Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were international criminal trials held by France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States against leaders of defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of several countries across Europe and committing atrocities against their citizens in the Second World War.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial to summary executions. In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, occupied Germany, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 22 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not only to try the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi war crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.
The IMT verdict followed the prosecution in declaring the crime of plotting and waging aggressive war "the supreme international crime" because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". Most defendants were also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Holocaust significantly contributing to the trials. Twelve further trials were conducted by the United States against lower-level perpetrators and focused more on the Holocaust. Controversial at the time for their retroactive criminalization of aggression, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law is considered "the true beginning of international criminal law".
Origin
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many European countries, including Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union. German aggression was accompanied by immense brutality in occupied areas; war losses in the Soviet Union alone included 27 million dead, mostly civilians, which was one seventh of the prewar population. The legal reckoning was premised on the extraordinary nature of Nazi criminality, particularly the perceived singularity of the systematic murder of millions of Jews.In early 1942, representatives of nine governments-in-exile from German-occupied Europe issued a declaration to demand an international court to try the German crimes committed in occupied countries. The United States and United Kingdom refused to endorse this proposal, citing the failure of war crimes prosecutions following World War I. The London-based United Nations War Crimes Commission—without Soviet participation—first met in October 1943 and became bogged down in the scope of its mandate, with Belgian jurist Marcel de Baer and Czech legal scholar Bohuslav Ečer arguing for a broader definition of war crimes that would include "the crime of war". On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States issued the Moscow Declaration, warning Nazi leadership of the signatories' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth... in order that justice may be done". The declaration stated high-ranking Nazis who had committed crimes in several countries would be dealt with jointly, while others would be tried where they had committed their crimes.
Soviet jurist Aron Trainin developed the concept of crimes against peace which would later be central to the proceedings at Nuremberg. Trainin's ideas were reprinted in the West and widely adopted. Of all the Allies, the Soviet Union lobbied most intensely for trying the defeated German leaders for aggression in addition to war crimes. The Soviet Union wanted to hold a trial with a predetermined outcome similar to the 1930s Moscow trials, in order to demonstrate the Nazi leaders' guilt and build a case for war reparations to rebuild the Soviet economy, which had been devastated by the war. The United States insisted on a trial that would be seen as legitimate as a means of reforming Germany and demonstrating the superiority of the Western system. The United States Department of War was drawing up plans for an international tribunal in late 1944 and early 1945. The British government still preferred the summary execution of Nazi leaders, citing the failure of trials following World War I and qualms about retroactive criminality. The form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On 2 May, at the San Francisco Conference, United States president Harry S. Truman announced the formation of an international military tribunal. On 8 May, Germany surrendered unconditionally, bringing an end to the war in Europe.
Establishment
Nuremberg charter
At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the form that the trial would take. Until the end of the negotiations, it was not clear that any trial would be held at all.The offences that would be prosecuted were crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing customary international law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. Despite misgivings from other Allies, American negotiator and Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson threatened the United States' withdrawal if aggression was not prosecuted because it had been the rationale for American entry into World War II. However, Jackson conceded on defining crimes against peace; the other three Allies were opposed because it would undermine the freedom of action of the United Nations Security Council.
War crimes already existed in international law as criminal violations of the laws and customs of war, but these did not apply to a government's treatment of its own citizens. Legal experts sought a way to try crimes against German citizens, such as the German Jews. A Soviet proposal for a charge of "crimes against civilians" was renamed "crimes against humanity" at Jackson's suggestion after previous uses of the term in the post-World War I Commission of Responsibilities and in failed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The British proposal to define crimes against humanity was largely accepted, with the final wording being "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population". The final version of the charter limited the tribunal's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity to those committed as part of a war of aggression. Both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to avoid giving an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens.
The charter upended the traditional view of international law by holding individuals, rather than states, responsible for breaches. The other three Allies' proposal to limit the definition of the crimes to acts committed by the defeated Axis was rejected by Jackson. Instead, the charter limited the jurisdiction of the court to Germany's actions. Article 7 prevented the defendants from claiming sovereign immunity, and Article 8 meant that the plea of acting under superior orders was not a valid defence, although it might be treated in mitigation. The trial was held under modified common law. The negotiators decided that the tribunal's permanent seat would be in Berlin, while the trial would be held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. Located in the American occupation zone, Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site of Nazi rallies. The Palace of Justice was relatively intact but needed to be renovated for the trial due to bomb damage; it had an attached prison where the defendants could be held. On 8 August, the Nuremberg Charter was signed in London.
Judges and prosecutors
In early 1946, there were a thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two thirds were from the United States. Besides legal professionals, there were many social-science researchers, psychologists, translators, interpreters, and graphic designers, the last to make the many charts used during the trial. Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being a deputy without voting rights.Jackson was appointed the United States' chief prosecutor. The United States prosecution believed Nazism was the product of a German deviation from the West and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. As the largest delegation, it would take on the bulk of the prosecutorial effort. At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judges Francis Biddle and John Parker. The British chief prosecutor was Hartley Shawcross, Attorney General for England and Wales, assisted by his predecessor David Maxwell Fyfe. Although the chief British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, was the nominal president of the tribunal, in practice Biddle exercised more authority.
The French prosecutor, François de Menthon, had just overseen trials of the leaders of Vichy France; he resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Auguste Champetier de Ribes. The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and deputy Robert Falco, a judge of the Cour de Cassation who had represented France at the London Conference. The French government tried to appoint staff untainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments, including Champetier de Ribes, were of those who had been in the French resistance. Expecting a show trial, the Soviet Union initially appointed as chief prosecutor Iona Nikitchenko, who had presided over the Moscow trials, but he was made a judge and replaced by Roman Rudenko, a show trial prosecutor chosen for his skill as an orator. The Soviet judges and prosecutors were not permitted to make any major decisions without consulting a commission in Moscow led by Soviet politician Andrei Vyshinsky; the resulting delays hampered the Soviet effort to set the agenda. The influence of the Soviet delegation was also constrained by limited English proficiency, lack of interpreters, and unfamiliarity with diplomacy and international institutions.
Requests by Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization, as well as the Provisional Government of National Unity in Poland, for an active role in the trial justified by their representation of victims of Nazi crimes were rejected. The Soviet Union invited prosecutors from its allies, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia; Denmark and Norway also sent a delegation. Although the Polish delegation was not empowered to intervene in the proceedings, it submitted evidence and an indictment, succeeding at drawing some attention to crimes committed against Polish Jews and non-Jews.