The legal reckoning

The Nuremberg Tribunal

At the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, high-ranking Nazi leaders were accused of war crimes, USHMM #16777

The prosecution of the most important German war criminals began immediately after World War II, at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. During this trial, the responsibility for the crimes was defined both politically and judicially.

The Tribunal was set up by the Allied great powers: The United States, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France. It was established 8 August 1945 in Nuremberg. Until October 1946 22 accused were prosecuted for:

1. Crimes against peace (the planning and carrying out of wars of aggression)
2. War crimes
3. Crimes against humanity

The Court defined crimes against humanity as murders, annihilation, slavery, deportation…or persecution based on political, racial or religious affiliation”. The accused were Nazi top politicians, party functionaries, military people and technocrats.

The sentences were pronounced 30 September and 1 October 1946:

The result of the trial

The extermination of the European Jews was not an independent count at the trial, but was included in ’crimes against humanity’. Many of the murderers, tormentors and henchmen have since 1945 been convicted for the murder of Jews based on the guidelines from the Nuremberg Tribunal. Several of these have been executed.

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg thus declared that:

• Several Nazi institutions were ‘criminal organisations’, among them the Gestapo, SS, SD and the Nazi Party. The members of these institutions could therefore be accused and convicted – if their individual guilt could be established.
• People, who committed a criminal act according to international law, were individually responsible for their actions. As an accused, it was not possible to explain away one’s actions by referring to orders from above. The tribunal thus stated clearly that there existed no excuse for a criminal action.
• All warfare was subject to international treaties.

It is important to note that war criminals were convicted according to European judicial principles of defence, examination of witnesses, evidence, etc. It was thus necessary to prove the accused guilty according to law before the sentencing.

The Nuremberg trials

After the Nuremberg Tribunal a number of other trials against war criminals followed. These are often termed the ‘Nuremberg Trials’, because 4 waves of trials followed that were all based on the standard set by the International Military Tribunal.

Besides the Nuremberg Tribunal’s case against the 24 main accused, another trial followed against 177 members of the ‘criminal organisations’. Former members of the SS, the Gestapo, SD and the Nazi Party were put on trial.

Apart from this, a legal reckoning followed with the members of the Einsatzgruppen, the doctors who had carried out the horrible experiments on humans and had killed the disabled, lawyers, businessmen, Nazi Party functionaries, camp personnel such as guards and commandants, police officers, and many others.

The 23 accused in the 'Doctors' Trial', Nuremberg, 9 December, 1946 - 20 August, 1947, USHMM #07354.

A third wave of trials took place in the spirit of the Nuremberg tribunal: the trials in Tokyo. Here, Japanese military and political leaders were accused using the same basis as in Nuremberg.

The fourth type of trials within the framework established at the Nuremberg Tribunal was the trials against ”lesser” war criminals. These trials took place in both military and national courts. They took place all over Europe – and frequently close to the scene of crime. The majority of trials especially involved the lower ranks of civil servants, camp personnel and soldiers.

Other post-war trials – the legal reckoning with the camp personnel

Auschwitz

In West Germany the so-called Auschwitz Trials were conducted against the camp guards from the concentration- and extermination camp at Auschwitz. The largest of these trials took place in Frankfurt am Main between 1963 and 1965, where 20 were accused. 17 were given jail sentences.

Furthermore, on West German soil, a number of trials against the personnel from other camps were initiated in the 1960’s. Those were the Belzec Trial, the Sobibor Trial and the First and Second Treblinka Trials.

The Belzec Trial

The Sobibor Trial

Den 3. juli 1964 stod tolv af udryddelseslejren Sobibors personale tiltalt for medvirken til drab på jøder i lejren. Alle tolv blev anklaget for medvirken til drabene. Selve retssagen startede den 6. september 1965 og sluttede den 20. december 1966 i Hagen. Over 100 vidner blev inddraget.

On 3 July 1964 twelve of the personnel in the extermination camp Sobibor stood accused of participating in the murder of Jews in the camp. All twelve were accused of assisting in the killings. The trial itself began in Hagen on 6 September 1965 and ended on 20 December 1966. More than 100 witnesses were called.

A total of 250,000 Jews were killed in the camp.

Six of the accused were convicted and a full five were acquitted – one committed suicide before the sentence was read.

The six were sentenced to:

• Karl F.: Life imprisonment for assisting in the murder of numerous people – at least 150,000 – and for personally murdering 9 people.
• Frans W.: 8 years imprisonment for at have assisted in the murder of numerous people – at least 39,000.
• Alfred I.: 4 years imprisonment for having assisted in the murder of numerous people – at least 68,000.
• Werner D.: 3 years imprisonment for having assisted in the murder of numerous people – at least 15,000.
• Erwin L.: 3 years imprisonment for having assisted in the murder of numerous people – at least 57,000.
• Erich F.: 4 years imprisonment having assisted in the murder of numerous people – at least 79,000.

The five acquitted:

The court defended the acquittal of five of the accused by pointing to lack of evidence – in particular the lack of eyewitnesses and especially reliable eyewitnesses – and the five accused were:

’…excused because of an uncorroborated, presumed (putative) situation of self-defence. With the doubt presented, they are acquitted because of lack of evidence, although under the present circumstances a not insignificant suspicion remains that they committed the said act.'

From: Adalbert Rückerl, ed., NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Munich, 1977), p. 86.

In general, the verdicts were very mild in relation to the terrible crimes committed. The court argued in its verdict that the camp personnel had been under coercion – they had no way of not following orders, although the court did not question the assisting of the accused in mass gassings of Jews. According to the verdict, it was necessary to:

’…refer to the fact that they [the camp personnel] had been forced to follow the orders to exterminate the Jews, since else, according to the rules, they would have been punished, transferred to a concentration camp, shot, or suffered another measure against their lives. Thus, they had no other possibility and saw no other way out than obeying orders so as to counter this danger.'

From: Adalbert Rückerl, ed., NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Munich, 1977), p. 85.

As far as witnesses were concerned, the court stated that many of the accounts of Jewish victims were useless, since

1. Their recollections were frequently displaced because of the traumatic experiences in the camps or perhaps during later escapes – and because of the nearly 20 years since the horrors took place.
2. Witnesses living in especially Israel had met and exchanged recollections. Following such meetings, witnesses could frequently feel that they had experienced themselves what in reality they had only been told – and that they thus confused the experiences of others with those of their own.
3. The thirst for revenge, in order to get at least some of the guilty convicted, could influence the witnesses’ “eagerness”.

First and Second Treblinka Trial

The so-called First Treblinka Trial began on 12 October 1964 in Düsseldorf. Ten members of the camp personnel were accused of taking part in the extermination of Jews in the camp. More than 100 witnesses were called.

A total of 900,000 Jews were killed in Treblinka (although at this point the number was set to 700,000).

The 10 verdicts – pronounced on 3 September, 1965:

Other trials

Documentation centres

After World War II, centres, commissions and offices were established with the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to trial. They collect information, investigate crimes, pass on names of Nazis to their respective governments and take action against Nazi criminals in their own countries.

‘Zentrale Stelle Ludwigsburg’ is Germany’s documentation centre, which collects evidence for the prosecution of crimes committed during the nazi regime in the period 1933-1945.

Immediately after World War II, the provisional Polish government established the ‘Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland’. The main commission has since then investigated nazi crimes committed in Poland during World War II and these days exist under a different name, the 'Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation'.

In the United States, since 1979, the ‘Office of Special Investigations’ (OSI) investigates the background of immigrants in order to establish an “eventual” Nazi past. By December 1986 the OSI had forced 16 Nazi war criminals to leave the country.

The ‘Simon Wiesenthal Center’ in Vienna, founded by the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, is perhaps the most famous documentation centre. Since World War II, the centre has tracked down many Nazi war criminals.

Responsibility and guilt – teaching resource

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