Nuremberg
Should leaders of one nation be able to put the leaders of other nations on
trial?
Should a person that agitates a group to action be responsible for that action?
Are nations responsible for the care of POW?
Should a soldier always obey orders? Duty over conscience.
Should a person be tried for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time it was
broken?
Should citizens be held accountable for the actions of their government?
Nuremberg Trial 1945
Why Nuremberg?
1. Held in the Palace
of Justice – site of
numerous Nazi
rallies.
2. Symbolic - This is
where it started,
and this is where it
would end.
Aerial view of the Nuremberg Palace
of Justice, where the International
Military Tribunal tried 22 leading
German officials for war crimes.
Nuremberg, November 1945.
Nuremberg
Purpose of the
Trial:
1. Leaders of nations
that engage in
unjustified warfare
should be brought
to justice.
2. International
Military Tribunal
The defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left to right:
Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans
Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk, Hjalmar
Schacht. Back row from left to right: Karl Dönitz, Erich
Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz
von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin
van Neurath, Hans Fritzsche.
What were the charges?
1.
2.
Count One: Conspiracy to Seize
Power-overthrow of government.
Count Two: Waging Aggressive
War, or "Crimes Against Peace"
Nuremberg
Including “the planning, preparation,
initiation, and waging of wars of
aggression, which were also wars in
violation of international treaties,
agreements, and assurances.”
3.
Count Three: War Crimes
These were the more “traditional”
violations of the law of war including
treatment of prisoners of war, slave
labor.
4.
Count Four: Crimes Against
Humanity
This count involved the actions in
concentration camps and other
death rampages.(genocide)
Justice Robert Jackson, Chief
Prosecutor for the United States at the
Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg
1.
2.
3.
4.
The Evidence:
Cremating, freezing,
and torturing human
beings.
Intentionally spreading
infectious diseases to
prisoners.
Shooting women and
children.
The most dramatic
was showing the film
of the atrocities.
The Defense:
1.
2.
3.
Pleads “not guilty”
Hans Frank: “I say yes we
Nuremberg
have fought against Jewry, we
have fought against them for
years. A thousand years will
pass and the guilt of Germany
will not be erased.”
Several key figures not
brought to trial:
A. Hitler
B. Goebbels
C. Martin Bormann tried in
absentia
4. What could possibly be their
arguments?
Ernst Kaltenbrummer pleading "not
guilty" to the charges against him
during the Nuremberg War Crimes
Trials
Nuremberg Defense:
Only following orders
They would have been killed if they would
have disobeyed these orders.
Insanity
Ex Post Facto – charged with crimes that did
not exist at the time. Ex. Genocide
War – anything goes. No different than what
the U.S. did at Hiroshima, and Britain at
Dresden. Herman Goering defendant
Dresden: February 1945
RAF conducts massive
bombing raid of Dresden
City is hit with a firestorm of
incendiary bombs
35,000 or more killed, mainly
civilian
Even Churchill questions
bombing used as a method
of terror without military
objectives
Kurt Vonnegut uses as the
setting for his novel
“Slaughterhouse Five”
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that
good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke