The Nuremberg Trials from 1945-1949 provide an understanding of the nature and causes of evil. Those who come to the trials expecting to find sadistic monsters are generally disappointed. What is shocking about Nuremberg is the ordinariness of the defendants: men who may be good fathers, kind to animals, even unassuming—yet who committed unspeakable crimes. Hannah Arendt who wrote of the “banality of evil” that most Nuremberg defendants never aspired to be villains. Rather, they over-identified with an ideological cause and suffered from a lack of imagination and empathy: they could not fully appreciate the human consequences of their career-motivated decisions.

There were twelve Nuremberg trials involving over a hundred defendants and several courts, from 1945-1949. The first trial, and the most famous, involved twenty-one major war criminals.

In early October 1945, the four prosecuting nations—the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia—issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations. The individual defendants were charges not only with systematic murder of millions of people, but also with planning and carrying out the war in Europe. After the initial trial there were subsequent Nuremberg trials focused on other perpetrators of Nazi horrors such as judges. However, as the cold war evolved, disharmony erupted between the former wartime allies. Ultimately, judicial tribunals reflected the policies and priorities of the individual combatants.

The United States was the primary country that argued for a trial. Winston Churchill, for example, said in 1944 that the Nazi leaders should be “hunted down and shot.” The French and Soviets also supported summary executions.

Twenty-one of the indicted men eventually sat in the dock in the Nuremberg court. One of those named, labor leader Robert Ley hanged himself before the trial began. Morton Borman was tried in absentia and sentenced to hang if he should ever show up; however, subsequent evidence proved that he died at the end of the World War II.

The indictment of Nazi organizations, however, raised a fundamental legal question: the legitimacy of creating a system of guilt by association. Although members of criminal organizations were later tried by German denazification courts, no one was ever punished solely on the basis of the tribunal convictions. Three organizations were found guilty: the SS, the Gestapo, and the Corps of the Political Leaders of the Nazi party.

The Charges:

The four powers divided the prosecution work, giving the United States the complicated and most difficult job of proving Count One—the conspiracy Charge

Count One: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War
The defendants charged under Count One were accused of agreeing to commit crimes. This charge has always remained controversial because Nazi policymaking was not coherent

Count Two: Waging Aggressive War or “Crimes Against Peace”
British prosecutors presented evidence that “the planning, preparation, initiation and waging wars of aggression were in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances.

Count Three: War Crimes
The Russian and French prosecutors presented evidence on atrocities committed in The East and West respectively. Specifically, this count dealt with acts that violated traditional concepts of law—e.g. the use of slave labor, bombing civilian populations, the Reprisal Order signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, a defendant. This order required that 50 Soviet soldiers be shot for every German killed by partisans, The Commando Order (issued by Keitel, it ordered that downed Allied airmen be shot rather than taken captive.)

Count Four: Crimes Against Humanity

The Russians and French held the defendants responsible for the death camps, the concentration camps and killing rampages in the East

Selection of Defendants

The list of the accused was to some extent arbitrary. The defendants represented the major administrative branches of the Third Reich.

Selective Defendants:

Karl Doenitz: German admiral who would eventually command entire navy. Hitler chose Doenitz to succeed him as fuhrer.

Defendants Comments: “Politicians brought the Nazis to power and started the war. They are the ones who brought about these disgusting crimes, and now we have to sit there in the dock with them and share the blame!”

Prosecution Points: Doenitz forbade the submarine fleet from rescuing enemy survivors.

Served 10 year sentence

Hans Frank: Governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland. He was called the “Jew butcher of Cracow.”

Defendants Comments: “Hitler disgraced Germany for all time! He betrayed and disgraced the people that loved him… I would be the first to admit my guilt

Prosecution Points: “The Jews must be eliminated. Whenever we catch one, it is his end”…Poland is a booty of the German Reich.”

In April 1930, Hitler asked Frank to secretly investigate that he had Jewish blood. Frank reported back that there was a 50-50 chance that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish.

Hanged October 16, 1946

Wilhelm Frick: Minister of the Interior

Defendants Comments: “Hitler did not want to do things my way. I wanted things done legally. After all I am a lawyer

Prosecution Points: Frick drafted, signed and administered laws that abolished opposition parties, and drafted the infamous Nuremberg Laws. Frick knew and abetted the systematic killing of the insane, aged and disabled

Hanged October 16, 1946

Hermann Goering: Reichsmarshall and Airforce Chief

Defendant Comments: “I joined the Party precisely because it was revolutionary, not because of the ideological stuff. The whole conspiracy idea is cockeyed. We had orders to obey the head of state. We were not a band of criminals meeting in the woods in the dead of night to plan mass murders. The four real criminals were Hitler, Goebbels, Borman, and Himmler.

Prosecution Points: Goering looted art treasuries from occupied territories, arranged for the use of slave labor, and was a key executive in implementing German quest for world domination

Goering committed suicide to avoid execution

Alfred Rosenberg: Chief Nazi Philosopher and Reich minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories

Defendant Comments:” I did not say that the Jews are inferior. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures did not work.”

Prosecution Points: Rosenberg helped plan the attack on Norway. Developed plans for the extermination of opponents of Nazi rule. He set quotas of laborers for the slave work quarters, leading to their death

Hanged October 16, 1946

Julius Streicher: Anti-Semitic Editor of Der Sturmer:

Defendant Comments: “The Jews are making a mistake if they make a martyr out of me…I am the only one in the world who saw the Jewish menace as an historical problem

Prosecution Points: Streicher was knows as the “number one Jew-baiter. He advocated the Nuremberg Decrees of 1935. He began in 1938 to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race.”

Streicher was a vulgar man. He was despised by most of his fellow defendants…he collected pornography

Hanged October 16,1946

Joachim von Ribbentrop: Foreign Minister

Defendant Comments: “ We are only living shadows—the remains of a dead era—an era that died with Hitler.

Prosecution Points: He planned attacks on Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, Holland and other countries

Hanged October 16, 1946