The Nuremberg Trials

the evidence has been published … but it seems

His successor, Funk, had organized the funding of the Nazi Party and, as president of the Reichsbank, he had arranged for the gold teeth of murdered Jews and money raised from other stolen valuables to be paid into false accounts

Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells, and waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the fifteen minutes I stood near, I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight persons, a man and a woman both of about fifty, with their children of about twenty to twenty-four, and two grown-up daughters about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about ten years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him. At that moment the SS man at the pit started shouting something to his comrade. The latter counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound. Among them was the family I have just mentioned. I well remember a girl, slim with black hair, who, as she passed me, pointed to herself and said, “twenty-three years old.” I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people shot were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was nearly two-thirds full. I estimated that it already contained about a thousand people

defence counsel had not been present. Lawrence

The worst of the Nazis – Adolf Hitler; head of the SS and principle architect of the Holocaust Heinrich Himmler; and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels – had committed suicide

Next a venue had to be decided on. The Soviets favoured Berlin, but this was impractical because the city had been devastated by Allied bombing. The Palace of Justice in Nuremberg incorporated a large prison, about 80 courtrooms and some 530 offices – and was largely undamaged. The Nazi Party had held its rallies there and the anti-Semitic laws that among other things stripped Jews of their German citizenship had been introduced at a rally there in 1935 and were known at the Nuremberg Laws. It seemed fitting that the Nazi Party and its cohorts should meet their demise there.
A compromised was reached. According to the London Charter, Berlin was to be the permanent home of the International Military Tribunal; the first formal session took place there under Soviet Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko on 18 October 1945. But the first trial was to take place in Nuremberg, starting on 20 November 1945

Stimson assigned Lieutenant Colonel Murray Bernays, an attorney at the War Department, to the task. The US Constitution prohibited ex post facto laws – that is, laws made up after the event to criminalize actions that were not illegal when they were committed. Neither was it practical to try separately everyone who committed a crime during the war. Nor was it right to punish the entire German people for something their leaders had done.

slap on the wrist

This was the first of 12 trials, involving more than a hundred defendants and several different courts, that took place at Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949

(In total 24 Nazis were indicted at Nuremberg but only 21 faced trial, because one was considered too ill and senile, one was missing and one committed suicide in custody.)