The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT) is perhaps the most famous international court in history.  The court tried Nazi war criminals following World War II, including several prominent Nazi military and political leaders.  The tribunal has proven an enduring influence on the development of international criminal law.

Precursors to the IMT

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was not the first attempt at establishing an international war crimes tribunal following a major war.  France, Great Britain, and the United States considered prosecuting German officials for war crimes following the conclusion of World War I.  Their debate is embodied in Articles 227 through 230 of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919. 

Article 227 provided for the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II before a tribunal of five judges, one each from the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.  But the Allies lacked the political will to follow through with a war crimes tribunal.  Although British Prime Minister David Lloyd George campaigned vigorously for the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal to try the Kaiser for war crimes, both Georges Clemenceau of France and Woodrow Wilson of the United States opposed this measure.  President Wilson in particular was concerned with promoting peace and avoiding the appearance of a victor’s revenge.  The parties compromised.  As a result of their compromise, Article 227 did not charge the Kaiser with perpetrating war crimes, but instead with “a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.”  The terms of Article 227 were vague and watered down, failing to charge the Kaiser with war crimes or to invoke any recognized international legal doctrine.  Thus, Article 227 effectively absolved the Kaiser of responsibility for war crimes.  The Kaiser went into exile in the Netherlands and was never tried.  The international war crimes tribunal envisioned by many following World War I never materialized.

Articles 228 through 230 of the Treaty of Versailles prescribed trials for other German officials accused of violating the laws of war.  But as with the trial of the Kaiser, the Allies’ lack of political unity resulted in the failure to establish an international war crimes tribunal.  The Germans convinced the Allies to permit trials of German war criminals to take place in the German Supreme Court in Leipzig.  The Leipzig trials resulted in very few convictions and in mild punishments, and the Allies refused to recognize the court’s decisions as valid under Articles 228-230 of the Versailles Treaty.  Thus, the push for an international war crimes tribunal following World War I resulted in utter failure.

Origins of the IMT

In sharp contrast to the aftermath of World War I, the Allied Powers stood unified and resolute in their support of an international war crimes tribunal following World War II.  Their resolve resulted largely from the perception that the evil perpetrated by the Nazis surpassed the crimes committed by Imperial Germany during World War I.  As early as the winter of 1942, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union began discussing the punishment of Nazi war criminals.  On December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a joint statement recognizing and condemning the Nazi extermination of European Jews.  The Allied Powers resolved to prosecute those responsible for the unprecedented attack against a civilian population.  The Allies felt that the exposure of the Nazi atrocities would serve as a lesson for posterity and that conducting a transparent trial would remove doubts about the scale of the atrocities.

In October 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union signed the Moscow Declaration.  The Moscow Declaration represented the first articulation of the structure of the war crimes trials to take place following the eventual armistice.  The parties agreed that most war criminals would be tried in the countries in which they committed their atrocities.  But they agreed to try the masterminds of the war crimes in a joint tribunal.

Legal Jurisdiction of the IMT

The legal and conceptual basis for the Nuremberg prosecutions my be found in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, and in the Kellog-Briand Pact of 1928.  The Hague Convention of 1899 dealt chiefly with prisoners of war and relations between occupation troops and civilians.  It also forbade the use of certain types of military tactics, such as the use of expanding bullets and poisonous gas.  The Hague Convention of 1907 affirmed and expanded the 1899 Convention, but its scope was essentially the same.  The Hague Conventions were multi-lateral international treaties signed by most world powers.  Following World War I, the United States and other world powers signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact represented a further international legal development that ultimately provided a legal basis for the IMT.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact was a multi-lateral international treaty that renounced war as an instrument of national policy.  The humanitarian principles embodied in these accords provided the conceptual basis for the definition of the crimes prosecuted by the IMT, including crimes against humanity, crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression), and war crimes.

Following Germany’s surrender in World War II, the Allies established the Allied Control Council, which served as the sovereign political authority over Germany.  The Council’s decision to prosecute violations of international law and the laws of war served as the legal basis for the establishment and jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

The London Charter and the Establishment of the IMT

On August, 8, 1945, the Allied Powers issued the London Charter, which decreed that crimes committed by the European Axis Powers could be prosecuted.  The London Charter also established the rules and procedures that would govern the trials.  The rules represented a compromise between the Anglo-American legal systems of Great Britain and the United States, and the Continental legal systems of the Soviet Union and France.  Continental legal elements incorporated into the London Charter included liberal allowance of hearsay evidence, detailed indictments, the ability of the defendants to make unsworn statements at the end of trial, and trial before a panel of judges, instead of a jury.  Anglo-American legal elements included permitting defendants to testify on their own behalf and allowing the cross examination of witnesses.  In addition, the London Charter defined the crimes to be prosecuted and declared that the “superior orders” defense could only be used as a mitigating factor during sentencing and not as evidence of innocence. 

