How does the world confront the destruction of a war as brutal as World War II? How do nations begin to reckon with the cold efficiency of industrialised killing, with the deliberate machinery of genocide that defined the Holocaust? And how, amidst such devastation, can humanity find the foundations of justice for crimes unlike any previously recorded in human history?
The Allied powers, comprising the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or the Soviet Union, which emerged as a victor in World War II, faced these dilemmas.
These nations took it upon themselves to hold the top brass of the Third Reich or Nazi Germany accountable for military aggression, war crimes, and genocide.
Therefore, for the first time in history, it was decided that an international military tribunal must be conducted to prosecute government officials, military leaders, and administrators for actions undertaken on behalf of a state.
The Nuremberg Trials — a moment of reckoning
The trials were held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany — which was selected partly because it had been a symbolic centre of Nazi propaganda and partly because the Palace of Justice remained intact after the war.
Since Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the elite Nazi paramilitary group Schutzstaffel (SS) and the secret police group Gestapo, and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, all died by suicide as Germany faced defeat in the war, the remaining top Nazi leaders were tried.
The defendants of the Nuremberg Trials, which began 80 years ago on November 20, 1945, included 24 of the most prominent surviving Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, and Albert Speer.
Their charges fell under four categories:
Crimes against peace
War crimes
Crimes against humanity, and
Conspiratorial activities behind such crimes
One of the most significant articulations of the Nuremberg trials was the recognition of ‘crimes against humanity’, which came to be defined as the “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population.”
At the centre of the case against the Nazi top brass stood the Holocaust, a campaign of genocide against European Jews in Germany and German-occupied Europe, predominantly Poland.
The Holocaust, which employed methods such as mass shootings, pogroms and gas chambers in extermination camps, claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, as well as millions of other “undesirable” people like the Romani people, queer people, people with disabilities, and political dissidents like the Communists.
Legacy of the trials
While the judges of the Nuremberg Trial ordered the executions of 12 top Nazi leaders, several long prison terms, and a handful of acquittals, its true legacy lies in the comprehensive evidence of Nazi atrocities it produced.
Official documentation by German officials themselves, films made by American and Soviet prosecutors, and survivor testimonies helped form a foundation for the historical understanding of Nazi crimes.
Furthermore, the judges rejected the defence of “Superior Orders” (which is famously called the Nuremberg defence), where the top brass of the Third Reich unsuccessfully argued that they were in no position to question orders given to them (by Hitler). The Nuremberg Trials asserted a principle that endures to this day: moral responsibility rests with the individual.
More importantly, the Nuremberg trials laid the intellectual and legal groundwork for later tribunals addressing genocide and war crimes, and ultimately influenced the creation of the International Criminal Court.
In establishing that even the most powerful could be held accountable to universal principles of law, the Nuremberg Trials helped redefine the world's moral compass post-war.