Nuremberg

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Nuremberg

• Should leaders of one nation be able to put the
  leaders of other nations on trial?
• Should a person that agitates a group to action
  be responsible for that action?
• Are nations responsible for the care of POW?
• Should a soldier always obey orders? Duty over
  conscience.
• Should a person be tried for breaking a law that
  didnt exist at the time it was broken?
• Should citizens be held accountable for the
  actions of their government?

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Nuremberg Trial 1945

• Why Nuremberg?
• Held in the Palace of Justice site of numerous
  Nazi rallies.
• Symbolic - This is where it started, and this is
  where it would end.

Aerial view of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice,
where the International Military Tribunal tried
22 leading German officials for war crimes.
Nuremberg, November 1945.
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Nuremberg

• Purpose of the Trial
• Leaders of nations that engage in unjustified
  warfare should be brought to justice.
• International Military Tribunal

The defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left
to right Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim
von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst
Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank,
Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk,
Hjalmar Schacht. Back row from left to right
Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach,
Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin
van Neurath, Hans Fritzsche.
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Nuremberg

• What were the charges?
• Count One Conspiracy to Seize Power-overthrow of
  government.
• Count Two Waging Aggressive War, or "Crimes
  Against Peace"
• Including the planning, preparation,
  initiation, and waging of wars of aggression,
  which were also wars in violation of
  international treaties, agreements, and
  assurances.
• 3. Count Three War Crimes
• These were the more traditional violations of
  the law of war including treatment of prisoners
  of war, slave labor.
• 4. Count Four Crimes Against Humanity
• This count involved the actions in concentration
  camps and other death rampages.(genocide)

Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the
United States at the Nuremberg Trials
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Nuremberg

• The Evidence
• Cremating, freezing, and torturing human beings.
• Intentionally spreading infectious diseases to
  prisoners.
• Shooting women and children.
• The most dramatic was showing the film of the
  atrocities.

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Nuremberg

• The Defense
• Pleads not guilty
• Hans Frank I say yes we have fought against
  Jewry, we have fought against them for years. A
  thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany
  will not be erased.
• Several key figures not brought to trial
• A. Hitler
• B. Goebbels
• C. Martin Bormann tried in absentia
• 4. What could possibly be their arguments?

Ernst Kaltenbrummer pleading "not guilty" to the
charges against him during the Nuremberg War
Crimes Trials
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Nuremberg Defense

• Only following orders
• They would have been killed if they would have
  disobeyed these orders.
• Insanity
• Ex Post Facto charged with crimes that did not
  exist at the time. Ex. Genocide
• War anything goes. No different than what the
  U.S. did at Hiroshima, and Britain at Dresden.
  Herman Goering defendant

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Dresden February 1945

• RAF conducts massive bombing raid of Dresden
• City is hit with a firestorm of incendiary bombs
• 35,000 or more killed, mainly civilian
• Even Churchill questions bombing used as a method
  of terror without military objectives
• Kurt Vonnegut uses as the setting for his novel
  Slaughterhouse Five

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The World contains evil. There will Always be
plenty of evil. And therell Always be wars.
Because human Beings are aggressive animals.
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All that is necessary for evil to succeed is
that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke