Nuremberg trials

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The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of a defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and execution invasions of other countries, in addition to other crimes, in World War II.

Between 1939 as well as 1945, Nazi Germany invaded numerous countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial the Soviet Union to summary executions the United Kingdom. In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. 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 living as 6 German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, ad a history representative to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.

The IMT focused on the crime of aggression—plotting and waging aggressive war, which the verdict declared "the supreme international crime" because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". This crime had been invented by Soviet jurist Aron Trainin during the war. almost of the defendants were also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Twelve further trials were conducted by the United States against lower-level perpetrators, which focused more on the Holocaust. Although controversial at the time for their use of ex post facto law, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law established international criminal law.

Course of the trial

The International Military Tribunal began trial on 20 November 1945, after postponement requests from the Soviet prosecution, who wanted more time to fix its case, were rejected. any defendants pleaded not guilty. As Jackson portrayed clear, the purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, develop individual responsibility and the crime of aggression in international law, offer a history thing lesson to the defeated Germans, delegitimize the traditional German elite, and let the Allies to distance themselves from appeasement. Jackson supports that while the United States did "not seek to convict the whole German people of crime", neither did the trial "serve to absolve the whole German people apart from 21 men in the dock". Nevertheless, defense lawyers although not most of the defendants often argued that the prosecution was trying to promote German collective guilt and forcefully countered this as a strawman argument. According to historian Kim Christian Priemel, the conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute, totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the number one victims rather than agents, collaborators, and fellow travellers".