The Allies decided to hold the trials in Nuremberg, Germany.  France, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union each supplied judges and a prosecution team for the Nuremberg tribunal.  Each nation sent a primary judge and a reserve judge.  The United States sent Francis Biddle as its primary judge.  Biddle had served in several prominent government positions, including as an appellate judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as United States Solicitor General, and as Attorney General of the United States.  France sent Henri Donnedieu de Vabres to serve as its primary judge.  Prior to his appointment to the International Military Tribunal, de Vabres had been a professor of criminal law at the University of Paris and had been an outspoken proponent of the concept of an international criminal court.  The primary judge of the Soviet Union was Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko, who served as a prominent Soviet judge under Stalin.  Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain served as the tribunal’s presiding judge.  Lord Lawrence had previously served as Attorney General to the Prince of Wales and as a Lord Justice of Appeal.

President Harry Truman appointed Robert H. Jackson, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to serve as the United States Chief Counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.  Jackson took a leave of absence from the Court to perform this role.  Prior to the trials, Jackson participated in negotiating the London Charter and the procedures to be used at trial.  At trial, Jackson served as the chief prosecutor for the United States, presenting Nazi documents as evidence and cross-examining the Nazi defendants.

The trial formally opened on November 20, 1945. 

Trial of the Major War Criminals

The Allies chose to try 21 high-ranking Nazi officials at the major Nuremberg war crimes trial.  The defendants were chosen for the prominent role they played in the planning and execution of the Holocaust.  They were charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace.  The vote of at least three of the four judges was required for conviction.

The prosecutors relied heavily on documentary evidence produced by the Nazi regime to prove their case.  They perceived that using documentary evidence would undermine charges of biased or coerced testimony, giving the trial legitimacy and transparency.  This evidence provided the basis for much of what is now known about how the Nazis carried out the Holocaust, including the details of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the mechanical extermination of prisoners at Auschwitz, and the estimate of six million Jewish victims. 

The judges returned their verdicts on October 1, 1946.  Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, three defendants were sentenced to life in prison, and three defendants were acquitted.  Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death, only 10 were ever hanged.  The other two committed suicide before their sentences could be carried out.  The executions took place on October 16, 1946.

Influence of the IMT on Other War Crimes Tribunals

The trial of the major Nazi war criminals by the IMT was not the only war crimes trial that took place following World War II.   The day after the executions of the Nazi leaders, President Truman appointed Telford Taylor to replace Robert Jackson as the American chief war crimes prosecutor.  Taylor prosecuted 185 lower-level German officials during 12 trials.  These defendants included the infamous Nazi doctors who performed gruesome experiments on prisoners in concentration camps, Gestapo and SS officers, prison camp guards, and others complicit in the Nazi atrocities.  These trials, commonly referred to as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, resulted in 12 additional death sentences, 8 life sentences, and 77 terms of imprisonment.  Additional war crimes trials were held in the countries in which the atrocities were committed.  The most prominent of these trials was that of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess, who was tried in Poland and condemned to death. 

The IMT also served as a model for the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, which tried Japanese war criminals following the conclusion of the Pacific Theater of World War II.  The IMTFE was similar in purpose and structure to the IMT.  Defendants were charged with the same crimes: crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes.  And, similar to the IMT, each of the eleven nations involved sent a judge and a prosecution team.  The IMTFE tried 28 Japanese military and political leaders.  The trial lasted over two and a half years and resulted in 7 death sentences, 16 life sentences, and 2 terms of imprisonment.  Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the entire imperial family were exonerated of all responsibility for the war and consequent atrocities.  They never stood trial.

The IMT continues to influence international criminal prosecutions, and recent international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, have been modeled on the IMT.

Legacy

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was a watershed event in history and left an indelible mark on the development of international law.  The Nuremberg tribunal broke the monopoly over criminal jurisdiction previously held by the nations of the world.  And the tribunal created new offenses that capture the scale of the crime of genocide.  The tribunal gave scope and definition to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace.  Modern international criminal tribunals, including the ICC, the ICTY, and the ICTR continue to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, crimes first prosecuted by the IMT.  Finally, the tribunal contributed to the development of new international criminal law norms, notably the elimination of the defense of “obedience to superior orders” and the increased accountability of heads of state.

More broadly, the Nuremberg tribunal fueled the issuance of several landmark declarations and conventions that have proven foundational to contemporary international law.  These include the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Nuremberg Principles, and the 1949 Geneva Convention.  Finally, the Nuremberg trials served as the inspiration for a permanent international criminal court, culminating in the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002.  Today, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg continues to serve as reference point for humanity and for the promotion of justice.

Sources:

Antonio Cassese, International Criminal Law (2003).

Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (1994).

Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (1992).

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007069

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm