Coordinates:
49°27.2603′N 11°02.9103′EThe
Nuremberg trials (
German:
Die Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of
military tribunals held by the
Allied forces under
international law and the
laws of warafter
World War II. 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 the city of
Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.
The first and best known of these 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 who presided over them.
[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 Allied capture, but was apprehended by Israel's intelligence service (
Mossad) and hanged in 1962.
Hermann Göring was sentenced to death, but committed suicide by consuming cyanide the night before his execution in defiance of his captors.
This article primarily deals with the first trial, which was conducted by the IMT. 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 used afterwards by the
United Nations for the development of a specific international jurisprudence in matters of
war crime,
crimes against humanity,
war of aggression, as well as got the creation of the
International Criminal Court. The Nuremberg indictment also mentions genocide for the first time in international law (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]
DESE ARE DE FACTS
