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The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and atrocities against their citizens in World War II.
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 (the Soviet Union) to summary executions (the United Kingdom).
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 (IMT) 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 just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi 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 of the defendants were also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the systematic murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust was significant to the trial. Twelve further trials were conducted by the United States against lower-level perpetrators, which 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.
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 after 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 the 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 that those 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 (waging aggressive war) 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 after World War I and qualms about retroactive criminality. The form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945.
More information: United Nations
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.
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 offenses 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 -concerned that its Jim Crow system of racial segregation not be labeled a crime against humanity- 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 the plea of acting under superior orders was left for the judges to decide. 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.
More information: Robert H. Jackson Center
in open court before an international tribunal,
had a profound long-term effect in bringing Germans
back to democracy and humanity.
Anthony Lewis
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