ABSTRACT
The second world war had resulted in grave human rights violations, and the world wars led the world community to pledge to never let anything similar happen again. Nuremberg trials or the Nurnberg trials held in the aftermath of the Second World War were held to try 24 major war criminals and 8 criminal organizations, responsible for committing crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and war crimes. The Nuremberg trials not only punished the perpetrators of violence, human rights violations and genocide, but also formed the bedrock of the international criminal law.
In this article, I seek to cover the major aspects related to the Nuremberg trials, beginning from the establishment of the tribunal to the conviction of the accused, and the significance these trials have in international law.
THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
“On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 am, Hirano and his classmates were attending a morning assembly in their schoolyard in Hiroshima when suddenly, a strong orangey flash hit with a burst, followed by darkness and dust. When Hirano looked at himself and his classmates, they had all been badly burned and their clothes were shredded; they looked like “monsters.”
The US had flown the Enola Gay to bomb the central Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb ever used in combat, later used on the city of Nagasaki, the aftermath of which was the surrender by Japan, while the Germany had already surrendered in May 1945. This brought the six-year long war to an end.
But there was something that did not end, and was to continue for decades to come – the permanent scars that the horrors of the war had left on the people. The world’s most affluent cities lay in ruins, with a death toll of sixty million and countless others left homeless. During Hitler’s era, the Nazis were responsible for a wide range of atrocities, most significant of which was the killing of around 1,50,03,000 to 3,15,95,000 people in concentration and death camps.
While the Axis powers had also sustained large scale destruction and causalities – roughly 9% of Germany’s population died, while also severely affecting the country’s agricultural production and destroying cities, it was the Allied that had emerged victorious and since everything is not fair in war, they had to bring the German fascists and Japanese militarists to justice who claimed the lives of 60-80 million people and were tasked with the job of punishing those who had unleashed the war and had made millions suffer.
BACKGROUND OF THE NUREMBERG TRIALS
THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE
In 1943, the Moscow Conference, a series of meetings between October 18 and November 11, were held between the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union, so as to discuss the measures needed to be taken to shorten and end the war with Germany. Together, they signed the Declaration Regarding Italy, Declaration on Austria, and Declaration of German Atrocities. The Declaration of German Atrocities, stated that the German officers and members of nazi party who were responsible for atrocities, massacres and executions would be sent back to the countries where they committed those crimes and would be judged and punished according to the laws of the respective nation. At the same time, the Declaration also stated that the major war criminals, whose offences did not respect national boundaries, shall be punished by the joint decision of the allied governments.
THE LONDON CHARTER
The dreadful war had ended on May 8, 1945 after the surrender by Germany and suicide by Adolf Hitler in April 1945. However, the end of the war formalized on September 2, 1945 with the formal surrender by Japan. In august, 1945, the Governments of the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed an agreement in London, the ‘London Charter’, which created an International Military Tribunal to try German leaders at the ‘Palace of Justice’ in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and therefore, also came to be known as the Nuremberg Charter.
WHY NUREMBERG?
Nuremberg was chosen as the appropriate place for the trial by the IMT, as the allies wanted to symbolize the death of the Hitler’s regime, the third Reich, as it was the focal point of Hitler’s annual propaganda rallies. Additionally, it was here that the infamous antisemitic and racist laws were enacted in 1935. Apart from this, it was the only undamaged facility that was extensive enough to hold a major trial and had a large prison area, capable of holding 1200 prisoners.
CRIMES UNDER THE CHARTER
Article 6 of the London Charter provided that the IMT shall have the jurisdiction to try and punish the persons who committed any of the following three crimes:
- Crimes against Peace – planning, preparing, initiating or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties.
- War Crimes – murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
- Crimes against Humanity – murder, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
Apart from these three broad categories of crime, the article also made a provision for a common plan or a conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes.
THE TRIAL
While some of the allied political leaders like Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill proposed the use of electric chair to execute the German offenders, some advocated for other ways of summary execution of the high ranking nazis. However, the Americans preferred the legal civilised approach and supported the idea of an open trial with all the procedural safeguards and guarantees. And therefore, the London charter charged the IMT with the task of ensuring a fair trial while also ensuring that all the defendants enjoy all the rights and guarantees, namely the right to defend personally or through a legal advisor, the right to present evidence and witnesses and the right to cross examine the witnesses summoned by the prosecution.
As Robert H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States quoted “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 that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
On October 18, 1945, twenty-four individuals, and six nazi organisations, were charged with the crimes defined in the charter but all the defendants pleaded not guilty.
Some of the major crimes committed by the nazi individuals and organizations include the Holocaust of the European Jews, the Action T4 killing of the disabled (a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia), mistreatment to soviet prisoners of war who were starved and subjected to deadly conditions under the custody of the German Army, the Wormhoudt Massacre – the mass murder of 81 British and French prisoners of war by the Schutzstaffeln. Further, breaking international agreements set out in the Treaty of Versailles and pursuing aggressive expansionism, occupying Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, reintroducing conscription, among others, constituted major crimes against peace.
The trial began on 20 November, 1945 and ended on 31 August 1946, during which it held 403 open sessions and delivered its verdict on 1 October 1946. Over 400 visitors attended the proceedings each day. Each of the four allied powers appointed a judge and a prosecution team to the tribunal. The judges of the IMT were: Francis Biddle (by the USA), Professor Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (by the France); Major General Iona Nikitchenko (by the Soviet Union) and Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (by the UK). Lawrence was elected President of the Tribunal. The chief prosecutors were: Robert H Jackson of the United States, Sir Hartley Shawcross of Great Britain, Francois de Menthon of France, and Roman A Rudenko of the Soviet Union.
All the defendants were represented by a counsel, in some cases appointed by the Tribunal at the request of the defendants, but in most cases chosen by the defendants themselves. However, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels could not be tried because they committed suicide at the end of the war. The prosecution aimed to establish the crimes committed by Nazis by relying heavily on the words and testimonies of Germans themselves. Their case was predominantly built upon the extensive collection of German documents confiscated by the Allies and most of the witnesses they called to testify had been members of the Nazi Party, or the German state or military. The prosecution displayed footages of Nazi concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz and considerable evidence was presented about the Nazi atrocities, and the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, captured by Allied military photographer and the authenticity of such evidence was not denied by the defendants.
Apart from this, a group of translators delivered real-time interpretations of all proceedings in four different languages: English, French, German, and Russian, ensuring that the audience had access to simultaneous translations.
THE VERDICT
The trial ended on September 1, 1946. On October 1, 1946, the IMT delivered its verdict. It convicted 19 of the defendants and three were acquitted. Out of the 19 convicts, 12 were sentenced to death. The IMT also declared the following Nazi party organizations to be criminal organizations – the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party; the Gestapo; the Schutzstaffel (SS); and the SS intelligence service.
However, the court concluded that the criminality of SS membership did not apply to persons whose membership ceased before the start of World War II or to members who did not participate in its crimes.
HOW ARE THE NUREMBERG TRIALS SIGNIFICANT IN INTERNATIONAL LAW?
The precedent created by the Nuremberg Trial was a significant step for the international community and a foundation of international criminal justice. In the General Assembly session on 24 October, 1946, the Secretary-General of the United Nations advanced the suggestion that the Nuremberg principles should be made a permanent part of international law.
On 21 November 1947, one year after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trial, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 177 (II) entrusting the International Law Commission with the formulation of the principles of international law recognized in the IMT’s Charter and final judgment. The Commission formulated seven principles, some of which include:
- The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person from responsibility under international law,
- The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law,
- Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law,
- Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
Additionally, the outcomes of the Nuremberg proceedings directly paved the way for the establishment of significant international agreements, including the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War in 1949.
However, a few years after the war concluded, the enthusiasm for prosecuting Nazi war criminals dwindled. By the late 1950s, the majority of those who had been found guilty but not executed were set free. But the Nazis’ highest authority, the person most to blame for the Holocaust, was missing at the trials. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the final days of the war, as had several of his closest aides. Many more criminals were never tried, while some fled Germany to live abroad, including hundreds who came to the United States. Nonetheless, the Nuremberg trial not only punished the instigators of aggression, the Nuremberg trials are now regarded as a milestone toward the establishment of a permanent international court, and an important precedent for dealing with later instances of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
FAQs
1.Were the Nuremberg Trials open to the public?
Yes, the trials were open to the public and were widely reported in the media. This transparency helped to legitimize the proceedings and educate the world about the atrocities committed during the war.
2. Were there any other trials other than Nuremberg trials after the end of world war 2?
Yes, several other trials were held after World War II to prosecute war criminals:
- Tokyo Trials (International Military Tribunal for the Far East) – the trials were held at Tokyo, Japan, between May 3, 1946 – November 12, 1948 where 28 Japanese military and political leaders, including Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were convicted for Crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and were sentenced to death, while some received life imprisonment or varying prison terms.
- Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (Nuremberg Military Tribunals) – between December 9, 1946 – April 13, 1949. 12 subsequent trials conducted by the United States in Nuremberg, focusing on different groups of war criminals, such as the Doctors’ Trial where certain medical professionals were prosecuted for human experimentation and euthanasia programs.
- Dachau Trials – these trials were held at Dachau, Germany, to prosecute Concentration camp personnel, SS guards, and members of the Gestapo for War crimes, particularly related to the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps
- What was the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials?
The legacy of the Nuremberg Trials is enduring:
- They established legal precedents for prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
- They reinforced the principle that individuals, including state leaders, can be held accountable for their actions.
- They contributed to the development of modern international criminal law.
By:
Arshita Jindal
University Institute of Legal Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh
