

Three-and-a-half years later, the stated intention to punish the Germans was much more trenchant. On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States published their "Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe", which gave a "full warning" that, when the Nazis were defeated, the Allies would "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth ... in order that justice may be done. ... The above declaration is without prejudice to the case of the major war criminals whose offences have no particular geographical location and who will be punished by a joint decision of the Government of the Allies."^[8] This intention by the Allies to dispense justice was reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Potsdam in 1945.^[9]

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944 the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US and Soviet leaders later in the war.^[10]

In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill, believing them to be serious, denounced the idea of "the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country" and that he would rather be "taken out in the courtyard and shot" himself than partake in any such action.^[11] However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that, in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions "for political purposes."^[12][13] According to the minutes of a meeting between Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, on 4 February 1945, at the Livadia Palace, President Roosevelt "said that he had been very much struck by the extent of German destruction in Crimea and therefore he was more bloodthirsty in regard to the Germans than he had been a year ago, and he hoped that Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German Army."^[14]

Henry Morgenthau Jr., US Secretary of the Treasury, suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany;^[15] this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany and the summary execution of so-called "arch-criminals", i.e. the major war criminals.^[16] Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked generating widespread condemnation by the nation's newspapers. Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternative position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

On 20 April 1942, representatives from the nine countries occupied by Germany met in London to draft the "Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes". At the meetings in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union, agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the trial was established by the London Charter, which was agreed upon by the four so-called Great Powers on 8 August 1945, ^[17] and which restricted the trial to "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries"

Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939.

Leipzig and Luxembourg were briefly considered as the location for the trial.^[18] The Soviet Union had wanted the trials to take place in Berlin, as the capital city of the 'fascist conspirators',^[18] but Nuremberg was chosen as the site for two reasons, with the first one having been the decisive factor:^[19]

As a compromise with the Soviets, it was agreed that while the location of the trial would be Nuremberg, Berlin would be the official home of the Tribunal authorities.^[20][21][22] It was also agreed that France would become the permanent seat of the IMT^[23] and that the first trial (several were planned) would take place in Nuremberg.^[20][22]

Most of the accused had previously been detained at Camp Ashcan, a processing station and interrogation center in Luxembourg, and were moved to Nuremberg for the trial.

Each of the four countries provided one judge and an alternative, as well as a prosecutor.

Assisting Jackson were the lawyers Telford Taylor,^[24] William S. Kaplan^[25] and Thomas J. Dodd, and Richard Sonnenfeldt, a US Army interpreter. Assisting Shawcross were Major Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. Mervyn Griffith-Jones, who was later to become famous as the chief prosecutor in the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial, was also on Shawcross's team. Shawcross also recruited a young barrister, Anthony Marreco, who was the son of a friend of his, to help the British team with the heavy workload.

Tom Steyer's father Roy Henry Steyer was also a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.^[26]

The vast majority of the defense attorneys were German lawyers.^[27] These included Georg Fröschmann, Heinz Fritz (Hans Fritzsche), Otto Kranzbühler (Karl Dönitz), Otto Pannenbecker (Wilhelm Frick), Alfred Thoma (Alfred Rosenberg), Kurt Kauffmann (Ernst Kaltenbrunner), Hans Laternser (general staff and high command), Franz Exner (Alfred Jodl), Alfred Seidl (Hans Frank), Otto Stahmer (Hermann Göring), Walter Ballas (Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach), Hans Flächsner (Albert Speer), Günther von Rohrscheidt (Rudolf Hess), Egon Kubuschok (Franz von Papen), Robert Servatius (Fritz Sauckel), Fritz Sauter (Joachim von Ribbentrop), Walther Funk (Baldur von Schirach), Hanns Marx (Julius Streicher), Otto Nelte (Wilhelm Keitel), and Herbert Kraus/Rudolph Dix (both working for Hjalmar Schacht). The main counsel were supported by a total of 70 assistants, clerks and lawyers.^[28] The defense witnesses included several men who took part in the war crimes during World War II, such as Rudolf Höss. The men testifying for the defense hoped to receive more lenient sentences. All of the men testifying on behalf of the defense were found guilty on several counts.^[29]

The International Military Tribunal was opened on 19 November 1945 in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.^[30][31] The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command", comprising several categories of senior military officers.^[103] These organizations were to be declared "criminal" if found guilty.

The indictments were for:

The 24 accused were, with respect to each charge, either indicted but not convicted (I), indicted and found guilty (G), or not charged (—), as listed below by defendant, charge, and eventual outcome:

The Rorschach test was administered to the defendants, along with the Thematic Apperception Test and a German adaptation of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test.^[42] All were above average intelligence, several considerably so.^[43]

Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants survive; they were edited into book form and published in 2004.^[46] Jean Delay was the psychiatric expert for the French delegation in the trial of Rudolf Hess.^[47]

The accusers were successful in unveiling the background of developments leading to the outbreak of World War II, which cost around 50 million lives in Europe alone,^[49] as well as the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences (ranging from 10 years to life sentence), three were acquitted, and two were not charged.^[50]

The death sentences were carried out on 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop. The U.S. Army denied claims that the drop length was too short which caused the condemned to die slowly from strangulation instead of quickly from a broken neck,^[51] but evidence remains that some of the condemned men died agonizingly slowly, struggling for 14 to 28 minutes before finally choking to death.^[52][53] The executioner was John C. Woods.^[54] The executions took place in the gymnasium of the court building (demolished in 1983).^[55]

Although the rumor has long persisted that the bodies were taken to Dachau and burned there, they were actually incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar.^[56] The French judges suggested that the military condemned (Göring, Keitel and Jodl) be shot by a firing squad, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges, who argued that the military officers had violated their military ethos and were not worthy of death by being shot, which was considered to be more dignified. The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Martin Bormann was convicted in absentia (he had, unknown to the Allies, died while trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945), and Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution. The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

Of the indicted organizations the following were found not to be criminal:

The American authorities conducted subsequent Nuremberg Trials in their occupied zone.

Other trials conducted after the first Nuremberg trial include the following:

While Sir Geoffrey Lawrence of Britain was the judge chosen as president of the court, the most prominent of the judges at trial arguably was his American counterpart, Francis Biddle.^[57] Prior to the trial, Biddle had been Attorney General of the United States but had been asked to resign by Truman earlier in 1945.^[58]

Some accounts argue that Truman had appointed Biddle as the main American judge for the trial as an apology for asking for his resignation.^[58] Ironically, Biddle was known during his time as Attorney General for opposing the idea of prosecuting Nazi leaders for crimes committed before the beginning of the war, even sending out a memorandum on 5 January 1945 on the subject.^[59] The note also expressed Biddle's opinion that instead of proceeding with the original plan for prosecuting entire organizations, there should simply be more trials that would prosecute specific offenders.^[59]

Biddle soon changed his mind, as he approved a modified version of the plan on 21 January 1945, likely due to time constraints, since the trial would be one of the main issues discussed at Yalta.^[60] At trial, the Nuremberg tribunal ruled that any member of an organization convicted of war crimes, such as the SS or Gestapo, who had joined after 1939 would be considered a war criminal.^[61] Biddle managed to convince the other judges to make an exemption for any member who was drafted or had no knowledge of the crimes being committed by these organizations.^[58]

Justice Robert H. Jackson played an important role in not only the trial itself, but also in the creation of the International Military Tribunal, as he led the American delegation to London that, in the summer of 1945, argued in favour of prosecuting the Nazi leadership as a criminal conspiracy.^[62] According to Airey Neave, Jackson was also the one behind the prosecution's decision to include membership in any of the six criminal organizations in the indictments at the trial, though the IMT rejected this on the grounds that it was wholly without precedent in either international law or the domestic laws of any of the Allies.^[63] Jackson also attempted to have Alfried Krupp be tried in place of his father, Gustav, and even suggested that Alfried volunteer to be tried in his father's place.^[64] Both proposals were rejected by the IMT, particularly by Lawrence and Biddle, and some sources indicate that this resulted in Jackson being viewed unfavourably by the latter.^[64]

Thomas Dodd was a prosecutor for the United States. There was an immense amount of evidence backing the prosecutors' case, especially since meticulous records of the Nazis' actions had been kept. There were records taken in by the prosecutors that had signatures from specific Nazis signing for everything from stationery supplies to Zyklon B gas, which was used to kill the inmates of the deathcamps. Thomas Dodd showed a series of pictures to the courtroom after reading through the documents of crimes committed by the defendants. The showing consisted of pictures displaying the atrocities performed by the defendants. The pictures had been gathered when the inmates were liberated from the concentration camps.^[65]

Henry F. Gerecke, a Lutheran pastor, and Sixtus O'Connor, a Roman Catholic priest, were sent to minister to the Nazi defendants.^[66] Photographs of the trial were taken by a team of about a dozen US Army still photographers, under the direction of chief photographer Ray D'Addario.^[67]

The Tribunal is celebrated for establishing that "[c]rimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced."^[68] The creation of the IMT was followed by trials of lesser Nazi officials and the trials of Nazi doctors, who performed experiments on people in prison camps. It served as the model for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for crimes against peace and against humanity. It also served as the model for the Eichmann trial and for present-day courts at The Hague, for trying crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, and at Arusha, for trying the people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda.

The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served as models for:

The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II^[69]). See Nuremberg Principles.

