A Look Back At Nuremberg

About the Indictments
In early October 1945, the four prosecuting nations -- the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia -- issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations. The individual defendants were charged not only with the systematic murder of millions of people, but also with planning and carrying out the war in Europe.

About the Defendants
On November 20, 1945, 21 Nazi defendants filed into the dock at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg to stand trial for war crimes. The 22nd defendant, Martin Bormann, was believed to be dead.

Who was Who at Nuremberg
An index of the major participants at the trial, including defendants, attorneys, judges and witnesses.

The Creation of the Tribunal and the Law Behind It
Background on the theory and history behind the creation of the tribunal and a look at some of the major differences between the American system of justice and that used at Nuremberg.

Interview with Drexel Sprecher
Court TV News Editor Jim Lyons recently interviewed former American Nuremberg prosecutor Drexel Sprecher at his home in suburban Washington, D.C. Sprecher led the U.S. prosecution of Nuremberg defendants Hans Fritzsche and Baldur von Schirach. After the Nuremberg trials, Sprecher went on to become vice chairman of the Democratic Party.

The Legacy of the Trial
What are war crimes and crimes against humanity? What can the rest of the world do when a government brutalizes its people? Here is some background on the trial that has become a milestone in international law.

The Transcripts

The following transcripts were generously provided by Aristarchus Knowledge Industries, the first publisher to electronically store the more than 126,000 pages of the historic proceedings on CD-ROM. Aristarchus Knowledge Industries is a Seattle-based producer of online and CD-ROM databases and reference books. Major products include the Asia Pacific Database (available from Knight-Ridder Information Services' online services), Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Online, Women Worldwide Database, and Electrons, Lobbies & PACs Database (all three available on CD-ROM and from Library Corp.'s Nlightn online service). Contact Aristarchus at P.O. Box 45610, Seattle, WA, 98105.

Some of these transcripts have also been provided in a compressed (zipped) format for faster downloading. You will need an unzipping utility to use the compressed versions of these files.

The Indictments and the Entering of Pleas
Hermann Goering, Albert Speer and other top Nazi leaders listened from the Nuremberg courtroom prisoners' dock on Nov. 21, 1945 as their indictments were read. About eight months earlier, most of them were still under Adolph Hitler's command.

Prosecutors said the defendants carried out Nazi master race policies under the belief that Germans were accordingly entitled to subjugate, dominate, or exterminate other races and peoples.

After listening to prosecutors read a long list of atrocities in slave labor factories and concentration camps, each defendant pled not guilty to charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Download a compressed version.

Robert Jackson's Opening Speech
In this opening speech, the chief U.S. prosecutor promised that a paper trail of official documents would prove the Nazis wreaked wanton violence at unprecedented levels, systematically murdering and enslaving millions of people. Although the accused tried to hide their atrocities at the end of the war, they "shared a Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper." Download a compressed version.

Jackson, a justice on leave from the U.S. Supreme Court, argued for the legitimacy and need for this trial, saying, "the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

Sir Hartley Shawcross's Opening Speech
In this opening speech, the chief British prosecutor described the Nazis' gross disregard of international treaties and their intention of worldwide conquest. He quoted Adolf Hitler saying, "I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war, never mind whether it be true or not. The victor shall not be asked later on whether he told the truth or not."

The task for Nuremberg prosecutors would be two-part, Shawcross said. "The first is to demonstrate the nature and the basis of the crime against peace, which is constituted under the Charter of this Tribunal, by waging wars of aggression and in violation of treaties; and the second is to establish beyond all possibility of doubt that such wars were waged by these defendants." Download a compressed version.

SS General Otto Ohlendorf
Testifying for the prosecution, SS General Otto Ohlendorf said that as the head of "Einsatzgruppe D" he led a 500-man division that "liquidated" 90,000 people, primarily Jews, between June 1941 and June 1942. Men, women and children were taken from their homes, stripped, lined up at the edge of a tank ditch and shot by firing squad. Victims would fall into a ditch, which would be plowed over to form a mass grave.

German troops complained about shooting women and children, the 38-year-old Ohlendorf testified. In reaction, Nazi commanders ordered only the men to be shot. The women and children, in groups of 15 to 25, were gassed to death in special vans on the way to the grave sites.

Ohlendorf, considered too minor a figure to be tried at the initial trials, was convicted of war crimes in 1951 and hanged along with three other Einsatzgruppen commanders.

The American Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering
The following is the cross-examination by chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson of Hermann Goering, the man Adolf Hitler named as his successor. Though Hitler had called for Goering's arrest in the final days of the war, Goering was unapologetic, comparing the Germany's treatment of the Jews with the United States' treatment of Native Americans. When asked if it was true that the Nazis abolished democracy when they came to power, Goering said, "We found it no longer necessary." Download a compressed version.

The British Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering
British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe reportedly regarded Hermann Goering as one of the most difficult witnesses he ever examined. Download a compressed version.

The Auschwitz Commandant
Rudolf Hoess wrote poetry about the beauty of Auschwitz, the concentration camp he commanded. At peak efficiency the camp had the capacity to "get rid of ten thousand people in 24 hours," he testified in this cross-examination. By the end of the war, the camp accounted for more than two million deaths, according to German estimates. Hoess was taken to Nuremberg too late to be included in the prosecution's case. He was called to testify in the defense of SS officer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. In 1947, Hoess was hanged at Auschwitz by Polish authorities. Download a compressed version.

The Katyn Forest Massacre
Sometime after 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union attacked and divided Poland, 11,000 Polish soldiers disappeared. Soviet prosecutors claimed the Nazis were responsible. The Nazis said they found the soldiers' unmarked graves in Poland's Katyn forest after they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

In this testimony, German and Soviet experts contradict each other as to when the deaths occurred. More than four decades later, following Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "Glasnost" policy, the Soviet Union released documents indicating that it was responsible for the Katyn massacre. Download a compressed version.

Albert Speer: Hitler's Architect
Adolf Hitler considered Albert Speer a fellow artist and friend. When Speer completed construction on the Reich Chancellery, Hitler gave him a watercolor portrait of a church that Hitler had painted in 1909 while studying art in Vienna. In 1942, at Hitler's urging, Speer became Germany's armaments chief, controlling a vast work force of slave laborers. Download a compressed version.

Robert Jackson's Closing Speech
In this landmark in international law, Robert Jackson, the Chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, makes his final speech of the trial. To answer the defendants who claimed that Hitler's plans were unknown to them, Jackson said, "The plans of Adolf Hitler for aggression were just as secret as Mein Kampf (Hitler's political manifesto), of which over six million copies were published in Germany." Download a compressed version.