Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of 13 trials held in Nuremberg, Germany from 1945-1949. They tried German Nazi leaders, and accused them of deliberately starting an aggressive war (World War II), along with crimes against humanity, including mass murder and enslavement. These trials were a new development in international law. War criminals have been tried one way or another ever since war began. But at Nuremberg, for the first time, the leaders of a government were held on trial for starting an aggressive war.

The U.S. Army's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Central European Section of the Research and Analysis Branch prepared a 91-page report entitled Persecution of the Christian Churches ^[1] which contributed to the recognition that the Christian Churches were amongst the early victims of Nazi war criminality. The report describes "Nazi purposes, policies and methods of persecution of the Christian Churches in Germany and occupied Europe." Throughout the period of National Socialist rule, the Nazis employed a combination of ‘lawful’ and criminal devices to persecute the Churches in a cynically opportunistic manner. The various Christian Churches were systematically cut off from effective communication with the people. They were confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions accompanied partly by legal and partly by illegal and terroristic means.

To establish criminal responsibility in connection with the persecution it was sufficient to show that the measures taken against the Christian Churches were an integral part of the National Socialist scheme of world conquest. From the start, the report argues that, unlike other civil liberty provisions, the key articles of the pre-Nazi Weimar constitution, Articles, 135-140 and 149,^[2] "were never formally abrogated by the National Socialist regime, … were left untouched and still remain theoretically in force" and further "respect for the principle of religious freedom", continued to be reiterated in various official policy statements and in various "enactments of the National Socialist state". "To demonstrate the illegality of specific acts of persecution, it is sufficient to show that they were in violation of these legal provisions." In other words, the report argues that because the persistence of legal norms "immanent" to the German tradition of criminal law, there was no need to resort to ex post facto laws.

Ironically, some of the judges that proceeded the tribunals were Soviet-aligned, who were themselves guilty of many of the same actions as the Nazis, and to a greater scale, such as the Katyn Forest massacre (which the Nazis ended up being blamed for in the trials).

Liberals have also exploited the Nuremberg trials to push anti-war rhetoric during the Vietnam War, at least one of whom, Professor Telford Taylor, the author of the anti-Vietnam tract Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, had previously worked on the Nuremberg trials as the successor to Justice Robert H. Jackson as Chief of Counsel at Nuremberg.^[3]

Principal defendants[edit]

• Hermann Goering (sentenced to death by hanging but committed suicide hours before he was due to be executed)
• Rudolf Hess (sentenced to life imprisonment)
• Joachim von Ribbentrop (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[4]
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[5]
• Wilhelm Keitel (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[6]
• Alfred Jodl (sentenced to death by hanging)
• Alfred Rosenberg (sentenced to death by hanging)
• Julius Streicher (sentenced to death by hanging)
• Hans Frank (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[7]
• Wilhelm Frick (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[8]
• Karl Doenitz (sentenced to 10 years imprisonment) (Repented)^[9]
• Erich Raeder (sentenced to imprisonment for life) (Repented)^[10]
• Baldur Von Schirach (sentenced to 20 years imprisonment) (Repented)^[11]
• Fritz Sauckel (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[12]
• Albert Speer (sentenced to 20 years imprisonment) (Repented)^[13]
• Walther Funk (sentenced to imprisonment for life)
• Arthur Seyss-Inquart (sentenced to death by hanging) (Repented)^[14]
• Konstantin von Neurath (sentenced to 15 years imprisonment)
• Hans Fritzsche (acquitted) (Repented)^[15]
• Franz von Papen (acquitted) (Was considered unimportant and not complicit in the actions)
• Hjalmar Schacht (acquitted) (Revealed to have played minor role in Anti Nazi Resistance. [However, reportedly in 1949, he was still unrepentant.^[16]])
• Martin Bormann (tried in absentia)

See also[edit]

• Franz Leopold Neumann

References[edit]

1. ↑ R&A Report 3114.4 (draft for war crimes staff, dated 6th July 1945)
2. ↑ Weimar Constitution-Religion and Religious Communities
3. ↑ https://uakron.edu/dotAsset/ca5946e8-b2d6-43f9-a5ea-b6b98d73a461.pdf
4. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
5. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
6. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
7. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
8. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
9. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
10. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
11. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
12. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
13. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
14. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
15. ↑ https://thechaplainkit.com/history/chaplains-at-war/world-war-2/i-walked-to-the-gallows-with-the-nazi-chiefs/
16. ↑ Alfred Werner, The Irrepressible Herr Schacht:Hitler’s Adviser Stages a Comeback, Commentary Magazine, July 1949.

    ... Most of the Nazi bigwigs who shared the dock with Schacht in Nuremberg are now either dead or in jail, but the man who liked to refer to himself as the “Economic Napoleon of the 20th Century” now lives undisturbed with his second wife near Hamburg in the British zone, unrepentant, self-assured... He seems not in the least afraid of the Goddess of Justice! When in 1947, after his Nuremberg acquittal, a German de-Nazification court sentenced Schacht to eight years of forced labor, the decision was quashed by the Court of Appeals at Ludwigsburg, Wuerttemberg, in the American zone. However, the Minister of de-Nazification of Wuerttemberg-Baden over-ruled the appeals court and ordered a new trial for January 31, 1949. The scene was ready for the trial, but the defendant was absent. A new date was set and the President-Justice warned Schacht that he would be tried in absentia should he fail to appear. On the appointed day, Schacht did not appear and instead sent a letter claiming that the entire trial was illegal. Thereupon the court rejected the appeal it had previously granted Schacht....

    The textiles firm, Yarur, in Chile, has asked Schacht to become its financial and commercial adviser. The Yarurs are .. Arabs who belong to the wealthiest and most influential families in Chile. It remains to be seen whether the Allies will permit Schacht to emigrate to Chile. If he should go to Chile, he could be of enormous aid to the large German minority which is pro-Nazi.

External links[edit]

• Claire Hulme & Dr. Michael Salter, The Nazi's Persecution as a War Crime: The OSS Response Within the Nuremeberg Trial's Process, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, n.d.