The influence of the nuremberg trials

Origin[ edit ] There were, I suppose, three possible courses:

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Prosecutor, addresses the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg No trial provides a better basis for understanding the nature and causes of evil than do the Nuremberg trials from to Those who come to the trials expecting to find sadistic monsters are generally disappointed.

Years later, reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt wrote of "the banality of evil. Rather, they over-identified with an ideological cause and suffered from a lack of imagination or empathy: Twelve trials, involving over a hundred defendants and several different courts, took place in Nuremberg from to By far the most attention--not surprisingly, given the figures involved--has focused on the first Nuremberg trial of twenty-one major war criminals.

Several of the eleven subsequent Nuremberg trials, however, involved conduct no less troubling--and issues at least as interesting--as the Major War Criminals Trial. For example, the trial of sixteen German judges and officials of the Reich Ministry The Justice Trial considered the criminal responsibility of judges who enforce immoral laws.

Other subsequent trials, such as the Doctors Trial and the Einsatzgruppen Trialare especially compelling because of the horrific events described by prosecution witnesses.

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These three subsequent trials each receive separate coverage elsewhere in this website. Inwhen eventual victory over the Axis powers seemed likely, President Franklin Roosevelt asked the War Department to devise a plan for bringing war criminals to justice.

Before the War Department could come up with a plan, however, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau sent his own ideas on the subject to the President's desk. Morgenthau's eye-for-an-eye proposal suggested summarily shooting many prominent Nazi leaders at the time of capture and banishing others to far off corners of the world.

The Treasury Secretary's aim was to destroy Germany's remaining industrial base and turn Germany into a weak, agricultural country.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson saw things differently than Morgenthau. The counter-proposal Stimson endorsed, drafted primarily by Colonel Murray Bernays of the Special Projects Branch, would try responsible Nazi leaders in court.

The War Department plan labeled atrocities and waging a war of aggression as war crimes. Moreover, it proposed treating the Nazi regime as a criminal conspiracy.

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Roosevelt eventually chose to support the War Department's plan. Other Allied leaders had their own ideas, however. Churchill reportedly told Stalin that he favored execution of captured Nazi leaders.

Stalin answered, "In the Soviet Union, we never execute anyone without a trial.

The Legacy of Nuremberg, 70 Years On - UConn Today

We should give them a trial first. Rosenman asked Jackson, on behalf of President Truman, to become the chief prosecutor for the United States at a war-crimes trial to be held in Europe soon after the war ended.

Truman wanted a respected figure, a man of unquestioned integrity, and a first-rate public speaker, to represent the United States. Justice Jackson, Rosenman said, was that person. Three days later, Jackson accepted.

On May 2, Harry Truman formally appointed him chief prosecutor. But prosecutor of whom, and under what authority? Many questions remained unanswered.

Nuremberg Trials - HISTORY

Several Nazi leaders would escape trial and punishment. Two days before Jackson's appointment, in a bunker twenty feet below the Berlin sewer system, Adolf Hitler shot himself. Soon thereafter, Heinrich Himmler--perhaps the most terrifying figure in the Nazi regime--took a cyanide crystal while being examined by a British doctor and died within minutes.Nuremberg trials left a lasting legacy November 20 marks the 65th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, in which 22 prominent leaders of Nazi Germany were brought to justice by the International Military Tribunal.

The Nuremberg trials also influenced the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva conventions on the laws of war, all signed shortly after the war. The strongest impact should have been on the development of international criminal law, but this was largely frozen out by the Cold War.

The influence which Nuremberg and to a certain extent the Tokyo trials had upon the formulation and conception of such a declaration cannot be understated. Nuremberg had for the first time in international law traced a definite distinction between jus ad bello a doctrine concerned exclusively on the conduct in warfare, and jus ad bellum, which concerns itself with the justice or legality of the waging of war.

The blog Nuremberg at 70 was also established by the staff of the Dodd Research Center to address various aspects of the trials. Soon after the dedication of the Dodd Research Center, UConn designated human rights as a University priority and, in , the Human Rights Institute was established.

Jan 29,  · Additionally, Nuremberg had been the site of annual Nazi propaganda rallies; holding the postwar trials there marked the symbolic end of Hitler’s government, the Third Reich. The Major War Criminals’ Trial: The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20, , to October 1, The Nuremberg trials were a series of trials held between and in which the Allies prosecuted German military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and financiers for crimes they had committed during world war ii.