[60] Conspiracy charges were especially central to the cases against propagandists and industrialists; the former were charged with providing the ideological justification for war and other crimes, while the latter were accused of economic mobilization without which no war would have been possible. It was the last thing Streicher was known to have written. Many were resistance fighters or political opponents. Another favorite was Alfred Jodl, former chief of the operations staff of the Army high command, who was found guilty and executed. He argued that he was being persecuted.. Number 5 was Albert Speer, Hitlers personal architect and confidant. [240] The IMT is one of the most well-studied trials in history, and it has also been the subject of an abundance of books and scholarly publications, along with motion pictures such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Memory of Justice (1976). The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials that occurred in post-World War II Germany to provide a platform for justice against accused Nazi war criminals. Most of the defendants had surrendered to the United States Army, but the Soviet Union also held a few top Nazis who were extradited for trial at Nuremberg. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Gring committed suicide before he could be executed. An anti-Semite to the end, and proclaiming that his death was a victory for world Jewry, Streichers final shouted words as he dropped through the trap door to his death were, This is the Purim Festival for 1946. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials . [123] The next week, the Soviet prosecution suddenly produced former field marshal Friedrich von Paulus, captured after the Battle of Stalingrad, as a witness and questioned him about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Upon arriving in the European Theater, Prestianni, a replacement, found himself in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division. Following the Second World War, many concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz were liberated. Procurement is quick and merely requires an . The authority of the International Military Tribunal to conduct these trials stemmed from the London Agreement of August 8, 1945. [63] Jackson also rewrote the indictment with the intent of keeping the proceedings under American control by separating out an overall conspiracy charge from the other three charges. [130] The defense presented evidence of Soviet responsibility,[131] and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict. Raeder kept to himself, voraciously reading and writing his memoirs, but when he interacted with the others, it was often to lash out in anger. [197] The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with the judgements themselves totaling 3,828 pages. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 24 of the most important political and military leaders of Nazi Germany. [120] Ultimately, the French prosecution was unable to convince the court that Germanization was a crime against humanity, and incidents such as the German annexation of AlsaceLorraine went unmentioned in the final verdict. However, some Russian guards who had perhaps the best reason to want to harshly punish the former German leaders in retaliation for previous atrocities and other crimes committed in the Soviet Union, were friendly and, even in some cases, considerate of the prisoners and American personnel.. Noticeable dislike existed between the prisoners and most of their Soviet guards. Immediately following the end of the IMT, the American military government held twelve more war crimes trials in Nuremberg. [132] The inclusion of Katyn in the charges undermined the credibility of Soviet evidence in general. Still others displayed docile and taciturn mannerisms and personalities. The tribunal consisted of a member plus an alternate selected by each of the four signatory countries. [85] The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents[40] and entered 4,600 into evidence,[87] along with 30 kilometres (19mi) of film and 25,000 photographs. Ten of themHans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur Seyss-Inquartwere hanged on October 16, 1946. [150] The judges barred most evidence on Allied misdeeds from being heard in court. I tried to treat each prisoner without rancor.. The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war), and (4) a common plan or conspiracy to commit the criminal acts listed in the first three counts. He argued that Germans needed Lebensraum (living space) and that they were looking only for land expansion. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler 's former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. 10 issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The note said, To a good man in remembrance of my going forth to death., Prestianni said, I have no idea why he gave it to me. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. These once powerful leaders of Nazi Germany were the accused of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Another, Hermann Goring, opted to commit . On October 15, 1946, guards and prisoners listened to the pounding of the gallows being constructed. Despite this precaution, such limited, semiamicable relationships did exist. When asked how the individual personalities, habits, and mannerisms differed, Prestianni responded that they were varied. Schacht had been imprisoned in July 1944, under suspicion of being part of an assassination conspiracy against Hitler. A huge crowd of soldiers stands at . [179], The exact sentences to be given each defendant were debated at length by the judges. [32] The trial was held under modified common law. Recently one of our readers in the US contacted us with a photo of a pair of sunglasses that were in a box in his grandfather's garage. jkeller, Aug 11, 2010 #16. macrusk Proud Daughter of a Canadian WWII Veteran. Their trial was held before an International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany. Nuremberg, Germany, November 1945. [6] The Soviet Union wanted to hold a show trial similar to the 1930s Moscow trials, in order to demonstrate the Nazi leaders' guilt and build a case for war reparations to rebuild the Soviet economy, which had been devastated by the war. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be an understanding between East and West. Most of the time the prison was dank, uncomfortably cold, and forbidding, especially during the winter months. He rarely talked, but when he did his speech was rambling. Did guards favor some prisoners over others? Batya. The only part of the French charges that were accepted by the judges was the deportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe. Later 19 other nations accepted the provisions of this agreement. During the months of imprisonment, the brisk gait of some of the prisoners gradually evolved into defeatist, head-bowed shuffling as acceptance of their fate gradually wore them down and eroded their will. Minister of Foreign Affairs (until 1938), then Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. Like the Nazis, he was afraid (rightly) that his "God" would kill him if he refused. [103], Much of the American case focused on the development of the Nazi conspiracy before the outbreak of war. When the needling did not abate and became somewhat annoying, Prestianni said he used to give the former World War I ace his own version of a little dig in return. [1] The defendants included some of the most famous Nazis, including Hermann Gring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel. Prompt medical attention was readily available to all prisoners. My mothers cousin was a WAC serving in England during WW2. He would just lie on his bed staring at the ceiling with expressionless, sunken eyes and fallow, sort of ashen, death-like skin. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. [182] Nikichenko released a dissent approved by Moscow that rejected all the acquittals, called for a death sentence for Hess, and convicted all the organizations. He remained bombastic and arrogant right up to the end, all the while looking upon the other prisoners as inferior beings., Ribbentrop, another of Prestiannis checker opponents, was vainglorious, almost constantly given to pompous bragging and considered stupid by the other prisoners. [124] Paulus incriminated his former associates, pointing to Keitel, Jodl, and Gring as the defendants most responsible for the war. [5] Soviet jurist Aron Trainin developed the concept of crimes against peace (waging aggressive war) which would later be central to the proceedings at Nuremberg. [6][7] Trainin's ideas were reprinted in the West and widely adopted. An accomplished horseman, Streicher continued to wear high leather boots and riding britches during his confinement. Emilio "Leo" DiPalma, a World War II veteran and a guard for some of the most notorious Nazi prisoners during the Nuremberg trials, died Wednesday along with several other veterans who. The Wiener Holocaust Library's holdings on war crime trials largely pertain to those crimes committed by the Nazis and their allies during the Second World War. The SA, the Reich Cabinet, and the General Staff and High Command were not ruled to be criminal organizations. Koch was later tried at Buchenwald and sentenced to life imprisonment. [192] Members of the SS were tried in the Pohl trial, which focused on members of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that oversaw SS economic activity, including the Nazi concentration camps;[193] the RuSHA trial of Nazi racial policies; and the Einsatzgruppen trial, in which members of the mobile killing squads were tried for the murder of more than one million people behind the Eastern Front. During his three-month tour of duty at Nuremberg prison, Prestianni was assigned to 16 different prisoners. He had been instrumental in establishing a totalitarian state. It was in my family until the early 2000s. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. [3] War losses in the Soviet Union alone included 27 million dead, mostly civilians, which was .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}17th of the prewar population. Adam Weishaupt, Abraham: The World's First Psychopath. The tribunal responded that such acts had been regarded as criminal prior to World War II. [49][48] The French government tried to appoint staff who were not tainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments were of those who had been in the French resistance. His daily diary notes culminated in a book after his release. In the prison cellblock, each single-occupant cell had two parallel heating pipes beneath a single, heavily scratched, plastic-covered window, the top half of which could be tilted open for limited ventilation. The verdict was drafted by British alternate judge Norman Birkett. Beginning on November 20, 1945, all sessions of the tribunal were held in Nrnberg under the presidency of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (later Baron Trevethin and Oaksey), the British member. Movement was extremely restricted and closely monitored, even for the guards. Others were deemed "unfit" for Nazi society: Jews, lesbians, sex workers or homeless women. Ten of them Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart were hanged on October 16, 1946. On October 1, 1946, the verdicts on 22 of the original 24 defendants were handed down for the Nrnberg trials. (November 1945) Sources: All photos copyright and courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The most infamous of the female prisoners during Prestiannis tour of duty was Ilse Koch, known to guards as the Bitch of Buchenwald. With her husband, Karl Koch, the camp commander, Ilse often rode a horse through the camp compound, whipping prisoners. [18], At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the exact form that the trial would take. The Nuremberg Trials After the war, the top surviving German leaders were tried for Nazi Germany's crimes, including the crimes of the Holocaust. Hitler's Minister of Economics; succeeded Schacht as head of the, Hitler's Deputy Fhrer until he flew to Scotland in 1941 in an attempt to broker peace with the United Kingdom. we went to Germany with and my younger brother was born there, dad remained un the Army until 1960, when he retired after 32 years service. The Nuremberg Trials: Table of Contents | Indictments | Defendants & Verdicts Click Left/Right to Scroll American guards maintain constant surveillance over Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg prison. [134] The second film included footage of the liberation of Majdanek and the liberation of Auschwitz and was considered even more disturbing than the American concentration camp film. That was enough. [234][235] Further developments in international criminal law in the aftermath of the trials included the Genocide Convention (1948) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). Twelve of the defendants would be sentenced to death. My father became an MP after the war. Four were convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years. Nuremberg was first and foremost theater to lay bare the crimes of the Nazi regime for the general public, and symbolically prosecute one leading member of the regime for a particular segment (the Army, the Navy, the SS, the Ministry of Propaganda etc). My mother gave the journal to my oldest brother who died in 1998. Read about WWII here. [48] The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and alternate Robert Falco, who had represented France at the London Conference. Sentenced to death, Reich Law Leader 193345 and Governor-General of the, Hitler's Minister of the Interior 193343 and. When I once asked him why he had done what he was convicted of doing, he replied that he only did what the Fatherland [Germany] instructed him to do. Three others were acquitted. The Ugly Truth About the Nuremberg Tribunals. We were given strict orders to have no contact whatsoever with these women, no conversation, no nothing and to stay well away from them, noted Prestianni. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) delivered its judgment against the Nazi leaders on September 30 and October 1, 1946. [83] The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors, as the latter was considered less reliable and more liable to accusations of bias, but at the expense of reducing public interest in the proceedings. [14][15] The exact form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. During the dead of winter, cell temperatures constantly hovered near freezing, partially due to severe coal shortages throughout most of Germany, and some prisoners were relegated to wearing stockings as gloves and wrapping their feet in underwear or any other available cloth to keep warm. [175][176], Four organizations were ruled to be criminal: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD, although some lower ranks and subgroups were excluded. These compelling first-person accounts of the Nuremberg trials were recorded by professional historians who interviewed 11 Americans participants, including prosecutors, journalists, security guards, and even the architect who designed the courtroom. All of those with whom I came in contact spoke flawless English, he remembered. The same routine was followed for each of the condemned prisoners. [111][112] The British case covered invasions, from that of Poland to that of the Soviet Union, which Shawcross covered in the second part of his speech;[113] these charges took three days to present, with Maxwell Fyfe detailing 15 treaties broken by Germany. Answer (1 of 5): None of the footage I have seen of the trials revealed anyone but American MPs. At the wars end, he was assigned to the guard detail at Nuremburg. [21] At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing international customary law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. [87] In France, some verdicts were met with outrage from the media and especially from organizations for deportees and resistance fighters, as they were perceived as too lenient. His name was Raymond J Arsenault. [159] During the closing statements, most defendants disappointed the judges by their lies and denial. This is a good documentary on the Nuremberg Trials that occurred after the end of the war. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. By early 1946, Western prosecutors were uneasy about the Katyn charge, although they never publicly rejected it for fear of casting the entire proceedings into question. The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.. [104] On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps. These parapets included watchtowers at the four corners equipped with telephones to contact or summon supervising sergeants or lieutenants, who were constantly on call to resolve problems that might develop. [127] Evidence was presented on the murder of children, attempts to cover up atrocities,[128] systematic plunder of occupied territories, and confiscation or destruction of cultural heritage. By creating an Aryan nation, the world would look up to and envy Germany for its racial purity.. Prestiannis assignment was over, and he was transferred to guard duty at a POW compound at Bamberg, Germany. He always was respectful, always the consummate gentleman. Speer was convicted and served 20 years in prison. Our database is searchable by subject and updated continuously. Only Speer occasionally tried to befriend him or penetrate his deep solitude with a few words of encouragement. [161][162], The International Military Tribunal agreed with the prosecution that aggression was the gravest charge against the accused, stating in its judgement that because war in general is evil, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. He served in that capacity for three months, bringing him in daily contact with 16 of the 22 accused war criminals. This wasnt authorized, but it was done on occasion, Prestianni smiled. No favoritism was shown nor was a selection offered. Gring enjoyed baiting his guards. [45] At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judges Francis Biddle and John Parker. Gerald lives in MN. Nuremberg Trials On November 20, 1945, six months after the surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces, twenty-one military, political, media, and business leaders of the Third Reich filed into the dock of the Palace of Justice in the devastated and occupied German city of Nuremberg. Streicher, sentenced to death, was perhaps the most despised prisoner of all due to his complete obsession with sex. But the Nuremberg Trials showed contempt for the only-obeying-orders position, and we hold it in contempt too.". Hildegard Lchert (AKA "Bloody Brigette" or "Beast") Hildegard Lchert was conscripted to join the Nazi women in 1942, at the age of 22. He often went for hours without speaking to anyone. [157] Over the course of the trial, crimes against humanity and especially against Jews (who were mentioned as victims of Nazi atrocities far more than any other group) came to upstage the aggressive war charge. It was eerie. List of Judges Francis Biddle (American) John J Parker (American) Edward Francis Carter (American) Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Lord Justice (British, President of the Tribunal) Sir Norman Birkett (British) Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (French) Robert Falco (French) Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet) The first session, under the presidency of Gen. I.T. The photograph shows some of the security measures taken at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Prestianni, the guard contingent, and supervisors under the command of Colonel B.C. [2] German aggression was accompanied by immense brutality in occupied areas and the systematic murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. 1 Feb 1946. After his release from prison in Nuremberg, a Stuttgart court sentenced him to eight years in a work camp. The Nrnberg trials were a series of trials held in Nrnberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946 following the end of World War II. These were 60 year old Emma Zimmer, nee Mezel, and 36 year old . Four were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years: Karl Dnitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. [167] The judges were aware that both the Allies and the Axis had planned or committed acts of aggression, writing the verdict carefully to avoid discrediting either the Allied governments or the tribunal. The prisons concrete walls, most of which were more than three feet thick, encased the solitary cell window that offered the prisoners no view of the outside world. The night Gring pulled that off on October 16, 1946, now that was quite a night, he recalled. [89] Because of the loose evidentiary rules, photographs, charts, maps, and films played an important role in making incredible crimes believable. He was made an MP after the war William A Shoemaker from North Carolina. In an attempt to further depersonalize them, prisoners were designated by numbers rather than by their familial surnames. Emilio DiPalma (right) stands on guard at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. [241][242], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}492716N 110254E / 49.45444N 11.04833E / 49.45444; 11.04833. An enduring mystery of the 1946 Nuremberg trials was apparently solved yesterday when an American former prison guard claimed it was he who, as an unwitting accomplice, passed to Hermann. Streicher, for reasons never made known, was photographed clothed and then naked and again in death. He was released in 1966. Uncover the topics related to the Nuremberg trials. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Whether the prisoners availed themselves of this privilege was by individual choice. [223], The International Military Tribunal, and the drafters of its charter, invented international criminal law essentially from nothing. I never treated him differently than I did the others I guarded.. The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations. Most certainly. Had been imprisoned since then. One spoon has a carving of a skeleton key on its handle, the other an engraving of N 19 P. I could never determine the significance of the latter carving. [208][209] Many Germans lumped criminal trials with denazification, internment, and confrontation with the concentration camps, as illegitimate victor's justice and the imposition of collective guilt. [227] The main legal criticisms of the trial focused on questions of retroactivity, selectivity, and jurisdiction. Ribbentrop was held in low esteem by others close to Hitler due to his perceived ineptness in many areas. Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (December 1946 - April 1949)
