The constant gardener
Nuremberg Trials
Adrian Jones,
McMaster University
Nuremberg, Germany was the site of the trials of major German war criminals after World War II by the International Military
Tribunal (IMT). The Charter of the IMT was formally enacted by the main Allied Governments
— the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. The Charter recognized
the principle of individual responsibility for three crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity. All of the judges and prosecutors were appointed by the Allies. These included Justice Robert Jackson of
the U.S. Supreme Court, who served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg.
Practical considerations limited the number of defendants who could be tried. Also, several top Nazi officials had
not survived the war, including Adolph Hitler who had committed suicide. The final list of twenty-two defendants
included those remaining amongst the most senior ranks of the Nazi apparatus. These included Herman Goering, Chief
of the Air Force, President of the Reichstag, and Director of the Four-Year Plan to
eliminate Jews from political life in Germany and for the destruction and takeover of Jewish businesses and
property. Other particularly notable defendants included Rudolph Hess, Deputy to the Fuhrer and Nazi Party Leader,
and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister. Twenty-one of twenty-two defendants were found guilty. Goering
was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide in his cell. Ten others, including von Ribbentrop, were
put to death by hanging. The rest, including Hess, were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from ten years
to life.
The IMT's Charter and judgments were adopted as the Nuremberg Principles by
the United Nations International Law Commission. These re-affirmed the principle of individual criminal
responsibility under international law (Principle I). International law must be adhered to notwithstanding any
conflicting national law (Principle II), whether or not the individual is a government or military official
(Principle III), and irrespective of whether the individual acts pursuant to superior orders, provided a "moral
choice" was available to that person (Principle IV). In 1948, a separate tribunal was established in Tokyo, Japan
for war criminals in the Far East, but its legacy is less pronounced as it succeeded the Nuremberg proceedings and
essentially followed those earlier judicial pronouncements.
The Nuremberg proceedings significantly altered the contours of international law and had significant implications
for the autonomy and well-being of individuals. They catalyzed the emergence and evolution of international human
rights law and international humanitarian law protections, and the related ideas of human security and global
citizenship which enshrine the common bonds uniting all of humanity. Conversely, collective autonomy in the form of
state sovereignty was circumscribed, such that atrocities committed against a state's own citizens became a proper
subject of global concern. A permanent international criminal tribunal was contemplated after Nuremberg, but the
Cold War stymied such efforts until the final establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998.
Suggested Readings:
Avalon Project at Yale Law School website.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials,
www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm (accessed 2 March 2005).
Brackman, Arnold C. 1987.
The other Nuremberg: The untold story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. New York:
Morrow.
Ratner, Steven R. and Jason S. Abrams. 2001.
Accountability for human rights atrocities in international law: Beyond the Nuremberg legacy. 2nd ed.
New York:
Oxford University Press.
Sands, Philippe. ed. 2003.
From Nuremberg to The Hague: The future of international criminal justice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.