Nuremburg Trial Collection

Held for the purpose of bringing accused Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of thirteen trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers along with German industrialists, lawyers, and doctors, were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

In December 1942, the Allied leaders of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union "issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European Jewry and resolving to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilian populations." A group of four powers (France, Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States) eventually established the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials with the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), issued on August 8, 1945. Among other things, the charter defined three categories of crimes: crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting, or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements), war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war), and crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds). It was determined that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes. The city of Nuremberg (also known as Nurnberg) in the German state of Bavaria was selected as the location for the trials, at the Palace of Justice.

The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946. The format of the trial was a mix of legal traditions: There were prosecutors and defense attorneys according to British and American law, but the decisions and sentences were imposed by a tribunal (panel of judges) rather than a single judge and a jury. The chief American prosecutor was Robert H. Jackson, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied powers supplied two judges--a main judge and an alternate.

Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminal. As the accused men and judges spoke four different languages, the trial saw the introduction of a new technology, instantaneous translation. IBM provided the technology and recruited men and women from international telephone exchanges to provide on-the-spot translations through headphones in English, French, German and Russian. The international tribunal found all but three of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were given prison sentences ranging from ten years to life behind bars.

Following the Trial of Major War Criminals, there were twelve additional trials held at Nuremberg. These proceedings, lasting from December 1946 to April 1949, are grouped together as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. They differed from the first trial in that they were conducted before U.S. military tribunals rather than the international tribunal that decided the fate of the major Nazi leaders. The reason for the change was that growing differences among the four Allied powers had made other joint trials impossible. The subsequent trials were held in the same location at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.

Historical information taken from: http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials