Today marks the 65 th anniversary since the International Military Tribunal announced its verdicts of the World War II Nuremberg trials.
After the war, some of those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust were brought to trial. Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen as the site for the trials that took place in 1945 and 1946. Judges from the Allied powers namely Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the US, presided over the hearings of 22 major Nazi criminals.
Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death. Most of the defendants admitted to the crimes of which they were accused, although most claimed that they were simply following the orders of a higher authority. Those individuals directly involved in the killing received the most severe sentences. Other people who played key roles in the Holocaust, including high-level government officials and business executives who used concentration camp inmates as forced labourers, received short prison sentences or no penalty at all.
It imposed the death sentence on 12 defendants - Hermann Goering, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wihelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Martin Bormann.
Three – Rudolf Hess, Economics Minister Walther Funk, and Eric Raeder – were sentenced to life imprisonment. Four – Karl Doenitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath – received prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years.
The court acquited three defendants: Hjalmar Schacht, Economics Minister, Franz von Papen, German politician who played an important role in Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, and Hans Fritzsche, Head of Press and Radio.
The death sentences were carried out on October 16, 1946, with two exceptions: Goering who committed suicide shortly before his scheduled execution, and Bormann who went missing.
The other 10 defendants were hanged, their bodies cremated, and the ashes deposited in the Iser River. The seven major war criminals sentenced to prison terms were remanded to the Spandau Prison in Berlin.
The Nazis’ highest authority, the person most to blame for the Holocaust, was missing at the trials. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the final days of the war, as had several of his closest aides.
Many more criminals were never tried. Some fled Germany to live abroad, including hundreds who came to the United States.
Factbox
Chief prosecutors
• Robert H. Jackson (US)
• Francois de Menthon (France)
• Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union)
• Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain
Leading Nazi officials – the indicted include:
• Hermann Goering (Hitler’s heir designate)
• Rudolf Hess (Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party)
• Joachim von Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister)
• Wilhelm Keitel (Head of the Armed Forces)
• Wilhelm Frick (Minister of the Interior)
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Head of Security Forces)
• Hans Frank (Governor-general of occupied Poland)
• Konstantin von Neurath (Governor of Bohemia and Moravia)
• Erich Raeder (Head of the Navy)
• Karl Doenitz (Raeder’s successor),
• Alfred Jodl (Armed Forces Command),
• Alfred Rosenberg (Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories),
• Baldur von Schirach (Head of the Hitler Youth),
• Julius Streicher (Radical Nazi Antisemitic Publisher),
• Fritz Sauckel (Head of Forced-Labour Allocation),
• Albert Speer (Armaments Minister),
• Arthur Seyss-Inquart (Commissioner for the Occupied, The Netherlands)
• Martin Bormann (Hitler’s adjutant) tried in absentia.
Trials of Nazis continued to take place both in Germany and many other countries. Simon Wiesenthal, a Nazi-hunter, located Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann, who had helped plan and carry out the deportations of millions of Jews, was brought to trial in Israel. The testimony of hundreds of witnesses, many of them survivors, was followed all all over the world. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in 1962.