From December 1946 to April 1949, the United States held a series of twelve more military tribunals at the Palace of Justice for war crimes against Nazi German leaders. The accused were 177 doctors, judges, industrialists, SS and police commanders, military personnel, civil servants and high-ranking diplomats. The trials revealed German leaders, who supported the Nazi dictatorship. Of the 177 defendants, 24 were sentenced to death, 20 to life imprisonment and 98 other prison terms. Twenty-five accused were found not guilty. Many prisoners were released in the early 1950s on the basis of pardons. Thirteen of the 24 death sentences were carried out. After the war, the Allied powers – the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union – joined forces to form the International Military Tribunal (IMT). From 1945 to 1946, the leaders of Nazi Germany were tried for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit any of the aforementioned crimes. Although the charges brought against the German defendants at Nuremberg largely stemmed from pre-war international treaties, the tribunal was controversial even in Allied countries.

Several prominent figures in Allied governments, including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, initially advocated a much more extreme approach, advocating the summary execution of German war criminals. However, the governments of the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the United States eventually agreed to a joint tribunal with judges and prosecutors from each of these countries. In order to combat the accusation that the tribunal was only victors` justice, the Allies went to great lengths to provide defendants with counsel of their own choosing, as well as secretarial, shorthand and translation services. With regard to some of the most questionable legal issues, such as the ambiguous charge of conspiracy, the Allies ensured that none of the accused were convicted on that charge alone. Nevertheless, some Germans accused the Allies of conducting an unfair trial with a predetermined outcome. Several critics of the tribunal rightly criticized the efforts of Soviet participants to attribute Soviet atrocities, such as the massacre of Polish officers and Katyn intelligentsia, to German troops. Other IMT critics noted that Nazi defendants could not appeal their convictions. Despite these beliefs, the IMT is now widely regarded as a remarkably fair execution of justice.

In addition, several main objectives defined by its architects have been achieved. At the party`s annual congress at Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis enacted new laws that institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of «German or related blood.» Ordinances ancillary to laws deprived Jews of their rights and deprived them of most political rights. The Nuremberg trials stipulated that all humanity would be protected by an international legal shield and that even a head of state would be held criminally responsible and punished for aggression and crimes against humanity. The right to humanitarian intervention, to stop crimes against humanity – even of a sovereign against his own citizens – has gradually evolved from the Nuremberg Principles reaffirmed by the United Nations. The Anglo-American legal system differed considerably from the continental system used by the French and Russians. The first point of contention concerned the function of the indictment. In Anglo-American law, it is the indictment against a criminal to inform him of the crime of which he is accused. In the Soviet system, the indictment contains all the evidence used in the trial. In this case, the Americans won.

A second point of contention between the Americans and Russians was whether organizations such as the SS and Gestapo could be convicted as criminal units. The Russians said no and the Americans said yes. Giving the Americans the onus to prove this part of the case solved this problem. Conflicts have also arisen over the definition of international law and what constitutes both international law and the laws of a sovereign nation. The negotiating countries were faced with many such divergences. The adjournment of the conference, the preparation of new amendments, and the subsequent discussion of those amendments at the next session helped resolve every problem, but on many important points of contention, the U.S. delegation defied opposition from other nations. The other drawback, and ultimately the most important, is that the Charter of the United Nations itself and the global concept of collectively bringing despots to justice will be undermined if they are not brought before an international body such as the United Nations International Criminal Court. The noble precedents set by the Nazi Nuremberg trials after World War II and the recent war crimes trials in Yugoslavia and Rwanda would be ignored. Therefore, the main legacies of the IMT were its punishment of the worst Nazi offenders, its irrefutable documentation of Nazi crimes, and its discrediting of the Nazi Party among the majority of the German population. Although the tribunal largely failed to force average Germans to confront their complicity in their country`s war crimes and the Holocaust, it likely prevented many former Nazis from reclaiming prominent political office. These results are due to the efforts of the Western Allies to conduct fair trials and widely disseminate information on their outcome.

The trials began on November 20, 1945 at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, which had somehow survived the intense Allied bombings of 1944 and 1945. Do you like what you see? Check out some of our similar work below: After the trial of serious war criminals, 12 more trials took place at Nuremberg. These trials, which lasted from December 1946 to April 1949, have been summarized as the Nuremberg trials.