Nuremberg Should leaders of one nation be able to put the leaders of other nations on trial? Should a person that agitates a group to action be responsible for that action? Are nations responsible for the care of POW? Should a soldier always obey orders? Duty over conscience. Should a person be tried for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time it was broken? Should citizens be held accountable for the actions of their government?
Nuremberg Trial 1945 Why Nuremberg? Held in the Palace of Justice – site of numerous Nazi rallies. Symbolic - This is where it started, and this is where it would end. Aerial view of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where the International Military Tribunal tried 22 leading German officials for war crimes. Nuremberg, November 1945.
Nuremberg Purpose of the Trial: Leaders of nations that engage in unjustified warfare should be brought to justice. International Military Tribunal The defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk, Hjalmar Schacht. Back row from left to right: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin van Neurath, Hans Fritzsche.
Nuremberg What were the charges? Count One: Conspiracy to Seize Power-overthrow of government. Count Two: Waging Aggressive War, or "Crimes Against Peace" Including “the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances.” 3. Count Three: War Crimes These were the more “traditional” violations of the law of war including treatment of prisoners of war, slave labor. 4. Count Four: Crimes Against Humanity This count involved the actions in concentration camps and other death rampages.(genocide) Nuremberg Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg The Evidence: Cremating, freezing, and torturing human beings. Intentionally spreading infectious diseases to prisoners. Shooting women and children. The most dramatic was showing the film of the atrocities.
Nuremberg The Defense: Pleads “not guilty” Hans Frank: “I say yes we have fought against Jewry, we have fought against them for years. A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.” Several key figures not brought to trial: A. Hitler B. Goebbels C. Martin Bormann tried in absentia 4. What could possibly be their arguments? Ernst Kaltenbrummer pleading "not guilty" to the charges against him during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
Nuremberg Defense: Only following orders They would have been killed if they would have disobeyed these orders. Insanity Ex Post Facto – charged with crimes that did not exist at the time. Ex. Genocide War – anything goes. No different than what the U.S. did at Hiroshima, and Britain at Dresden. Herman Goering defendant
Dresden: February 1945 RAF conducts massive bombing raid of Dresden City is hit with a firestorm of incendiary bombs 35,000 or more killed, mainly civilian Even Churchill questions bombing used as a method of terror without military objectives Kurt Vonnegut uses as the setting for his novel “Slaughterhouse Five”
“The World contains evil. There will Always be plenty of evil. And there’ll Always be wars. Because human Beings are aggressive animals.”
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing Edmund Burke