The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

Tourists can visit courtroom 600 on days when no trial is on. A permanent exhibition has been dedicated to the trials.^[70]

The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. This movement was brought about because during the trials, there were conflicting court methods between the German court system and the U.S. court system. The crime of conspiracy was unheard of in the civil law systems of the Continent. Therefore, the German defense found it unfair to charge the defendants with conspiracy to commit crimes, while the judges from common-law countries were used to doing so.^[71]

Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid, and thus seen as a form of "victor's justice".^[74][75]

As Biddiss observed, "the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us. ... It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves."^[76][77][78]

Quincy Wright, writing eighteen months after the conclusion of the IMT, explained the opposition to the Tribunal thus:

Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud.^[80] "(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg, ... I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas", Stone wrote.^[80]

Jackson, in a letter discussing the weaknesses of the trial, in October 1945 told U.S. President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practising it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest."^[81][82]

Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time."^[83]

U.S. Deputy Chief Counsel Abraham Pomerantz resigned in protest at the low caliber of the judges assigned to try the industrial war criminals such as those at I.G. Farben.^[84]

Robert A. Taft, a US Senate Majority Leader from Ohio and son of William Howard Taft, criticized the Nuremberg Trials for trying Nazi war criminals under ex post facto laws which resulted in his failure to secure the Republican nomination for President in 1948.^[85]

A number of Germans who agreed with the idea of punishment for war crimes admitted trepidation concerning the trials. A contemporary German jurist said:

The validity of the court has been questioned on a number of grounds:

One criticism that was made of the IMT was that some treaties were not binding on the Axis powers because they were not signatories. This was addressed in the judgment relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity,^[128] which contains an expansion of customary law: "the [Hague] Convention expressly stated that it was an attempt 'to revise the general laws and customs of war,' which it thus recognised to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6 (b) of the [London] Charter."

The Nuremberg Trials employed four official languages: English, French, German and Russian. In order to address the complex linguistic issues that clouded over the proceedings, interpretation and translation departments had to be established. However, it was feared that consecutive interpretation would slow down the proceedings significantly. What is therefore unique in both the Nuremberg tribunals and history of the interpretation profession was the introduction of an entirely new technique, extempore simultaneous interpretation. This technique of interpretation requires the interpreter to listen to a speaker in a source (or passive) language and orally translate that speech into another language in real time, that is, simultaneously, through headsets and microphones. Interpreters were split into four sections, one for each official language, with three interpreters per section working from the other three languages into the fourth (their mother tongue). For instance, the English booth consisted of three interpreters, one working from German into English, one working from French, and one from Russian, etc. Defendants who did not speak any of the four official languages were provided with consecutive court interpreters. Some of the languages heard over the course of the proceedings included Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Polish.

The equipment used to establish this system was provided by IBM, and included an elaborate setup of cables which were hooked up to headsets and single earphones directly from the four interpreting booths (often referred to as "the aquarium"). Four channels existed for each working language, as well as a root channel for the proceedings without interpretation. Switching of channels was controlled by a setup at each table in which the listener merely had to turn a dial in order to switch between languages. People tripping over the floor-laid cables often led to the headsets getting disconnected, with several hours at a time sometimes being taken in order to repair the problem and continue on with the trials.

Interpreters were recruited and examined by the respective countries in which the official languages were spoken: the United States, United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as in special cases Belgium and the Netherlands. Many were former translators, army personnel, and linguists, some were experienced consecutive interpreters,^[102] others were ordinary individuals and even recent secondary school-graduates who led international lives in multilingual environments. It was, and still is believed, that the qualities that made the best interpreters were not just a perfect understanding of two or more languages, but more importantly a broad sense of culture, encyclopedic knowledge, inquisitiveness, as well as a naturally calm disposition.

With the simultaneous technique being extremely new, interpreters practically trained themselves, but many could not handle the pressure or the psychological strain. Many often had to be replaced, many returned to the translation department, and many left. Serious doubts were given as to whether interpretation provided a fair trial for the defendants, particularly because of fears of mistranslation and errors made on transcripts. The translation department had to also deal with the overwhelming problem of being understaffed and overburdened with an influx of documents that could not be kept up with. More often than not, interpreters were stuck in a session without having proper documents in front of them and were relied upon to do sight translation or double translation of texts, causing further problems and extensive criticism. Other problems that arose included complaints from lawyers and other legal professionals with regard to questioning and cross-examination. Legal professionals were most often appalled at the slower speed at which they had to conduct their task because of the extended time required for interpreters to render an interpretation properly. Also, a number of interpreters protested the idea of using vulgar language, especially if it referred to Jews or the conditions of the Nazi concentration camps. Bilingual/trilingual members who attended the trials picked up quickly on this aspect of character and were equally quick to file complaints.

Yet, despite the extensive trial and error, without the interpretation system the trials would not have been possible and in turn revolutionized the way multilingual issues were addressed in tribunals and conferences. A number of the interpreters following the trials were immediately recruited into the newly formed United Nations, while others returned to their ordinary lives, pursued other careers, or worked freelance. Outside the boundaries of the trials, many interpreters continued their positions on weekends interpreting for dinners, private meetings between judges, and excursions between delegates. Others worked as investigators or editors, or aided the translation department when they could, often using it as an opportunity to sharpen their skills and to correct poor interpretations on transcripts before they were available for public record.

For further reference, a book titled The Origins of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Nuremberg Trial, written by interpreter Francesca Gaiba, was published by the University of Ottawa Press in 1998.

Today, all major international organizations, as well as any conference or government that uses more than one official language, uses extempore simultaneous interpretation. Notable bodies include the Parliament of Kosovo with three official languages, the Parliament of Canada with two official languages, the Parliament of South Africa with eleven official languages, the European Union with twenty-four official languages, and the United Nations with six official working languages.