The Nuremberg Trials, held in the German city from November 1945 to October 1946, were the first time in history that state leaders were put on trial for waging aggressive war and for crimes against humanity. They established the principle that "following orders" was not a defence for atrocities.
Why were the Nuremberg Trials held?
When the Second World War ended in Europe in May 1945, the Allied powers — Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union — faced a decision about what to do with the surviving leadership of the Nazi regime. Three options were seriously considered: summary execution without trial, exile, or formal criminal proceedings.
Winston Churchill initially favoured execution of the top Nazis without trial. The American position, strongly influenced by Secretary of War Henry Stimson and later by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (who became the chief American prosecutor), was that a proper trial was essential — both morally, because summary execution looked too much like the arbitrary killing the Allies were condemning, and strategically, because a trial would create a documented historical record that Nazi crimes had in fact occurred.
The city of Nuremberg was chosen deliberately. It had been the site of the Nazi Party's enormous annual rallies — the Nuremberg Rally — and had symbolic weight as a city associated with Nazi power and propaganda. Holding the trials there, in a courthouse that happened to have survived bombing relatively intact, sent a deliberate message.
What crimes were the defendants charged with?
The International Military Tribunal charged twenty-four major Nazi defendants (one, Robert Ley, died by suicide before the trial; another, Martin Bormann, was tried in absentia) with four counts:
| Count | Charge | What it covered |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace | Planning aggressive war |
| 2 | Crimes against peace | Waging aggressive war (invading other countries) |
| 3 | War crimes | Violations of the laws of war (killing prisoners, targeting civilians) |
| 4 | Crimes against humanity | Murder, enslavement, persecution and genocide of civilian populations |
Count 4 — crimes against humanity — was particularly significant. It was a new legal category created specifically for the Nuremberg context, responding to the reality that the Holocaust and Nazi persecution had been carried out under German law or by order of the German state. The concept was designed to establish that some acts are criminal regardless of whether they were legal under the state's own laws.
Who was put on trial and what were the verdicts?
The major trial ran from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946 and covered twenty-three defendants. Key figures included:
- Hermann Göring: Commander of the Luftwaffe; most prominent surviving Nazi leader. Found guilty on all four counts, sentenced to death. He died by suicide the night before his scheduled execution.
- Rudolf Hess: Hitler's deputy who had flown to Scotland in 1941 in a bizarre personal peace mission. Found guilty of counts 1 and 2; sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in Spandau Prison in 1987, aged ninety-three.
- Joachim von Ribbentrop: Foreign Minister. Found guilty on all four counts; executed.
- Albert Speer: Armaments Minister who used forced labour. Found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity; sentenced to twenty years. He was the defendant who most strategically distanced himself from knowledge of the Holocaust.
- Julius Streicher: Publisher of the violently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer. Found guilty of crimes against humanity; executed.
Three defendants were acquitted: Hans Fritzsche, Franz von Papen and Hjalmar Schacht. Twelve were sentenced to death, seven to imprisonment.
What was the "following orders" defence and why did it fail?
Many defendants argued that they had been following legal orders from their superior, Adolf Hitler, and could not be held personally responsible for the results. This "Befehl ist Befehl" (orders are orders) defence was rejected by the tribunal on grounds that have shaped international law ever since.
The tribunal established that there are acts so fundamentally criminal that no order can justify them. A soldier — or a minister, or an administrator — who participates in a crime against humanity cannot escape responsibility by pointing upward to the chain of command. The obligation to obey lawful orders does not extend to participating in mass murder.
This principle was subsequently codified in the Nuremberg Principles (1950), adopted by the United Nations, which form one of the foundations of modern international criminal law. The International Criminal Court (established 2002) applies principles directly descended from the Nuremberg judgements.
Were the trials fair? What are the criticisms?
The Nuremberg Trials have been criticised on legal and political grounds, and historians should acknowledge these while assessing whether the criticisms are decisive.
Victor's justice: the four Allied powers who ran the tribunal were themselves parties to the conflict and were not neutral. Soviet judges participated despite the Soviet Union having invaded Poland in 1939 in a pact with Nazi Germany, and despite Soviet war crimes including the Katyn massacre (the murder of around 22,000 Polish officers, which the Soviet Union falsely blamed on Nazi Germany during the trial). The Allies were not tried for anything.
Retroactive law: "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity" as legal categories did not exist in international law before 1945. Defendants argued that they could not be tried for acts that were not criminal under the law at the time they were committed. The tribunal dismissed this argument, but it remains a genuine legal concern.
Historical significance outweighs procedural imperfections: the strongest counter-argument is that imperfect justice was better than no justice and better than summary execution, and that the documented evidence of Nazi crimes created by the trial provided an irrefutable historical record that has resisted denial and revisionism more effectively than any other form of post-war reckoning.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to the defendants who were found guilty?
Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, executed at Nuremberg on 16 October 1946. Seven received prison sentences ranging from ten years to life. Three were acquitted. The executed included von Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, and Seyss-Inquart. Hermann Göring was sentenced to death but died by suicide hours before his scheduled execution, having somehow obtained a cyanide capsule.
What were the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials"?
After the main International Military Tribunal concluded in 1946, American authorities conducted twelve additional trials — the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (1946–49) — covering doctors who conducted medical experiments on prisoners, judges who applied Nazi law, industrialists who used slave labour, SS commanders and others. These trials produced the Nuremberg Code (1947), a set of principles for ethical medical research that remains foundational in medical ethics today.
How did the Nuremberg Trials affect international law?
The Nuremberg Trials directly shaped modern international criminal law. The concept of crimes against humanity, the rejection of the "following orders" defence, the principle that individuals (not just states) can be criminally responsible under international law — all originated or were decisively developed at Nuremberg. The International Criminal Court, the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s, and international conventions against genocide all build on the Nuremberg foundation.
Why was Albert Speer's case controversial?
Albert Speer, Hitler's Armaments Minister, managed the economic exploitation of millions of forced labourers from occupied countries. At Nuremberg he positioned himself as the "good Nazi" — a technocrat who claimed ignorance of the Holocaust and professed opposition to Hitler's final destructive orders. He received a twenty-year sentence rather than death. Post-trial scholarship — particularly work by Matthias Schmidt — has shown that Speer knew considerably more about the Holocaust than he claimed, and that his "ignorance" defence was carefully constructed. His case is a significant example of how the management of personal narrative in a legal setting can produce outcomes that later historical research substantially revises.
Want Professor Harari to help you evaluate the Nuremberg transcripts as primary sources and argue whether the trials were just or a form of victor's justice? Add the AI Tutors connector at aitutors.me.