Nuremberg trials  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Nuremberg Trials)
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1949, at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 24 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. It was held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT), among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the separate article on the NMT for details on those trials.

Rorschach tests

Douglas Kelley and Gustave Gilbert administered the Rorschach inkblot test to 22 Nazi inmates prior to their trials.

The main trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Supreme Court Building in Berlin. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Iola T. Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six "criminal organizations" - the leadership of the Nazi party, the SS and SD, the Gestapo, the SA and the High Command of the army. The indictments were for:

  1. Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace
  2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression
  3. War crimes
  4. Crimes against humanity

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a document which came out of this trial.

The twenty-four accused were:

  1. Martin Bormann. Indicted for 1, 3 and 4, he was found guilty of 3 and 4 and sentenced in absentia to death.
  2. Karl Doenitz, the initiator of the U-boat campaign and Hitler's designated successor. Indicted for 1, 2 and 3, he was found guilty of 2 and 3 and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.
  3. Hans Frank. Indicted for 1, 3 and 4, he was found guilty of 3 and 4 and sentenced to death.
  4. Wilhelm Frick. Indicted on all counts, he was found guilty of 2, 3 and 4 and sentenced to death.
  5. Hans Fritzsche. At the trial he was in a way a substitute for Joseph Goebbels. Indicted for 1, 3 and 4, he was acquitted.
  6. Walter Funk. Indicted on all counts, he was found guilty of 2, 3 and 4 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
  7. Hermann Goering, Commander of Luftwaffe. Indicted on all four counts, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On the night before his execution he committed suicide.
  8. Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, flew to England in 1941. Indicted on all four counts, he was found guilty of 1 and 2 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
  9. Alfred Jodl. Indicted and found guilty on all four counts, he was sentenced to death.
  10. Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Indicted for 1, 3 and 4, he was found guilty of 3 and 4 and sentenced to death.
  11. Wilhelm Keitel. Indicted and found guilty on all four counts, he was sentenced to death.
  12. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. He was indicted on all four counts as representative of German heavy industry and for armament production. Charges against him were dropped for health reasons. But the "Krupp Trial" took place before a US military court in Nuremberg in 1948. Krupp's son Alfried was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment.
  13. Robert Ley. Indicted on all four counts, he committed suicide on October 26, 1945.
  14. Konstantin von Neurath. Indicted and convicted on all four counts, he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.
  15. Franz von Papen. Indicted on counts 1 and 2, he was acquitted.
  16. Erich Raeder. Indicted on 1, 2 and 3, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
  17. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Indicted and convicted on all four counts, he was sentenced to death.
  18. Alfred Rosenberg, the race theory evangelist. Indicted and found guilty on all four counts, he was sentenced to death.
  19. Fritz Sauckel. Indicted on all four counts, he was found guilty of 3 and 4 and sentenced to death.
  20. Horace Schacht. Indicted on 1 and 2, he was acquitted.
  21. Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitlerjugend, expressed repentance. Indicted on 1 and 4, he was found guilty and sentenced to from four to twenty years of imprisonment. Served twenty.
  22. Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Indicted on all four counts, he was found guilty of 2, 3 and 4 and sentenced to death.
  23. Albert Speer, responsible for several aspects of industry and a central figure in leadership, expressed repentance. Indicted on all four counts, he was found guilty of 3 and 4 and sentenced to from four to twenty years of imprisonment. Served twenty.
  24. Julius Streicher. Indicted on 1 and 4, he was sentenced to death.

The medical experiments conducted by German doctors lead to the creation of the Nüremberg code to control future trials involving human subjects.





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Nuremberg trials" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools