Nuremberg Trials Worksheets
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Fact File
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Table of Contents
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Summary
- Background and Purpose
- Organisation and Setting
- The Defendants and Charges
- Verdicts and Sentences
- Legacy and Later Trials
Key Facts And Information
Let’s know more about the Nuremberg Trials!
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held after the Second World War to bring leading members of Nazi Germany to justice. They took place in the German city of Nuremberg from November 1945 to October 1946 and were run by the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. For the first time, an international court put individuals on trial for crimes such as starting wars of aggression, mistreating prisoners and civilians, carrying out genocide, and planning these acts together.
The trials showed that powerful leaders could not escape punishment for terrible crimes. They also created a lasting record of Nazi actions, including the Holocaust, and set new rules in international law for dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Judges’ bench at the Nuremberg Trials
Background and Purpose of the Nuremberg Trials
- The Nuremberg Trials took place after the Second World War, which had left Europe in ruins and tens of millions dead. Nazi Germany had invaded and occupied much of Europe between 1939 and 1945, bringing with it terrible violence. Civilians were executed in mass shootings, people were forced from their homes, and many were deliberately starved. In the Soviet Union alone, about 27 million people died, most of them civilians. The Nazi extermination camps, where millions of Jewish people were systematically murdered, became central to the Allies’ case against Nazi leaders.
- The idea of holding trials for such crimes developed gradually during the war. Different governments and leaders made proposals at different times, and these steps eventually came together to form the Nuremberg Trials.
Timeline leading to the Nuremberg Trials:
- 1942: Nine governments-in-exile from occupied Europe called for an international court to punish German crimes. Britain and the United States were cautious because earlier war crimes trials after the First World War had been seen as failures.
- 1943: A War Crimes Commission was set up in London, though there was no agreement on how broadly to define war crimes. In November, the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States signed the Moscow Declaration, promising punishment for Nazi leaders. Around this time, Soviet legal scholar Aron Trainin introduced the idea of ‘crimes against peace’, which later became a key charge.
- 1944: The Allies showed different views. The Soviet Union wanted quick trials, Britain preferred executions without trial, while the United States pushed for a formal legal process. By late 1944, the US War Department began drafting tribunal plans.
- February 1945 (Yalta Conference): The question of trials remained unsettled.
- May 1945 (San Francisco Conference): US President Harry S. Truman confirmed that an International Military Tribunal (IMT) would be created. On 8 May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally.
- August 1945: The London Charter was signed, giving the tribunal its legal framework. It stated that individuals could be held responsible under international law and set out four main charges: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit these crimes.
- The trials had two main purposes. One was to punish Nazi leaders for their crimes. The other was to set rules for the future, making clear that wars of aggression and genocide could not be excused as ‘following orders’. They also aimed to keep a lasting record of Nazi crimes, so the truth could never be denied or forgotten.
Organisation and Setting
- The Nuremberg Trials were planned at the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945. The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France agreed on the rules for the tribunal, which were written in the London Charter signed on 8 August 1945.
- The charges were based on the London Charter and fell into 4 categories:
- Crimes against peace: planning and waging wars of aggression
- War crimes: killing prisoners, attacking civilians and breaking international law
- Crimes against humanity: extermination, deportation and persecution of populations
- Conspiracy: working together to plan and carry out these crimes
- The trials took place in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. This city had been used by the Nazis for their rallies and for announcing the Nuremberg Laws against Jewish people. Holding the trials there turned Nuremberg into a place of justice instead of Nazi power. The Palace of Justice was also one of the few large buildings still standing after the war. It had space for a big courtroom and a prison where the accused could be held.
- The four Allied powers each sent judges and prosecutors to Nuremberg. The United States was led by Robert H. Jackson, Britain by Attorney General Hartley Shawcross, France by François de Menthon and later Auguste Champetier de Ribes, and the Soviet Union by Roman Rudenko. The tribunal was led by the British judge Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, but the American judge Francis Biddle often guided the court.
- To make the trials possible, many other people were involved. Interpreters ensured the court could function in English, French, Russian and German. Historians and researchers gathered and prepared the evidence, while psychologists studied and spoke with the prisoners. Designers and film experts helped present the proof by creating charts, photographs and films. By early 1946, about 1,000 people were working in Nuremberg, most of them Americans.
The Defendants and Charges during the Nuremberg Trials
- The IMT at Nuremberg indicted 24 leading figures of the Nazi regime. The most notorious men of the Third Reich – Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels – had committed suicide before capture and so were not present. The remaining defendants were drawn from politics, the military, business and propaganda. Most had surrendered to American or British forces.
Handing over the indictment to the tribunal
Those indicted included:
- Political leaders: Franz von Papen, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Konstantin von Neurath, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Baldur von Schirach.
- Military leaders: Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz.
- Economic figures: Gustav Krupp (later excused due to illness), Hjalmar Schacht, Walther Funk, Albert Speer and Fritz Sauckel.
- Propaganda and security figures: Julius Streicher, Hans Fritzsche and Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
- Together, these men represented the core of the Nazi system. Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, was seen as the most important surviving Nazi and the main figure in the trial. Political leaders such as Ribbentrop and Rosenberg were accused of planning aggressive wars and controlling occupation policies, while Rosenberg and Frank were directly linked to crimes in Eastern Europe and Poland.
- Military leaders such as Keitel and Jodl were accused of directing campaigns of destruction and approving illegal orders. Business leaders like Speer and Sauckel were key to the exploitation of millions of forced labourers. Propaganda figures like Streicher were accused of spreading racial hatred that paved the way for genocide.
- Not all 24 men faced the trial. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, was tried in his absence because his death was not yet proven. Gustav Krupp was too ill to take part, and Robert Ley, leader of the German Labour Front, killed himself before the trial began. Even so, the trial went ahead with the rest of the defendants, each given a defence lawyer.
- The Tribunal also targeted six Nazi organisations, aiming to declare them criminal: Reich Cabinet, Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, Gestapo, SA, SS and SD, and General Staff and High Command of the German military. This approach was designed to establish that responsibility for crimes extended beyond individual leaders and into the institutions that supported Nazi rule. It also provided a way to prosecute members of these bodies in later proceedings.
- The case relied heavily on documentary evidence. The Allies examined around 110,000 captured German records, submitted 4,600 documents, and used 25,000 photographs and 30 kilometres of film. Only 37 prosecution witnesses were called, compared to 83 for the defence, along with testimony from 19 of the accused. The use of captured records helped prove the crimes without depending too much on survivor testimony, which some thought might be seen as biased. Films and photographs were also shown to reveal the reality of the atrocities and make the scale of the crimes impossible to deny.
Verdicts and Sentences
- The Tribunal’s judgements showed both severity and leniency. Twelve men were sentenced to death for planning wars, organising mass killings or spreading hatred. Three men, including Schacht, Papen and Fritzsche, were acquitted, which caused debate as many thought they still shared some blame.
- Some prison terms were also disputed. Albert Speer avoided execution by admitting guilt and showing remorse, even though he had overseen forced labour. Karl Dönitz was given ten years, seen by many as too light considering his role in submarine warfare.
- The executions took place on 16 October 1946, except for Göring, who killed himself just hours before. The bodies of those executed were secretly disposed of so their graves could not become places of Nazi worship.
Legacy and Later Trials
- The Nuremberg Trials changed how the world saw justice after war. For the first time, leaders were held responsible as individuals for their crimes, instead of blaming only countries. The excuse of ‘just following orders’ was no longer accepted. This marked an important step in creating modern international law.
- The trials also created rules that shaped later agreements, such as the Genocide Convention (1948), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Geneva Conventions (1949). In 1950, the Nuremberg Principles were written down to guide international justice. Although the Cold War slowed progress, these ideas later helped form new war crimes courts in the 1990s for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the permanent International Criminal Court in 2002. The trials also kept a huge record of Nazi crimes, with thousands of documents and photos, which made it harder for people to deny what had happened.
- The main trial in 1945–46 was only the start. The Allies had first planned a second big international court, but this never happened. Instead, the United States held 12 more trials in Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949, using the same courtroom. Almost 100,000 Germans were arrested as war criminals, and about 2,500 were seen as major cases. Out of these, 177 were put on trial.
These later trials looked at many groups:
- Doctors’ Trial: doctors who carried out cruel experiments and euthanasia killings
- Judges’ Trial: judges and lawyers who used law to support Nazi crimes
- Ministries Trial: government officials, especially from the Foreign Office
- Industrial Trials: leaders of companies like Flick, IG Farben and Krupp, who used forced labour and supported SS crimes
- SS Trials: members of SS offices that ran camps, organised racial policies or led the Einsatzgruppen killing squads
- Military Trials: generals accused of deportations, slave labour, looting and mass killings, such as in the Balkans and Soviet Union
- The later trials heard from 1,300 witnesses, used more than 30,000 documents and filled over 130,000 pages of records. Out of 177 defendants, 142 were found guilty and 25 were sentenced to death.
- Reactions were mixed. Many journalists and visitors came to the trials, but public interest soon faded, especially in Britain. In France, some thought sentences were too light. In Germany, people at first said the trials were fair, but later many saw them as ‘victors’ justice’. As the Cold War began, the United States wanted to rebuild West Germany, so many sentences were reduced or cancelled. By the 1950s, most prisoners had been released. The German churches and political parties also pushed for early release, which made many Germans feel the trials had not been fair in the first place.
- Even with its limits, the Nuremberg Trials are seen as a turning point. They showed that crimes like genocide and mass murder would not go unpunished. The Tokyo Trials in Japan followed the same model, and in 1946 the United Nations agreed that the Nuremberg principles should become part of international law.
- The trials also left a cultural impact. They introduced new technology like simultaneous translation, and the courtroom in Nuremberg is now a museum. Many films and books also featured the trials, keeping their lessons top of mind. The trials are seen as the start of international criminal law, and their impact can still be seen in courts today.
Image Sources
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Color_photograph_of_judges%27_bench_at_IMT.jpg/1280px-Color_photograph_of_judges%27_bench_at_IMT.jpg
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/At_a_solemn_session_in_Berlin%2C_the_representatives_of_the_various_nations_handed_over_to_the_Tribunal_their_indictments_for_the_Nuremberg_Trials.jpg/1920px-At_a_solemn_session_in_Berlin%2C_the_representatives_of_the_various_nations_handed_over_to_the_Tribunal_their_indictments_for_the_Nuremberg_Trials.jpg
Frequently Asked Questions About The Nuremberg Trials
- What were the Nuremberg Trials?
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held after World War II to prosecute prominent leaders of Nazi Germany for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace.
- When and where did the trials take place?
The main trial began on 20 November 1945 and concluded on 1 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany.
- Why were the trials held in Nuremberg?
Nuremberg was chosen because its Palace of Justice was largely undamaged, had a large prison, and the city symbolised Nazi power (it hosted many Nazi rallies). Holding the trials there was seen as a symbolic act of justice.