Two of the 24 defendants died during the trials, including Hermann Goring, commander of Nazi Germanys air force, who committed suicide. Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Many of the worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons. The Center for Human Rights and International Justice and Stanford Libraries hope to establish a single destination point that can help people understand how to seek justice when crimes against humanity have occurred and how to pursue accountability for systematic and widespread violence. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials . Ferencz told us he is still haunted by the things he saw. In the Hostages case, several generals were tried for executing thousands of hostages and prisoners of war, looting, using forced labor, and deporting civilians in the Balkans. The technology will allow users to discover and cut straight to material in a really dense corpus without being an expert on the trial or being a lawyer, and that is really powerful, Van Tuyl said. Benjamin Ferencz: Same thing, not guilty. He didn't deny the killings -- he had the gall to claim they were done in self-defense. I said, "Look. In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. The verdict was drafted by British alternate judge Norman Birkett. You know, kick 'em in. Streicher, editor in chief of the Der Sturmer anti-Semitic weekly, claimed that hed always viewed German Jews as legitimate compatriots and long supported Zionism. And he's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. [129] The Soviet prosecution also attempted to fabricate German responsibility for the Katyn massacre, which had in fact been committed by the Soviet Union. So you do it.". September 30, 2021 Stanford scholars expand digital database with historic records from the Nuremberg Trial. The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out between 1945 and 1949, the Trial of Major War Criminals being held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. and Chris Smith (R-N.J.) would . You know? In 1954, the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, was . [48] The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and alternate Robert Falco, who had represented France at the London Conference. [110] Unlike Jackson, he attempted to minimize the novelty of the aggression charges. [182] Nikichenko released a dissent approved by Moscow that rejected all the acquittals, called for a death sentence for Hess, and convicted all the organizations. [67] Also prosecuted were leaders of the German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG), former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, and economic planners Albert Speer and Walther Funk, along with Speer's subordinate and head of the forced labor program, Fritz Sauckel. [64] The division of labor, and the haste with which the indictment was prepared, resulted in duplication, imprecise language, and lack of attribution of specific charges to individual defendants. Screenshot from film showing the Einsatzgruppen at work. per adult (price varies by group size) Nuremberg World War 2 Tour. [183][184] The judges proved their independence from the governments that appointed them, the defendants were seen as receiving due process, and the evidence of guilt amassed by the prosecution was overwhelming. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite. [132] The inclusion of Katyn in the charges undermined the credibility of Soviet evidence in general. Stanford University. There's the rabbi coming along there. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days." By submitting the above I agree to the privacy policy and terms of use of JTA.org. Not guilty. [210] As the Cold War began, the rapidly changing political environment began to affect the effectiveness of the trials. Benjamin Ferencz: Never in my life. [136][137] The Soviet prosecution case was generally well received and presented compelling evidence about the suffering of the Soviet people and the Soviet contribution to victory. "Informed consent for treatment serves a slightly different purpose. Nearly 75 years ago, the Nuremberg Trial came to a close when on Oct. 1, 1946, a group of convicted Nazi leaders was sentenced by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II and the Holocaust. [168], The judgment found that there was a premeditated conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, the goals of the conspiracy being "the disruption of the European order as it had existed since the Treaty of Versailles" and "the creation of a Greater Germany beyond the frontiers of 1914". [208][209] Many Germans lumped criminal trials with denazification, internment, and confrontation with the concentration camps, as illegitimate victor's justice and the imposition of collective guilt. [69][37], The defendants, who were largely unrepentant,[70] included former cabinet ministers: Franz von Papen (who had brought Hitler to power); Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm Frick (interior minister), and Alfred Rosenberg, minister for the occupied eastern territories. The father had died just as we were entering the camp. This first international military tribunal was monumental: Not only did it bring perpetrators of mass atrocities to justice, it was also the first time international law was used to prosecute individuals, including heads of state, for war crimes. The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949 to try those accused of Nazi war crimes. One of these-- my defendants said-- He gets up, and he says, "[GERMAN]," which is, "What? This March, Ben Ferencz turned 101 and he's still in there fighting. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; and the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million men, women, and children shot in their own towns and villages in cold blood. [154] The United States controlled the prison where the defendants and some of the witnesses were held, and tried its best to shut the Soviets out of the proceedings. Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. A team of over 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts lead by Dr. Reiner Fullmich have begun legal proceedings over the CDC, WHO, the Davos Group for crimes against humanity. [104] On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps. 1/6. This is Ferencz making his opening statement in the Nuremberg courtroom 73 years ago. #. The trials, conducted at a military tribunal with judges from Allied nations including the Soviet Union, were a seminal milestone in the creation of modern international law in general and the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Look at the emancipation of woman in my lifetime. [177] In the latter case, the Wehrmacht leadership was not considered an organization within the meaning of the charter;[177][178] but this verdict was later misrepresented as an acquittal of the criminality of the Wehrmacht, forming one of the foundations of the clean Wehrmacht myth. Top ways to experience Nuremburg Trial Courthouse and nearby attractions. Fact check:Doctors' Trial was one of 13 Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg trials after World War II were historic -- the first international war crimes tribunals ever held. [60] Conspiracy charges were especially central to the cases against propagandists and industrialists; the former were charged with providing the ideological justification for war and other crimes, while the latter were accused of economic mobilization without which no war would have been possible. [14][15] The exact form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Benjamin Ferencz: When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that's more people than you've ever seen in your life, I took a sample. Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678. Another man was sentenced to death in absentia. [100], On 21 November, Jackson gave the opening speech for the prosecution. Without simultaneous translation the trial cannot happen. Nrnberg trials, Nrnberg also spelled Nuremberg, series of trials held in Nrnberg, Germany, in 1945-46, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. [142] In contrast, most defendants avoided incriminating each other. [231], The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial) borrowed many of its ideas from the IMT, including all four charges. Marie-Claude Valliant Couturier revealed the conditions under which French women existed while interned; 49 of the 230 French women sent to Auschwitz survived. [235] In the 1990s, a revival of international criminal law included the establishment of ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), which were widely seen as part of the legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. [32] The trial was held under modified common law. [45] At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judges Francis Biddle and John Parker. When we first reported on him back in 2017, he was 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he had served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial ever. The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out between 1945 and 1949, the Trial of Major War Criminals being held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. . They're not real. The progress has been remarkable. [101] He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason". Jan Lemnitzer, University of Oxford. The Nuremberg trials were conducted simultaneously in four languages and required the skills of 36 . [105] The American prosecutors were not any more effective when presenting documentary evidence on the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity, and ended up reaching a "saturation point of horror" by their indiscriminate selection and disorganized presentation of evidence without tying it to specific defendants. Judges deliberate at the trials of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany, Jan. 1, 1945. . subscribe to Stanford Report. Hitler's top lieutenants were prosecuted first. At the time, Ferencz just had the documents, and he started adding up the numbers. [219][220] The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials. Lesley Stahl: You know, you-- have seen the ugliest side of humanity. [81] Senior American officials believed that convicting organizations was a good way of showing that not just the top German leaders were responsible for crimes, without condemning the entire German people. President Harry Truman asked Robert Jackson, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, to serve as the chief American prosecutor . [34][35] Located in the American occupation zone, Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site of Nazi rallies. [114], In mid-December the Americans switched to presenting the case against the indicted organizations, while in January both the British and Americans presented evidence against individual defendants. He also recalls how, for a time, he followed in his fathers footsteps to become a school principal before he became politically radicalized and joined Adolf Hitlers Nazi Party, which he said he believed offered the best path to recovering Germanys ailing economy and improving its international status after its devastating defeat in World War I. 40 years on from the Majdanek trial verdict. COVID-19 vaccination does not violate the Nuremberg Code . He said, "OK. A Supreme Court justice led the American team of prosecutors. So the world is changing. Benjamin Ferencz: I was so young. And look at you. [12] The United States insisted on a fair trial as a means of reforming Germany. He scored a victory when the international criminal court in The Hague was created in 1998. [49][48] The French government tried to appoint staff who were not tainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments were of those who had been in the French resistance. [108][109], On 12 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech for the British. One of America's most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since 1991. [94] All defendants pleaded not guilty. Nuremberg war crimes trials 70 years on: a complex legacy. You know? Lesley Stahl: They're making them run to their own death? Benjamin Ferencz: Of course. [87][149] United States admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States had used the same methods of submarine warfare that the German admirals were accused of; Dnitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that such actions could not be crimes. Yes. Ben Ferencz in court: The charges we have brought accuse the defendants of having committed crimes against humanity. By Cnaan Liphshiz January 15, 2021 11:48 am. [212], The German churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were vociferous proponents of amnesty,[213] which had cross-party support in West Germany, which was established in 1949. A bust of Ferencz was just installed outside that Nuremberg courtroom where he argued almost three-quarters of a century ago. By early 1946, Western prosecutors were uneasy about the Katyn charge, although they never publicly rejected it for fear of casting the entire proceedings into question. Benjamin Ferencz: Well, if it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. But that didn't last long. [133], Inspired by the films shown by the American prosecution, the Soviet Union commissioned three films for the trial: The German Fascist Destruction of the Cultural Treasures of the Peoples of the USSR, Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders in the USSR, and The German Fascist Destruction of Soviet Cities, using footage from Soviet filmmakers as well as shots from German newsreels. [234][235] Further developments in international criminal law in the aftermath of the trials included the Genocide Convention (1948) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). [6] The Soviet Union wanted to hold a show trial similar to the 1930s Moscow trials, in order to demonstrate the Nazi leaders' guilt and build a case for war reparations to rebuild the Soviet economy, which had been devastated by the war. Massachusetts woman arrested for placing swastikas at Jewish womans home, Netflixs Rough Diamonds brings viewers into the drama of Antwerps Orthodox diamond district, Sofia Richie, Lionel Richies daughter, marries Jewish music executive after converting to Judaism, Sammys Roumanian, iconic Lower East Side Jewish restaurant, mounts a comeback, Stranger Things star Brett Gelman proposes to singer girlfriend Ari Dayan in Jerusalem, Disney+ series A Small Light tells the Anne Frank story from the perspective of the woman who hid her, Barbra Streisand is getting the next Jewish Nobel, in prizes return to celebrity tradition, Meet the real-life rabbi in the synagogue scene of Are You There God? And that's just the beginning. The trials weren't perfect, but the Allies had wanted to shoot the defendants, so at least the . Digitizing all the records from the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Trial Archives is ongoing. The British government was still opposed, unable to see the benefit of such a trial and preferring the summary execution of Nazi leaders. Lesley Stahl: Ben? (Image credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Courtesy Randy Cole). [21] At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing international customary law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. Speer managed to distinguish himself from other defendants, giving the impression of apologizing, although without assuming personal guilt or naming any victims other than the German people. Lesley Stahl: Did anybody ever say that you're naive? (JTA) At the opening of his trial in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher made several uncharacteristically friendly statements about Jews a people he had devoted his professional life to demonize. Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. [150] The judges barred most evidence on Allied misdeeds from being heard in court. Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Channette Alexander), (Image credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Courtesy Randy Cole), Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice, is an expanded repository of digital records, A better, faster tool for saving water on farms. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment. View of Nuremberg in 1945. And you shouldn't-- you know-- be despairing because it's never happened before. It isn't easy viewing. [43] The United States prosecution believed that Nazism was the product of a German deviation from Western history (the Sonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. [146][148] Six defendants were charged with the German invasion of Norway, and their lawyers argued that this invasion was undertaken to prevent a British invasion; a cover-up prevented the defense from capitalizing on this argument. Grbe painfully recounts how he saw a grave of over a thousand bodies, some of whom were still moving.. Series of military trials at the end of World War II, This article is about the series of international trials. Flags from left to right: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, List of defendants at the International Military Tribunal, SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, mass expulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe, confrontation with the concentration camps, Journal of International Criminal Justice, "Notre combat pour la paix: la France et le procs de Nuremberg (1945-1946)", "Le procs de Nuremberg: retour sur soixante-dix ans de recherche", "German Participation in the Nuremberg Trials and Its Implications for Today", "Imperfect Justice at Nuremberg and Tokyo", Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Special Panels of the Dili District Court, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nuremberg_trials&oldid=1152692054, International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Courts and tribunals disestablished in 1946, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 1 May 2023, at 18:42. All wars, and all decent people. Boy, I felt if I'd had a bayonet I woulda jumped over the thing, and put a bayonet right through one ear, and let it come out the other. Benjamin Ferencz: Going on right this minute, yes. The Rome Statute establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), which had been proposed in 1953, was finally agreed to in 1998. Nov. 20, 2021 / 3:00 AM On This Day: Nuremberg trials begin On Nov. 20, 1945, 24 German leaders went on trial at Nuremberg before the International War Crimes Tribunal. Nuremberg Combo Tour WWII + Old Town. [99] According to historian Kim Christian Priemel, the conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute, totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the first victims rather than agents, collaborators, and fellow travellers". For the scholars, what makes the Nuremberg archives particularly captivating is the variety of human narratives that emerges from the variety of documents and transcripts stories that are now easier to find thanks to Stanfords preservation efforts. And you're very wise. Thanks to a grant from Tad Taube and Taube Philanthropies, now, on the 75th anniversary of the first major international war crimes trial ending, a significant new collection of digital materials will be made available to the public. In 1946, verdicts were handed down in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. And I see the progress. [123] The next week, the Soviet prosecution suddenly produced former field marshal Friedrich von Paulus, captured after the Battle of Stalingrad, as a witness and questioned him about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. By SIMCHA PASKO 01/10/2021 He promoted an intentionalist view of the Nazi state and its overall conspiracy to commit all of the crimes mentioned in the indictment. . A new drama from Radio 4 follows the race to track down and capture war criminals, the struggle . 06/29/2021. Judge: How do you plead to this indictment, guilty or not guilty? [71][72] The military leaders were Hermann Gring, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Erich Raeder, and Karl Dnitz. [61], The problem of translating the indictment and evidence into the three official languages of the tribunal, as well as German, was severe due to the scale of the task and difficulty in recruiting interpreters, especially in the Soviet Union. So the Jewish question was for me solved in Germany, but I believed that another international solution will come, that we should meet with Zionists, listen to their demands, he said on April 26, 1946 at the military tribunal where he stood trial with other Nazi officials for crimes against humanity. View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Ferencz says his goal from the beginning was to affirm the rule of law and deter similar crimes from ever being committed again. Because I want peace instead of war. [36][35] On 8 August, the Nuremberg Charter was signed in London. These indictments and criminal procedures were carried out by the occupying Allies following the events of the Second World War. [141] The defendants tried to blame their crimes on Hitler, who was mentioned 1,200 times during the trialmore than the top five defendants combined. The judgement argued that aggressive war had already been illegal, even if no one had been punished for it, and therefore the German leaders could not count on immunity from prosecution. And you know what keeps me going? Lesley Stahl: We've had Rwanda, we've had Bosnia. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others--. [52][46] The Soviet personnel's lack of knowledge of English, lack of interpreters, and unfamiliarity with diplomacy and international institutions also limited their influence. Your legs won't reach the pedals." Lesley Stahl: Had you prosecuted trials before? Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don't even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. I was 27 years old. Fullmich and his team present the faulty PCR test and the order for doctors to label any comorbidity death as a Covid death as fraud. [63] Jackson also rewrote the indictment with the intent of keeping the proceedings under American control by separating out an overall conspiracy charge from the other three charges. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg, and I said to Taylor, "General, we've gotta put on a new trial.". [99] Nevertheless, defense lawyers (although not most of the defendants) often argued that the prosecution was trying to promote German collective guilt and forcefully countered this as a strawman argument. The Natural Capital Project is working with development banks and 10 pilot countries to put the environment at the forefront of policy and investment decisions. [8][9] On November 1, 1943, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States issued the Moscow Declaration to "give full warning" to the Nazi leadership of the Allies' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earthin order that justice may be done". Gabrielle Karampelas, Stanford Libraries: (650) 497-4414, gkaram@stanford.edu. 25. On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Streichers paper was a symbol for how Nazi propaganda methodically dehumanized Jews and used mass media to ready non-Jewish Germans to carry out the Holocaust. 22 mins. QAnon followers believe a second set of Nuremberg-like trials will be held to prosecute those who introduced coronavirus restrictions, on the grounds of "crimes against humanity." Acolytes of the . Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries . The Marines, they just looked at me and said, "Forget it, kid.". Benjamin Ferencz: And I start screaming. FALSE: "Nuremberg Trial 2" took place due to the atrocities committed against humanity. It was also a way to indirectly charge crimes committed before the beginning of World War II, which the charter placed outside the court's jurisdiction. [175][176], Four organizations were ruled to be criminal: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD, although some lower ranks and subgroups were excluded. The Jews were shot? You may have given little thought to the role Native Americans played in the creation of the U.S. Constitution. Benjamin Ferencz: He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. In doing so, it established a legal precedent in international humanitarian law that is still relevant today. This week, the U.S. [205] Where the prosecution was disappointed by some of the verdicts, the defense could take satisfaction. [236][237], The trials were the first use of simultaneous interpretation, which stimulated technical advances in translation methods. [156], On 31 August, closing arguments were presented. Lesley Stahl: He's a savage when he does the murder though. [206], Many Germans at the time of the trials focused on finding food and shelter; few followed the trial closely. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations. (@carolecadwalla) July 24, 2021 J Opacka (@jopackaj) July 24, . Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: "The city's Jews were ordered to present themselves about 34,000 reported, including women and children. Despite being accused of the same crimes, Sauckel was sentenced to death, while Speer was given a prison sentence because the judges considered that he could reform. The Nuremberg Trials . [181] All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on a deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don't say they're naive, I say they're stupid. [67] Former Nazis were allowed to serve as counsel[45] and by mid-November all defendants had lawyers. Google trends show a notable increase in people searching for "Nuremberg trials" since the onset of the pandemic, as well as a dramatic recent increase in searches for "Nuremberg trials 2021". So he finished at Harvard then enlisted as a private in the Army. [165] The official interpretation of the IMT held that all of the charges had a solid basis in customary international law,[166] which was elaborated in the verdict.
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