Nuremberg Trials: A History from Beginning to End

In September 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws, which consisted of the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. These laws established the legal foundation upon which the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews and non-Aryans became the law of the land. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis established more than 42,000 camps and ghettoes to implement this policy.

When the Allied Powers joined forces to fight the Nazis, they were determined to bring the German leaders to justice in an international court where they would be tried for their war crimes. The location for the trial would be Nuremberg in Germany, the site where the Nazi Party had held its famous rallies and where the Nuremberg Laws had been legislated. Now, the tables were turned and the city of Nuremberg would be the place where justice would be served.

What we call the Nuremberg trials was actually a series of 13 trials that took place between 1945 and 1949. The most famous of the trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, which began in November 1945 and ended in October 1946. Nazi leaders such as Joachim von Ribbentrop were hanged; others, such as Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess, were sentenced to prison terms. Hermann Goering was also sentenced to hang, but he cheated the noose by committing suicide with a cyanide pill that he had smuggled into his cell.

Although there were some, including several American Supreme Court justices, who felt that the Nuremberg trials failed to deliver justice, the contemporary view holds them as a milestone in the annals of the law and as the forerunner of a permanent international court charged with the task of addressing crimes against humanity.

Discover a plethora of topics such as

• Hiding the Evidence
• The Defendants
• The Trial Begins
• The Prosecution
• A Brain without a Conscience
• Sentencing and Executions
• And much more!