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On October 18, 1945, the chief prosecutors lodged an indictment with the War Crimes Tribunal charging 24 individuals with variety of crimes and atrocities. This included the deliberate instigation of wars, extermination of racial and religious groups, murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the murder, mistreatment, and the deportation of slave labor of the inhabitants of countries occupied by Germany during the war. The men accused at the trial were the Nationalist Socialist leaders Hermann Going and Rudolf Hess, diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, the munitions maker Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Grand Admiral Erich Rather, and 18 other military leaders and civilian officials. Seven organizations that formed part of the basic structure of the Nazi government were also charged as criminal.
These organizations included the SS (Schutzstaffel "Defense Corps"), the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State Police"), the SA (Sturmabteilung, "Storm Troops"), and the General Staff and High Command of the German armed forces. The trial began on November 20, 1945. The evidence submitted by the prosecution consisted mostly of original military, diplomatic, and other government documents that fell into the hands of the Allied forces after the collapse of the German government. The judgment of the International Military Tribunal was handed down on September 30 -October 1, 1946.
One notable feature of the decision was the conclusion, in accordance with the London Agreement, that to plan or instigate an aggressive war is a crime under the principles of international law. The tribunal rejected the contention of the defense that such acts had not been previously defined as crimes under international law, and therefore the condemnation of the defendants would violate the principle of justice prohibiting ex post facto punishments. The defense also rejected the contention that the defendants were legally responsible for their acts because they performed the acts under the orders of superior authority, stating that "the true test... is not the existence of the order but whether moral choice (in executing it) was in fact possible. " The tribunal found overwhelming evidence of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terrorism by the German government in the territories occupied by its forces, with respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Millions of people were destroyed in concentration camps, many of, which were equipped with gas chambers for the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and members of other ethnic or religious groups. Under the slave-labor policy of the German government, at least 5 million people had been forcibly deported from their homes to Germany.
Many of these people died because of inhuman treatment. The tribunal also found that atrocities had been committed on a large scale and as a matter of official policy. The tribunal declared the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party, the SS, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, "Security Service"), and the Gestapo of the seven indicted organizations to be guilty of criminal actions. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, seven received prison terms ranging from ten years to life, and three, including the German politician and diplomat Franz von Papen and the president of the German Central Bank Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, were acquitted. Those who had been condemned to death were executed on October 16, 1946. Going committed suicide in prison a few hours before he was to be executed.
After the conclusion of the first Nuremberg trial, 12 more trials were held under the authority of Control Council Law No. 10, which closely resembled the London Agreement but provided the war crimes trials in each of the four zones of occupied Germany. About 185 individuals were indicted in the 12 cases. Those indicted included doctors who had conducted medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war, judges who had committed murder and other crimes under the guise of the judicial process, and industrialists who had participated in the looting of occupied countries and in the forced-labor program. Other persons indicted included SS officials, who had headed the concentration camps, administered the Nazi racial laws, and carried out the extermination of Jews and other groups in the eastern territories overrun by the German army; and high military and civilian officials who bore responsibility for these and other criminal acts and policies of the Third Reich. A number of doctors and SS leaders were condemned to death by hanging, and approximately 120 other defendants were given prison sentences of various durations; 35 defendants were acquitted.
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Research essay sample on Prisoners Of War Concentration Camps
