Background Essay on the Nuremberg Trials
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During the Nazi regime from 1935-1945, under the
leadership of Adolf Hitler, 11,000,000 were killed in
what is today known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust
is commonly known for the mass killing of Jewish
Europeans, but was also a mass killing of any person
considered “undesirable” for Hitler’s superior Aryan
race. This not only included individuals who were
Jewish, but also the disabled, homosexuals, Gypsies
(those with Romanian descent), Jehovah's Witnesses, or individuals who had family members
generations before who practiced the Jewish faith.
Hitler was originally from Austria but fought in the German army during World War I. Due to
reparations left to Germany after World War I, once Hitler came to power, he and his Nazi regime
created a series of laws known as the Nuremberg Laws. Created in the city of Nuremberg, the
site of Nazi conventions known as the Nuremberg Rallies, these laws sought to “purify” the
German race. The laws included denying citizenship to German Jews, not allowing marriage
between Jews and non Jews, requiring Jews to register property, prohibiting Jews from public
places, and forcing them to close their businesses. Additionally, Jewish individuals had to have
identity cards on them at all times, a red “J” stamped on a part of their body, and an identifiably
Jewish name. Those who did not were forced to change their names.
In 1933, shortly after Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, concentration camps were
established. These camps were established throughout Europe including Dachau, Auschwitz,
Buchenwald, and Treblinka. In these camps Jewish men, women, and children along with those of
the other groups were murdered through shootings, harsh labor, starvation, and gas chamber.
As the end of World War II approached, Allied leaders from the United States, England, France,
and the Soviet Union, grappled with the appropriate response to these horrendous Nazi crimes
against humanity. In October 1945, five months after the defeat of the Germans, an International
Military Tribunal indicted 24 Nazi leaders on one or more of the following four counts: conspiracy,
crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Throughout the course of one
year (1945-46), the first of the Nuremberg Trials involved 403 open sessions, over 100 witness
accounts, and extensive cross-examinations of evidence. On September 30 and October 1,
1946, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, three were sentenced to life
imprisonment, two received twenty years’ imprisonment, one was sentenced to fifteen years, one
to ten years, and three defendants were found not guilty. One of the initial 24 defendants
committed suicide prior to the trials, and another was deemed medically unfit to stand trial. Over
the course of the next three years 12 subsequent trials were held, after which twelve additional
death sentences and 85 prison sentences were imposed.
The international response to the Nuremberg Trials was controversial.
Overall, the majority favored the trials as they brought to light the extent
of the human rights violations conducted by the Nazis. However, a
small minority critiqued the trials as imposing retroactive justice upon the
accused, while others believed that although many Nazi leaders were brought to justice, the
thousands members of the Nazi regime and “silent bystanders” who allowed Nazi violence to take
place, went unpunished. The debate remains, Was Justice Served as a Result of the Nuremberg
Trials?
