Eight Decades Since the Beginning of the Denunciation of Crimes Against Humanity: The Nuremberg Trials 

80 years ago, on Nov. 20, 1945, in Nuremberg, Germany, the Allies began a year-long series of trials that held high-ranking Nazis accountable for their despotic actions. The Nuremberg Trials began the fight for justice for all of the Holocaust’s victims; they furthermore established foundational principles of international criminal law.

The United States, France, Britain and the Soviet Union captured 24 of these Nazi perpetrators at the end of World War II, bringing them into an international court they newly established. These men were some of the Nazi regime’s main ministers and ideologues who set the Final Solution into motion, including Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command. The trials were instrumental in bringing to light the truth about concentration camps, gas chambers, methods of torture and the persecution of millions of Jews and other minorities simply for who they were—realities not widely known around the world prior to the public trial. For the first time in human history, the leaders of a regime were not tried only for war crimes, but also for crimes against humanity. 

Premier Nazis who once dreamed of world domination found themselves on the rough wooden benches of courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice, tried by a pioneering International Military Tribunal. The four Allied states each presented their own team of representatives, composed of a judge, an alternate judge, a team of prosecutors and experts, so that justice would not be done by a single victorious power, but by several states that collaborated to promote international responsibility. They judged through a special international legal system which combined several legal traditions: elements from the Anglo-Saxon law, French continental and civil law and rigid Soviet policies. 

The desire of the Allied governments to punish the Nazi politicians and leaders appeared as early as the winter of 1942, as the leaders of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union began discussing what would happen to the Nazis after Germany’s defeat. Despite the world being in the midst of war, small amounts of information had begun to surface, gradually revealing that the German army was committing serious crimes against civilians. In Dec. 1942, the “Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations’’ first formally acknowledged the Holocaust, prompted by a diplomatic report sent by the Polish foreign minister in exile, Edward Raczyński, where he denounced the mass murders of Jews in German-occupied Poland.

The Declaration clearly and publicly confirmed that the Allies were aware of the mass murders and officially condemned the crimes committed by Nazi Germany. It stated that those responsible for atrocities against civilians, especially Jews, would not escape punishment and would be held personally accountable for their actions. This moment marked one of the first times the Allied powers clearly expressed their intention to pursue justice after the war, rather than allowing the crimes to go unpunished. As reports of genocide continued to emerge, the idea of prosecuting Nazi leaders gained support, laying the foundation for the Nuremberg Trials. In Oct. 1943, American President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Premier Stalin signed the decisive declaration in Moscow; it established that at the time of signing an armistice, the individuals accused of being responsible for war crimes would be sent back to the countries where those crimes were committed and tried according to the laws of the respective state. Those whose crimes could not be limited to a specific geographic area were to be judged and punished by the joint decision of the Allied governments. 

The most important leaders, the heads of the Final Solution, did not face judgement: Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide immediately before the end of the war. Taking into account their covert suicides, the court decided not to try them posthumously, to avoid creating the impression that the three were still alive. Of the 24 defendants brought to Nuremberg for crimes against humanity—defined as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and persecution on racial, political or religious grounds—” crimes against peace, and crimes of war, only 21 appeared in court. 

U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson, in charge of gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses and deciding which charges to file, made it clear in his opening statement that the trial would not be a show of victory, but an effort to demonstrate to the world that the leaders are not above the law. He built his case entirely from documents written and issued by the Nazis, rather than the testimonies of their victims, to avoid criticism for basing his accusations on biased testimonies. 

The judges delivered the trials’ final verdict on Oct. 1, 1946.  They sentenced 12 defendants to death, among them Foreign Minister Joachimm von Ribbentrop, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, Security Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and occupied Poland’s governor Hans Frank. In order to carry out the punishment in a fair manner, they were hanged, cremated at Dachau and their remains were thrown into the Isar River. However, Göring never served this sentence, committing suicide the night before his scheduled execution. 

Three other defendants, including Hitler’s adjutant Rudolf Hess, received life imprisonment, and four other accomplices, such as Admiral Karl Donits, received sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison. The judges found three figures to be innocent, including Hans Fritsche, the head of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry’s news department.

In addition to the Nuremberg trials, which are considered the most famous from the Second World War, hearings and trials of other architects of the Final Solution continued, such as members of Einsatzgruppen, Gestapo and S.S., as well as German industrialists, concentration camp guards and doctors that partook in the Nazis’ medical experiments on camp prisoners.

In 1949, after the trials concluded, transcripts and evidence were given to the Harvard Law Library for preservation and research. This Nov. 20, to commemorate the first trial’s 80th Anniversary, the library released a newly digitized, searchable archive of more than 750,000 pages of documents from the tribunals. By organizing and digitizing these archives, Harvard has enabled one of the most significant legal collections in history to be accessible worldwide.

This initiative emphasizes the importance of remembering the Holocaust, even 80 years on. “Without archives we lose context, and misinformation and denial can become much more common. Being able to read primary sources about the Holocaust is an incredibly valuable tool,” Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School junior Avi Klein said. 

Amidst a global tide of Holocaust denial, this collection tells the truth of what happened in the tragedy. “People didn’t believe that it was real; now we see it in Harvard and we trust it,’’ Bethesda-Chevy Chase World History teacher Stuart Marcowitz, whose ancestors were murdered in the concentration camps, said.  

Written by Alexia Jarnea

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons