Nuremberg trials. Tribunal verdict

On November 20, 1945 at 10.00 in the small German town of Nuremberg, an international trial opened in the case of the main Nazi war criminals of the European countries of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis. This city was not chosen by chance: for many years it was a citadel of fascism, an involuntary witness to the congresses of the National Socialist Party and parades of its assault troops. The Nuremberg trials were carried out by the International Military Tribunal (IMT), created on the basis of the London Agreement of August 8, 1945 between the governments of the leading allied states - the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France, which was joined by 19 other countries - members of the Anti-Hitler coalition. The basis of the agreement was the provisions of the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943 on the responsibility of the Nazis for the atrocities committed, which was signed by the leaders of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain.

The building of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, where the Nuremberg trials took place

The establishment of a military tribunal with international status became possible largely thanks to the creation at a conference in San Francisco (April-June 1945) of the United Nations - a world security organization that united all peace-loving states, which together put up a worthy rebuff to fascist aggression. The Tribunal was established in the interests of all member countries of the United Nations, which, after the end of the bloodiest of wars, set as their main goal “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war: and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.” This is stated in the UN Charter. At that historical stage, immediately after the end of the Second World War, for these purposes it was extremely necessary to publicly recognize the Nazi regime and its main leaders as guilty of unleashing an aggressive war against almost all of humanity, which brought it monstrous grief and untold suffering. To officially condemn Nazism and outlaw it meant putting an end to one of the threats that could potentially lead to a new world war in the future. In his opening speech at the first sitting of the court, the presiding judge, Lord Justice J. Lawrence (IMT member for the UK), emphasized the uniqueness of the process and its “social significance for millions of people around the globe.” That is why the members of the international court had a huge responsibility. They were to "discharge their duties honestly and conscientiously, without any connivance, in accordance with the sacred principles of law and justice."

The organization and jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal were determined by its Charter, which formed an integral part of the London Agreement of 1945. According to the Charter, the tribunal had the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries individually or as members of an organization, committed crimes against peace, military crimes and crimes against humanity. The IMT included judges - representatives from the four founding states (one from each country), their deputies and chief prosecutors. The following were appointed to the Committee of Chief Prosecutors: from the USSR - R.A. Rudenko, from the USA - Robert H. Jackson, from Great Britain - H. Shawcross, from France - F. de Menton, and then C. de Ribes. The Committee was entrusted with the investigation of the main Nazi criminals and their prosecution. The process was built on a combination of procedural orders of all states represented in the tribunal. Decisions were made by majority vote.

In the courtroom

Almost the entire ruling elite of the Third Reich was in the dock - senior military and government officials, diplomats, major bankers and industrialists: G. Goering, R. Hess, J. von Ribbentrop, W. Keitel, E. Kaltenbrunner, A. Rosenberg, H. Frank, W. Frick, J. Streicher, W. Funk, C. Dönitz, E. Raeder, B. von Schirach, F. Sauckel, A. Jodl, A. Seys-Inquart, A. Speer, K. von Neurath , H. Fritsche, J. Schacht, R. Ley (hanged himself in his cell before the start of the trial), G. Krupp (was declared terminally ill, his case was suspended), M. Bormann (tried in absentia, because he disappeared and did not was found) and F. von Papen. The only people missing from the courtroom were the most senior leaders of Nazism - Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler, who committed suicide during the storming of Berlin by the Red Army. The accused were participants in all major domestic and foreign political, as well as military events since Hitler came to power. Therefore, according to the French publicist R. Cartier, who was present at the trial and wrote the book “Secrets of War. Based on the materials of the Nuremberg trials,” “their trial was a trial of the regime as a whole, of an entire era, of the entire country.”

The main prosecutor from the USSR at the Nuremberg trials R.A. Rudenko

The International Military Tribunal also considered the issue of recognizing as criminal the leadership of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP), its assault (SA) and security detachments (SS), the security service (SD) and the state secret police (Gestapo), as well as the government cabinet, the General Staff and the High Command (OKW) of Nazi Germany. All crimes committed by the Nazis during the war were divided in accordance with the Charter of the International Military Tribunal into crimes:

Against peace (planning, preparing, initiating or waging a war of aggression or war in violation of international treaties);

War crimes (violations of the laws or customs of war: murder, torture or enslavement of civilians; murder or torture of prisoners of war; robbery of state, public or private property; destruction or looting of cultural property; wanton destruction of cities or villages);

Crimes against humanity (destruction of Slavic and other peoples; creation of secret points for the destruction of civilians; killing of the mentally ill).

The International Military Tribunal, which sat for almost a year, did a colossal job. During the trial, 403 open court hearings were held, 116 witnesses were questioned, over 300 thousand written testimonies and about 3 thousand documents were considered, including photo and film accusations (mainly official documents of German ministries and departments, the Wehrmacht High Command, the General Staff, military concerns and banks, materials from personal archives). If Germany had won the war, or if the end of the war had not been so swift and crushing, then all of these documents (many classified as “Top Secret”) would most likely have been destroyed or hidden forever from the world community. Numerous witnesses who testified during the trial, according to R. Cartier, were not limited to just facts, but covered and commented on them in detail, “bringing new shades, colors and the spirit of the era itself.” In the hands of judges and prosecutors there was indisputable evidence of the criminal intentions and bloody atrocities of the Nazis. Wide publicity and openness became one of the main principles of the international process: more than 60 thousand passes were issued to be present in the courtroom, sessions were conducted simultaneously in four languages, the press and radio were represented by about 250 journalists from different countries.

The numerous crimes of the Nazis and their accomplices, revealed and made public during the Nuremberg trials, are truly amazing. Everything that could be invented that was beyond cruel, inhumane and inhumane was included in the arsenal of the fascists. Here we should mention barbaric methods of warfare, cruel treatment of prisoners of war, grossly violating all international conventions previously adopted in these areas, the enslavement of the population of occupied territories, the deliberate destruction of entire cities and villages from the face of the earth, and sophisticated technologies of mass destruction. . The world was shocked by the facts voiced during the trial about savage experiments on people, about the massive use of special killing drugs “Cyclone A” and “Cyclone B”, about the so-called gas gas vans, gas “baths”, powerful cremation furnaces working non-stop day and night. Nazi subhumans, cynically considering themselves the only chosen nation that has the right to decide the destinies of other peoples, created an entire “industry of death.” The death camp at Auschwitz, for example, was designed to exterminate 30 thousand people per day, Treblinka - 25 thousand, Sobibur - 22 thousand, etc. In total, 18 million people passed through the system of concentration and death camps, about 11 million of whom were brutally exterminated.

Nazi criminals in the dock

Accusations of the incompetence of the Nuremberg trials, which arose years after its end among Western revisionist historians, some lawyers and neo-Nazis and boiled down to the fact that it was allegedly not a fair trial, but a “quick execution” and “revenge” of the victors, at least insolvent. All defendants were handed an Indictment on October 18, 1945, that is, more than a month before the start of the trial, so that they could prepare for their defense. Thus, the fundamental rights of the accused were respected. The world press, commenting on the Indictment, noted that this document was drawn up on behalf of the “offended conscience of humanity”, that this is not “an act of revenge, but a triumph of justice”; not only the leaders of Nazi Germany, but also the entire system of fascism will appear before the court. It was an extremely fair trial of the peoples of the world.

J. von Ribbentrop, B. von Schirach, W. Keitel, F. Sauckel in the dock

The defendants were given a wide opportunity to defend themselves against the charges brought against them: they all had lawyers, they were provided with copies of all documentary evidence in German, assistance was provided in finding and obtaining the necessary documents, and delivering witnesses whom the defense considered necessary to call. However, the accused and their lawyers from the very beginning of the trial set out to prove the legal inconsistency of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. In an effort to avoid inevitable punishment, they tried to shift all responsibility for the crimes committed exclusively to Adolf Hitler, the SS and the Gestapo, and made counter-accusations against the founding states of the tribunal. It is characteristic and significant that not one of them had the slightest doubt about their complete innocence.

G. Goering and R. Hess in the dock

After painstaking and scrupulous work that lasted almost a year, on September 30 - October 1, 1946, the verdict of the international court was announced. It analyzed the basic principles of international law violated by Nazi Germany, the arguments of the parties, and gave a picture of the criminal activities of the fascist state for more than 12 years of its existence. The International Military Tribunal found all the defendants (with the exception of Schacht, Fritsche and von Papen) guilty of conspiracy to prepare and wage aggressive wars, as well as of committing countless war crimes and the gravest atrocities against humanity. 12 Nazi criminals were sentenced to death by hanging: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streichel, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia). The rest received various prison sentences: Hess, Funk, Raeder - for life, Schirach and Speer - 20 years, Neurath - 15 years, Doenitz - 10 years.

The representative of the prosecution from France speaks

The Tribunal also found the leadership of the National Socialist Party, SS, SD and Gestapo criminal. Thus, even the verdict, according to which only 11 of the 21 defendants were sentenced to death, and three were acquitted, clearly showed that justice was not formal and nothing was predetermined. At the same time, a member of the international court from the USSR - the country that suffered the most at the hands of Nazi criminals, Major General of Justice I.T. Nikitchenko, in a Dissenting Opinion, stated the disagreement of the Soviet side of the court with the acquittal of the three defendants. He spoke out for the death penalty against R. Hess, and also expressed disagreement with the decision not to recognize the Nazi government, the High Command, the General Staff and the SA as criminal organizations.

The convicts' petitions for clemency were rejected by the Control Council for Germany, and on the night of October 16, 1946, the death penalty was carried out (shortly before this, Goering committed suicide).

Following the largest and longest international trial in history in Nuremberg, 12 more trials took place in the city until 1949, which examined the crimes of more than 180 Nazi leaders. Most of them also suffered a well-deserved punishment. Military tribunals, which took place after the end of World War II in Europe and in other cities and countries, convicted a total of more than 30 thousand Nazi criminals. However, many Nazis responsible for committing brutal crimes unfortunately managed to escape justice. But their search did not stop, but continued: the UN made an important decision not to take into account the statute of limitations for Nazi criminals. Thus, in the 1960s and 1970s alone, dozens and hundreds of Nazis were found, arrested and convicted. Based on the materials of the Nuremberg trials, E. Koch (in Poland) and A. Eichmann (in Israel) were brought to trial and sentenced to death in 1959.

It is important to emphasize that the goal of the international process in Nuremberg was to condemn the Nazi leaders - the main ideological inspirers and leaders of unjustifiably cruel actions and bloody atrocities, and not the entire German people. In this regard, the British representative at the trial stated in his closing speech: “I repeat again that we do not seek to blame the people of Germany. Our goal is to protect him and give him the opportunity to rehabilitate himself and win the respect and friendship of the whole world. But how can this be done if we leave in his midst unpunished and unconvicted these elements of Nazism, who are mainly responsible for tyranny and crimes and who, as the tribunal can believe, cannot be converted to the path of freedom and justice? As for the military leaders, in the opinion of some, who were simply fulfilling their military duty, unquestioningly following the orders of the political leadership of Germany, it is necessary to emphasize here that the tribunal condemned not just “disciplined warriors,” but people who considered “war a form of existence” and who never learned “lessons from the experience of defeat in one of them.”

To the question asked by the accused at the very beginning of the Nuremberg trials: “Do you plead guilty?”, all the accused, as one, answered in the negative. But even after almost a year - time quite sufficient to rethink and reassess their actions - they have not changed their opinion.

“I do not recognize the decision of this court: I continue to be faithful to our Fuhrer,” Goering said in his last word at the trial. “We’ll wait twenty years. Germany will rise again. Whatever sentence this court may give me, I will be found innocent before the face of Christ. I am ready to repeat everything again, even if it means that I will be burned alive,” these words belong to R. Hess. A minute before the execution, Streichel exclaimed: “Heil Hitler! With God blessing!". Jodl echoed him: “I salute you, my Germany!”

During the trial, militant German militarism, which was “the core of the Nazi party as well as the core of the armed forces,” was also condemned. Moreover, it is important to understand that the concept of “militarism” is by no means connected with the military profession. This is a phenomenon that, with the Nazis coming to power, permeated the entire German society, all spheres of its activity - political, military, social, economic. Militarist-minded German leaders preached and practiced the dictatorship of armed force. They themselves enjoyed the war and sought to instill the same attitude in their “flock.” Moreover, the need to counteract evil, also with the help of weapons, on the part of the peoples who became the target of aggression, could ricochet back at them.

In his closing speech at the trial, the US representative stated: “Militarism inevitably leads to a cynical and evil disregard for the rights of others, the foundations of civilization. Militarism destroys the morals of the people who practice it, and since it can only be defeated by the force of its own weapons, it undermines the morals of the peoples who are forced to engage in battle with it.” To confirm the idea of ​​​​the corrupting effect of Nazism on the minds and morals of ordinary Germans, soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht, one, but very characteristic, example can be given. In document No. 162, presented to the International Court of the USSR, the captured German chief corporal Lecourt admitted in his testimony that he personally shot and tortured 1,200 Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in the period from September 1941 to October 1942 alone. , for which he received another title ahead of schedule and was awarded the “Eastern Medal”. The worst thing is that he committed these atrocities not on the orders of higher commanders, but, in his own words, “in his free time from work, for the sake of interest,” “for the sake of his pleasure.” Isn’t this the best proof of the guilt of the Nazi leaders before their people!

American soldier, professional executioner John Woods prepares a noose for criminals

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUREMBERG TRIALS

Today, 70 years after the start of the Nuremberg Trials (next fall will mark 70 years since its end), it is clearly visible what a huge role it played in historical, legal and socio-political terms. The Nuremberg trials became a historical event, first of all, as the triumph of Law over Nazi lawlessness. He exposed the misanthropic essence of German Nazism, its plans for the destruction of entire states and peoples, its extreme inhumanity and cruelty, absolute immorality, the true extent and depth of the atrocities of the Nazi executioners and the extreme danger of Nazism and fascism for all humanity. The entire totalitarian system of Nazism as a whole was subjected to moral condemnation. This created a moral barrier to the revival of Nazism in the future, or at least to its universal condemnation.

We must not forget that the entire civilized world, which had just gotten rid of the “brown plague,” applauded the verdict of the International Military Tribunal. It is unfortunate that now in some European countries there is a revival of Nazism in one form or another, and in the Baltic states and Ukraine there is an active process of glorification and glorification of members of the Waffen-SS detachments, which during the Nuremberg trials were recognized as criminal along with German security detachments SS. It is important that these phenomena of today be sharply condemned by all peace-loving peoples and such authoritative international and regional security organizations as the UN, OSCE and the European Union. I would not like to believe that we are witnessing what one of the Nazi criminals, G. Fritsche, predicted in his speech at the Nuremberg trials: “If you believe that this is the end, then you are mistaken. We are present at the birth of the Hitler legend."

It is important to know and remember that the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal have not been canceled! It seems completely unacceptable to radically revise its decisions and, in general, its historical significance, as well as the main results and lessons of the Second World War, which, unfortunately, some Western historians, legal scholars and politicians are trying to do today. It is important to note that the materials of the Nuremberg trials are one of the most important sources for studying the history of the Second World War and creating a holistic and objective picture of the atrocities of the Nazi leaders, as well as for obtaining a clear answer to the question of who is to blame for the outbreak of this monstrous war. In Nuremberg, it was Nazi Germany, its political, party and military leaders who were recognized as the main and only culprits of international aggression. Therefore, the attempts of some modern historians to divide this blame equally between Germany and the USSR are completely untenable.

From the point of view of legal significance, the Nuremberg trials became an important milestone in the development of international law. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal and the verdict pronounced almost 70 years ago became “one of the cornerstones of modern international law, one of its basic principles,” wrote the famous domestic researcher of various issues and aspects of the Nuremberg trials, Professor A.I. Poltorak in his work “The Nuremberg Trials. Main legal problems". His point of view is of particular importance also because he was the secretary of the USSR delegation at this trial.

It should be admitted that among some lawyers there is an opinion that in the organization and conduct of the Nuremberg trials, not everything was smooth from the point of view of legal norms, but it must be taken into account that it was the first international court of its kind. However, not the most strict lawyer who understands this will ever argue that Nuremberg did not do anything progressive and significant for the development of international law. And it is completely unacceptable for politicians to take on the interpretation of the legal subtleties of the process, while claiming to express the ultimate truth.

The Nuremberg trials were the first event of this kind and significance in history. He defined new types of international crimes, which then became firmly established in international law and the national legislation of many states. In addition to the fact that at Nuremberg aggression was recognized as a crime against peace (for the first time in history!), it was also the first time that officials responsible for planning, preparing and unleashing wars of aggression were held criminally liable. For the first time, it was recognized that the position of the head of state, department or army, as well as the execution of government orders or a criminal order do not exempt from criminal liability. The Nuremberg decisions led to the creation of a special branch in international law - international criminal law.

The Nuremberg Trials were followed by the Tokyo Trials, the trial of major Japanese war criminals, which took place in Tokyo from May 3, 1946 to November 12, 1948 at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The demand for the trial of Japanese war criminals was formulated in the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender of September 2, 1945, pledged to “fairly implement the terms of the Potsdam Declaration,” including the punishment of war criminals.

The Nuremberg principles, approved by the UN General Assembly (resolutions of December 11, 1946 and November 27, 1947), have become generally accepted norms of international law. They serve as a basis for refusal to carry out a criminal order and warn of the responsibility of those leaders of states who are ready to commit crimes against peace and humanity. Subsequently, genocide, racism and racial discrimination, apartheid, the use of nuclear weapons, and colonialism were classified as crimes against humanity. The principles and norms formulated by the Nuremberg Trials formed the basis of all post-war international legal documents aimed at preventing aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity (for example, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the 1949 Geneva Convention “On the Protection of Victims of War”, 1968 Convention “On the Inapplicability of the Statute of Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity”, 1998 Rome Statute “On the Establishment of the International Criminal Court”).

The Nuremberg trials set a legal precedent for the establishment of similar international tribunals. In the 1990s, the Nuremberg Military Tribunal became the prototype for the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, established by the UN Security Council. True, as it turned out, they do not always pursue fair goals and are not always completely impartial and objective. This was especially evident in the work of the tribunal for Yugoslavia.

In 2002, at the request of the President of Sierra Leone, Ahmed Kabba, who addressed the UN Secretary-General, a Special Court for Sierra Leone was created under the auspices of this authoritative organization. It was to conduct an international trial of those responsible for the most serious crimes (mainly military and against humanity) during the internal armed conflict in Sierra Leone.

Unfortunately, when establishing (or, conversely, deliberately not establishing) international tribunals like Nuremberg, “double standards” often operate these days and the decisive factor is not the desire to find the true culprits of crimes against peace and humanity, but in a certain way to demonstrate one’s political influence on the international stage, to show “who is who.” This, for example, happened during the work of the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia. To prevent this from happening in the future, political will and unity of UN member states is required.

The political significance of the Nuremberg trials is also obvious. He marked the beginning of the process of demilitarization and denazification of Germany, i.e. implementation of the most important decisions adopted in 1945 at the Yalta (Crimean) and Potsdam conferences. As is known, in order to eradicate fascism, destroy the Nazi statehood, eliminate the German armed forces and military industry, Berlin and the country's territory were divided into occupation zones, administrative power in which was exercised by the victorious states. We note with regret that our Western allies, disregarding the agreed decisions, were the first to take steps towards the revival of the defense industry, the armed forces and the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in their zone of occupation, and with the emergence of the military-political NATO bloc and the admission of West Germany into it.

But, assessing the post-war socio-political significance of Nuremberg, we emphasize that never before had a trial united all the progressive forces of the world, who sought once and for all to condemn not only specific war criminals, but also the very idea of ​​achieving foreign policy and economic goals through aggression against other countries and peoples. Supporters of peace and democracy regarded it as an important step towards the practical implementation of the Yalta agreements of 1945 to establish a new post-war order in Europe and throughout the world, which was to be based, on the one hand, on the complete and general rejection of aggressive military force methods in international politics, and on the other hand, on mutual understanding and friendly all-round cooperation and collective efforts of all peace-loving countries, regardless of their socio-political and economic structure. The possibility of such cooperation and its fruitfulness was clearly proven during the Second World War, when most of the world's states, realizing the mortal danger of the “brown plague,” united into the Anti-Hitler Coalition and jointly defeated it. The creation in 1945 of the world security organization - the UN - served as further proof of this. Unfortunately, with the beginning of the Cold War, the development of this progressive process - the rapprochement and cooperation of states with different socio-political systems - turned out to be significantly difficult and did not go as expected at the end of the Second World War.

It is important that the Nuremberg Trials always stand as a barrier to the revival of Nazism and aggression as state policy in our days and in the future. Its results and historical lessons, which are not subject to oblivion, much less revision and reassessment, should serve as a warning to all who see themselves as the chosen “arbiters of the destinies” of states and peoples. This requires only the desire and will to unite the efforts of all the freedom-loving, democratic forces of the world, their union, such as the states of the Anti-Hitler coalition managed to create during the Second World War.

Shepova N.Ya.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher
Research Institute (military history)
Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces

Erich Koch is a prominent figure in the NSDAP and the Third Reich. Gauleiter (October 1, 1928 - May 8, 1945) and Chief President (September 1933 - May 8, 1945) of East Prussia, Head of the Civil Administration of the Bialystok District (August 1, 1941-1945), Reich Commissioner of Ukraine (1 September 1941 - November 10, 1944), SA Obergruppenführer (1938), war criminal.

Adolf Eichmann was a German Gestapo officer directly responsible for the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. By order of Reinhard Heydrich, he took part in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, at which measures for the “final solution of the Jewish question” - the extermination of several million Jews - were discussed. As a secretary, he kept minutes of the meeting. Eichmann proposed to immediately resolve the issue of deporting Jews to Eastern Europe. Direct leadership of this operation was entrusted to him.

He was in a privileged position in the Gestapo, often receiving orders directly from Himmler, bypassing the immediate superiors of G. Müller and E. Kaltenbrunner. In March 1944, he headed the Sonderkommando, which organized the dispatch of transport with Hungarian Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz. In August 1944, he presented a report to Himmler, in which he reported on the extermination of 4 million Jews.

Organization of the tribunal

In 1942, British Prime Minister Churchill stated that the Nazi leadership should be executed without trial. He expressed this opinion more than once in the future. When Churchill tried to impose his opinion on Stalin, Stalin objected: “Whatever happens, there must be ... an appropriate judicial decision. Otherwise people will say that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were simply taking revenge on their political enemies! " Roosevelt, hearing that Stalin was insisting on a trial, in turn declared that the trial procedure should not be "too legalistic."

The demand for the creation of an International Military Tribunal was contained in the statement of the Soviet government of October 14, 1942 “On the responsibility of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices for the atrocities they committed in the occupied countries of Europe.”

The agreement on the creation of the International Military Tribunal and its charter were developed by the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France during the London Conference, held from June 26 to August 8, 1945. The jointly developed document reflected the agreed position of all 23 countries participating in the conference; the principles of the charter were approved by the UN General Assembly as generally recognized in the fight against crimes against humanity. On August 29, the first list of the main war criminals was published, consisting of 24 Nazi politicians, military men, and fascist ideologists.

List of defendants

The defendants were included in the initial list of accused in the following order:

1. Hermann Wilhelm Goering (German) Hermann Wilhelm Goering), Reichsmarschall, Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force
2. Rudolf Hess (German) Rudolf Heß), Hitler's deputy in charge of the Nazi Party.
3. Joachim von Ribbentrop (German) Ullrich Friedrich Willy Joachim von Ribbentrop ), Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany.
4. Wilhelm Keitel (German) Wilhelm Keitel), Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces.
5. Robert Ley (German) Robert Ley), head of the Labor Front
6. Ernst Kaltenbrunner (German) Ernst Kaltenbrunner), head of the RSHA.
7. Alfred Rosenberg (German) Alfred Rosenberg), one of the main ideologists of Nazism, Reich Minister for Eastern Affairs.
8. Hans Frank (German) Dr. Hans Frank), head of the occupied Polish lands.
9. Wilhelm Frick (German) Wilhelm Frick), Reich Minister of the Interior.
10. Julius Streicher (German) Julius Streicher), Gauleiter, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Sturmovik" (German. Der Stürmer - Der Stürmer).
11. Walter Funk (German) Walther Funk), Minister of Economy after Shakht.
12. Hjalmar Schacht (German) Hjalmar Schacht), Reich Minister of Economics before the war.
13. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (German) Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach ), head of the Friedrich Krupp concern.
14. Karl Dönitz (German) Karl Donitz), Grand Admiral of the Navy of the Third Reich, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, after the death of Hitler and in accordance with his posthumous will - President of Germany
15. Erich Raeder (German) Erich Raeder), Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.
16. Baldur von Schirach (German) Baldur Benedikt von Schirach), head of the Hitler Youth, Gauleiter of Vienna.
17. Fritz Sauckel (German) Fritz Sauckel), head of the forced deportations to the Reich of labor from the occupied territories.
18. Alfred Jodl (German) Alfred Jodl), Chief of Staff of the OKW Operations Command
19. Martin Bormann (German) Martin Bormann), the head of the party chancellery, was accused in absentia.
20. Franz von Papen (German) Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen ), Chancellor of Germany before Hitler, then Ambassador to Austria and Turkey.
21. Arthur Seyss-Inquart (German) Dr. Arthur Seyß-Inquart), Chancellor of Austria, then Imperial Commissioner of occupied Holland.
22. Albert Speer (German) Albert Speer), Reich Minister of Armaments.
23. Constantin von Neurath (German) Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath ), in the first years of Hitler's reign, Minister of Foreign Affairs, then governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
24. Hans Fritsche (German) Hans Fritzsche), head of the press and radio broadcasting department at the Ministry of Propaganda.

Remarks to the accusation

The accused were asked to write on it their attitude towards the accusation. Raeder and Ley wrote nothing (Ley's response was actually his suicide shortly after the charges were filed), but the remaining defendants wrote the following:

1. Hermann Wilhelm Goering: “The winner is always the judge, and the loser is the accused!”
2. Rudolf Hess: “I don’t regret anything”
3. Joachim von Ribbentrop: "The wrong people have been charged"
4. Wilhelm Keitel: “An order for a soldier is always an order!”
5. Ernst Kaltenbrunner: “I am not responsible for war crimes, I was only fulfilling my duty as head of the intelligence agencies, and I refuse to serve as some kind of ersatz Himmler”
6. Alfred Rosenberg: “I reject the charge of 'conspiracy'. Anti-Semitism was only a necessary defensive measure.”
7. Hans Frank: “I view this trial as a supreme court pleasing to God, designed to understand the terrible period of Hitler’s reign and bring it to an end.”
8. Wilhelm Frick: "The entire accusation is based on the assumption of participation in a conspiracy"
9. Julius Streicher: “This trial is the triumph of world Jewry”
10. Hjalmar Schacht: “I don’t understand at all why I’ve been charged”
11. Walter Funk: “Never in my life have I, either consciously or out of ignorance, done anything that would give rise to such accusations. If, out of ignorance or as a result of delusions, I committed the acts listed in the indictment, then my guilt should be considered in the light of my personal tragedy, but not as a crime.”
12. Karl Dönitz: “None of the charges have anything to do with me. American inventions!
13. Baldur von Schirach: "All troubles come from racial politics"
14. Fritz Sauckel: “The gulf between the ideal of a socialist society, nurtured and defended by me, a former sailor and worker, and these terrible events - the concentration camps - deeply shocked me”
15. Alfred Jodl: “The mixture of just accusations and political propaganda is regrettable”
16. Franz von Papen: “The accusation horrified me, firstly, with the awareness of the irresponsibility as a result of which Germany was plunged into this war, which turned into a world catastrophe, and secondly, with the crimes that were committed by some of my compatriots. The latter are inexplicable from a psychological point of view. It seems to me that the years of godlessness and totalitarianism are to blame for everything. It was they who turned Hitler into a pathological liar."
17. Arthur Seyss-Inquart: “I would like to hope that this is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War”
18. Albert Speer: “The process is necessary. Even an authoritarian state does not relieve each individual of responsibility for the terrible crimes committed.”
19. Constantin von Neurath: “I have always been against accusations without a possible defense”
20. Hans Fritsche: “This is the most terrible accusation of all time. Only one thing can be more terrible: the impending accusation that the German people will bring against us for abusing their idealism.”

Groups or organizations to which the defendants belonged were also charged.

Even before the start of the trial, after reading the indictment, on November 25, 1945, the head of the Labor Front, Robert Ley, committed suicide in his cell. Gustav Krupp was declared terminally ill by a medical commission, and his case was dropped before trial.

The remaining accused were brought to trial.

Progress of the process

The International Military Tribunal was formed on a parity basis from representatives of the four great powers in accordance with the London Agreement.

Tribunal members

• from the USA: former Attorney General of the country F. Biddle.
• from the USSR: Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Major General of Justice I. T. Nikitchenko.
• for Great Britain: Chief Justice, Lord Geoffrey Lawrence.
• from France: professor of criminal law A. Donnedier de Vabres.

Each of the 4 countries sent their own to the process main accusers, their deputies and assistants:

• from the USA: US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.
• from the USSR: Prosecutor General of the Ukrainian SSR R. A. Rudenko.
• from UK: Hartley Shawcross
• from France: François de Menton, who was absent during the first days of the trial and was replaced by Charles Dubost, and then Champentier de Ribes was appointed instead of de Menton.

A total of 216 court hearings were held, the chairman of the court was the representative of Great Britain J. Lawrence. Various evidence was presented, among them the so-called for the first time appeared. “secret protocols” to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (presented by I. Ribbentrop’s lawyer A. Seidl).

Due to the post-war aggravation of relations between the USSR and the West, the process was tense, this gave the accused hope that the process would collapse. The situation became especially tense after Churchill's Fulton speech, when the real possibility of war against the USSR arose. Therefore, the accused behaved boldly, skillfully played for time, hoping that the coming war would put an end to the trial (Goering contributed most to this). At the end of the trial, the USSR prosecution provided a film about the concentration camps of Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, shot by front-line cameramen of the Soviet army.

Accusations

1. Nazi Party Plans:
   • Using Nazi control for aggression against foreign countries.
   • Aggressive actions against Austria and Czechoslovakia.
   • Attack on Poland.
   • Aggressive war against the whole world (-).
   • The German invasion of the territory of the USSR in violation of the non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939.
   • Cooperation with Italy and Japan and the war of aggression against the United States (November 1936 - December 1941).
2. Crimes against peace:
   • « All of the accused and various other persons, for a number of years prior to May 8, 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation and conduct of aggressive wars, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and obligations».
3. War crimes:
   • Killings and ill-treatment of civilians in occupied territories and on the high seas.
   • Removal of the civilian population of the occupied territories into slavery and for other purposes.
   • Killings and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of countries with which Germany was at war, as well as persons sailing on the high seas.
   • The aimless destruction of cities and towns and villages, devastation not justified by military necessity.
   • Germanization of the occupied territories.
4. Crimes against humanity:
   • The defendants pursued a policy of persecution, repression and extermination of the enemies of the Nazi government. The Nazis imprisoned people without a trial, subjected them to persecution, humiliation, enslavement, torture, and killed them.

Hitler did not take all the responsibility with him to his grave. All the blame is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. These living have chosen these dead as their accomplices in this grandiose brotherhood of conspirators, and each of them must pay for the crime they committed together.

It can be said that Hitler committed his last crime against the country he ruled. He was a mad messiah who started a war for no reason and continued it senselessly. If he could no longer rule, then he did not care what would happen to Germany...

They stand before this court as blood-stained Gloucester stood before the body of his slain king. He begged the widow as they beg you: “Tell me I didn’t kill them.” And the queen replied: “Then say that they are not killed. But they are dead." If you say that these people are innocent, it is the same as saying that there was no war, no dead, no crime.

From Robert Jackson's indictment

Sentence

International Military Tribunal sentenced:

• To death by hanging: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia), Jodl.
• To life imprisonment: Hess, Funk, Raeder.
• To 20 years in prison: Schirach, Speer.
• To 15 years in prison: Neyrata.
• To 10 years in prison: Dönitz.
• Justified: Fritsche, Papen, Schacht

Soviet judge I. T. Nikitchenko filed a dissenting opinion, where he objected to the acquittal of Fritzsche, Papen and Schacht, the non-recognition of the German cabinet, the General Staff and the High Command of criminal organizations, as well as life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty) for Rudolf Hess.

Jodl was posthumously completely acquitted when the case was reviewed by a Munich court in 1953, but later, under US pressure, the decision to overturn the verdict of the Nuremberg court was annulled.

The Tribunal recognized the SS, SD, SA, Gestapo and the leadership of the Nazi Party as criminal organizations.

A number of convicts submitted petitions to the Allied Control Commission for Germany: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Sauckel, Jodl, Keitel, Seyss-Inquart, Funk, Doenitz and Neurath - for pardon; Raeder - on replacing life imprisonment with the death penalty; Goering, Jodl and Keitel - about replacing hanging with shooting if the request for clemency is not granted. All of these requests were rejected.

The death penalty was carried out on the night of October 16, 1946 in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison. Goering poisoned himself in prison shortly before his execution (there is an assumption that his wife gave him a capsule with poison during their last kiss).

Trials of lesser war criminals continued in Nuremberg until the 1950s (see Subsequent Nuremberg Trials), but not in the International Tribunal, but in an American court.

On August 15, 1946, the American Office of Information published a review of surveys conducted, according to which an overwhelming number of Germans (about 80 percent) considered the Nuremberg trials fair and the guilt of the defendants undeniable; about half of those surveyed responded that the defendants should be sentenced to death; only four percent responded negatively to the process.

Execution and cremation of the bodies of convicts

One of the witnesses to the execution, writer Boris Polevoy, published his memories and impressions of the execution. The sentence was carried out by American Sergeant John Wood - “at his own request.”

Going to the gallows, most of them tried to appear brave. Some behaved defiantly, others resigned themselves to their fate, but there were also those who cried out for God's mercy. All but Rosenberg made short statements at the last minute. And only Julius Streicher mentioned Hitler. In the gym, where American guards were playing basketball just 3 days ago, there were three black gallows, two of which were used. They hanged one at a time, but in order to finish it quickly, the next Nazi was brought into the hall while the previous one was still hanging on the gallows.

The condemned walked up 13 wooden steps to an 8-foot-high platform. Ropes hung from beams supported by two posts. The hanged man fell into the interior of the gallows, the bottom of which was covered with dark curtains on one side and covered with wood on three sides so that no one could see the death throes of the hanged.

After the execution of the last convict (Seys-Inquart), a stretcher with Goering's body was brought into the hall so that he would take a symbolic place under the gallows, and also so that journalists could be convinced of his death.

After the execution, the bodies of the hanged and the corpse of the suicide Goering were laid in a row. “Representatives of all the Allied powers,” wrote one Soviet journalist, “examined them and signed the death certificates. Photographs were taken of each body, clothed and naked. Then each corpse was wrapped in a mattress along with the last clothes it was wearing, and with the rope on which he was hanged and placed in a coffin. All the coffins were sealed. While the rest of the bodies were being handled, Goering’s body, covered with an army blanket, was also brought on a stretcher... At 4 o’clock in the morning the coffins were loaded into 2.5-ton trucks, waiting in the prison yard, they were covered with a waterproof tarpaulin and driven along by a military escort, with an American captain in the lead vehicle, followed by a French and an American general. Then followed by trucks and a jeep guarding them with specially selected soldiers and a machine gun. The convoy drove through Nuremberg and Having left the city, he headed south.

At dawn they approached Munich and immediately headed to the outskirts of the city to the crematorium, the owner of which had been warned about the arrival of the corpses of “fourteen American soldiers.” There were actually only eleven corpses, but they said so in order to lull possible suspicions of the crematorium staff. The crematorium was surrounded, and radio contact was established with the soldiers and tank crews of the cordon in case of any alarm. Anyone who entered the crematorium was not allowed to return until the end of the day. The coffins were opened and the bodies were checked by American, British, French and Soviet officers present at the execution to ensure they had not been switched along the way. After this, cremation began immediately and continued throughout the day. When this matter was finished, a car drove up to the crematorium and a container with ashes was placed in it. The ashes were scattered from the plane into the wind.

Conclusion

Having convicted the main Nazi criminals, the International Military Tribunal recognized aggression as the gravest crime of an international character. The Nuremberg trials are sometimes called " By the court of history", since he had a significant influence on the final defeat of Nazism. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Funk and Raeder were pardoned in 1957. After Speer and Schirach were released in 1966, only Hess remained in prison. The right-wing forces of Germany repeatedly demanded to pardon him, but the victorious powers refused to commute the sentence. On August 17, 1987, Hess was found hanged in a gazebo in the prison yard.

The American film “Nuremberg” is dedicated to the Nuremberg trials ( Nuremberg) ().

At the Nuremberg trial I said: “If Hitler had friends, I would be his friend. I owe to him the inspiration and glory of my youth as well as later horror and guilt.”

In the image of Hitler, as he was in relation to me and others, one can discern some sympathetic features. One also gets the impression of a person who is gifted and selfless in many respects. But the longer I wrote, the more I felt that it was about superficial qualities.

Because such impressions are countered by an unforgettable lesson: the Nuremberg trials. I will never forget one photographic document depicting a Jewish family going to death: a man with his wife and his children on the way to death. It still stands before my eyes today.

In Nuremberg I was sentenced to twenty years in prison. The verdict of the military tribunal, no matter how imperfectly the story was portrayed, attempted to articulate guilt. The punishment, always ill-suited to measuring historical responsibility, put an end to my civil existence. And that photograph stripped my life of its foundation. It turned out to last longer than the sentence.

Museum

Currently, the courtroom (“Room 600”), where the Nuremberg trials took place, is the usual working premises of the Nuremberg Regional Court (address: Bärenschanzstraße 72, Nürnberg). However, on weekends there are excursions (from 13 to 16 hours every day). In addition, the documentation center for the history of Nazi congresses in Nuremberg has a special exhibition dedicated to the Nuremberg trials. This new museum (opened November 4) also has audio guides in Russian.

Notes

Literature

• Gilbert G. M. Nuremberg Diary. The process through the eyes of a psychologist / trans. with him. A. L. Utkina. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2004. - 608 pp. ISBN 5-8138-0567-2

see also

• “The Nuremberg Trials” is a feature film by Stanley Kramer (1961).
• “Nuremberg Alarm” is a 2008 two-part documentary film based on the book by Alexander Zvyagintsev.

History has never seen such a trial. The leaders of the defeated country were not killed, they were not treated as honorable prisoners, and they were not given asylum by any neutral state. The leadership of Nazi Germany, almost in its entirety, was detained, arrested and put in the dock. They did the same with Japanese war criminals, holding the Tokyo People's Court, but this happened a little later. The Nuremberg trials provided a criminal and ideological assessment of the actions of government officials with whom, up to and including 1939, world leaders negotiated, concluded pacts and trade agreements. Then they were received, visited, and generally treated with respect. Now they sat in the dock, silent or answering the questions asked. Then, accustomed to honor and luxury, they were taken to cells.

Retribution

US Army Sergeant J. Wood was an experienced professional executioner with extensive pre-war experience. In his hometown of San Antonio (Texas), he personally executed almost three and a half hundred notorious scoundrels, most of whom were serial killers. But this was the first time he had to work with such “material.”

The permanent leader of the Nazi youth organization "Hitler Youth" Streicher resisted and had to be dragged to the gallows by force. Then John strangled him manually. Keitel, Jodl and Ribbentrop suffered for a long time with their airways already clamped in a noose; for several minutes they could not die.

At the last moment, realizing that they could not pity the executioner, many of the condemned still found the strength to accept death for granted. Von Ribbentrop said words that have not lost their relevance today, wishing Germany unity and mutual understanding between East and West. Keitel, who signed the surrender and, in general, did not participate in the planning of aggressive campaigns (except for the never carried out attack on India), paid tribute to the fallen German soldiers by remembering them. Yodel gave a final greeting to his native country. And so on.

Ribbentrop was the first to ascend the scaffold. Then it was Kaltenbrunner's turn, who suddenly remembered God. His last prayer was not denied.

The execution continued for a long time, and in order to speed up the process, the convicts began to be brought into the gym where it took place, without waiting for the end of the agony of the previous victim. Ten were hanged, two more (Goering and Ley) were able to avoid shameful execution by committing suicide.

After several examinations, the corpses were burned and the ashes scattered.

Preparation of the process

The Nuremberg trials began in the late autumn of 1945, on November 20. It was preceded by an investigation that lasted six months. In total, 27 kilometers of tape film were used, thirty thousand photographic prints were made, and a huge number of newsreels (mostly captured ones) were viewed. Based on these figures, unprecedented in 1945, one can judge the titanic work of the investigators who prepared the Nuremberg trials. Transcripts and other documents took up about two hundred tons of writing paper (fifty million sheets).

To make a decision, the court needed to hold more than four hundred meetings.

Charges were brought against 24 officials who held various positions in Nazi Germany. It was based on the principles of the Charter adopted for a new court called the International Military Tribunal. For the first time, the legal concept of a crime against humanity was introduced. The list of persons subject to prosecution under the articles of this document was published on August 29, 1945, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Criminal plans and plans

Aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the USSR and, as the document says, “the whole world,” was blamed on the German leadership. The conclusion of cooperation agreements with fascist Italy and militaristic Japan was also called criminal acts. One of the charges was an attack on the United States. In addition to specific actions, the former German government was accused of aggressive plans.

But that was not the main thing. Whatever insidious plans Hitler’s elite had, they were judged not for their thoughts about conquering India, Africa, Ukraine and Russia, but for what the Nazis did in their own country and beyond.

Crimes against peoples

The hundreds of thousands of pages that occupy the materials of the Nuremberg trials irrefutably prove the inhumane treatment of civilians of the occupied territories, prisoners of war and the crews of ships, military and merchant, who sank the ships of the German Navy. There were also large-scale ethnic cleansings carried out along national lines. The civilian population was transported to the Reich to be used as labor resources. Death factories were built and operated at full capacity, in which the process of exterminating people took on an industrial character, for which unique technological techniques invented by the Nazis were used.

Information about the progress of the investigation and some materials from the Nuremberg trials have been published, although not all.

Humanity shuddered.

From unpublished

Already at the stage of formation of the International Military Tribunal, some delicate situations arose. The Soviet delegation brought with it to London, where preliminary consultations on the organization of the future court took place, a list of issues the consideration of which was considered undesirable for the leadership of the USSR. The Western allies agreed not to discuss topics relating to the circumstances of the conclusion of the mutual non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany in 1939, and especially the secret protocol attached to it.

There were other secrets of the Nuremberg trials that were not made public due to the far from ideal behavior of the leadership of the victorious countries in the pre-war situation and during the fighting at the fronts. It was they who could shake the balance that had developed in the world and Europe thanks to the decisions of the Tehran and Potsdam conferences. The boundaries of both states and spheres of influence, agreed upon by the Big Three, were established by 1945, and, according to their authors, were not subject to revision.

What is fascism?

Almost all documents of the Nuremberg trials have now become publicly available. It was this fact that in a certain sense cooled interest in them. They are appealed to during ideological discussions. An example is the attitude towards Stepan Bandera, who is often called Hitler’s henchman. Is it so?

German Nazism, also called fascism and recognized by the international court as a criminal ideological base, is essentially an exaggerated form of nationalism. Giving advantages to an ethnic group may well lead to the idea that members of other peoples living within the territory of a nation-state can either be forced to abandon their own culture, language or religious beliefs, or forced to emigrate. In case of non-compliance, the option of forced expulsion or even physical destruction is possible. There are more than enough examples in history.

About Bandera

In connection with the latest events in Ukraine, such an odious personality as Bandera deserves special attention. The Nuremberg trials did not directly examine the activities of the UPA. There were references to this organization in the court materials, but they concerned the relations between the occupying German troops and representatives of Ukrainian nationalists, and these did not always work out well. Thus, according to document No. 192-PS, which is a report from the Reichskommissar of Ukraine to Alfred Rosneberg (written in Rovno on March 16, 1943), the author of the document complains about the hostility of the Melnik and Bandera organizations towards the German authorities (p. 25). There, on the following pages, mention is made of “political impudence” expressed in demands to grant Ukraine state independence.

This is precisely the goal that Stepan Bandera set for the OUN. The Nuremberg trials did not consider the crimes committed by the UPA in Volyn against the Polish population, and other numerous atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists, perhaps because this topic was among the “undesirable” for the Soviet leadership. At the time when the International Military Tribunal was taking place, pockets of resistance in Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk and other western regions had not yet been suppressed by MGB forces. And it was not the Ukrainian nationalists who were involved in the Nuremberg trials. Bandera Stepan Andreevich tried to take advantage of the German invasion to realize his own idea of ​​​​national independence. He failed. He soon found himself in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, however, as a privileged prisoner. For the time being...

Documentary

A cinematic documentary chronicle of the Nuremberg trials in 1946 has become more than just accessible. The Germans were forced to watch it, and if they refused, they were deprived of food rations. This order was in effect in all four occupation zones. It was hard for people who had been consuming Nazi propaganda for twelve years to see the humiliation suffered by those whom they had only recently believed. But it was necessary, otherwise it would hardly have been possible to get rid of the past so quickly.

The film “The Judgment of Nations” was shown on a wide screen both in the USSR and in other countries, but it evoked completely different feelings among the citizens of the victorious countries. Pride in their people, who made a decisive contribution to the victory over the personification of absolute evil, filled the hearts of Russians and Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Tajiks, Georgians and Armenians, Jews and Azerbaijanis, in general, all Soviet people, regardless of nationality. The Americans, French, and British also rejoiced, this was their victory. “The Nuremberg trials gave justice to the warmongers,” thought everyone who watched this documentary.

"Little" Nurembergs

The Nuremberg trials ended, some war criminals were hanged, others were sent to Spandau prison, and others managed to avoid just retribution by taking poison or making a homemade noose. Some even ran away and lived the rest of their lives in fear of discovery. Others were found decades later, and it was not clear whether punishment awaited them, or deliverance.

In 1946-1948, in the same Nuremberg (there was already a prepared room there, a certain symbolism also played a role in the choice of place) trials of Nazi criminals of the “second echelon” took place. The very good American film “The Nuremberg Trials” of 1961 tells about one of them. The picture was shot on black and white film, although in the early 60s Hollywood could afford the brightest Technicolor. The cast includes stars of the first magnitude (Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy and many other wonderful artists). The plot is quite real, Nazi judges are being tried, passing down terrible sentences under the absurd articles that filled the codes of the Third Reich. The main theme is repentance, which not everyone can come to.

This was also the Nuremberg trial. The trial stretched out over time, it involved everyone: those who carried out the sentences, and those who just wrote papers, and those who simply wanted to survive and sat on the sidelines, hoping to survive. Meanwhile, young men were executed “for disrespect for great Germany,” men who some considered inferior were forcibly sterilized, and girls were thrown into prison on charges of having relations with “subhumans.”

Decades later

With each passing decade, the events of the Second World War seem more and more academic and historical, losing their vitality in the eyes of new generations. Quite a bit more time will pass, and they will begin to seem something like Suvorov’s campaigns or the Crimean campaign. There are fewer and fewer living witnesses, and this process, unfortunately, is irreversible. The Nuremberg trials are perceived today in a completely different way than by contemporaries. The collection of materials, available to readers, reveals many legal gaps, shortcomings in the investigation, and contradictions in the testimony of witnesses and accused. The international situation in the mid-forties was not at all conducive to the objectivity of judges, and the restrictions initially established for the International Tribunal sometimes dictated political expediency to the detriment of justice. Field Marshal Keitel, who had nothing to do with the Barbarossa plan, was executed, and his “colleague” Paulus, who took an active part in the development of the aggressive doctrines of the Third Reich, testified as a witness. At the same time, both surrendered. The behavior of Hermann Goering is also of interest, as he clearly explained to his accusers that the actions of the allied countries were sometimes also criminal, both in war and in domestic life. Nobody, however, listened to him.

Humanity in 1945 was outraged, it thirsted for revenge. There was little time, but there were a lot of events to evaluate. The war has become an invaluable treasure trove of stories, human tragedies and destinies for thousands of novelists and film directors. Future historians have yet to evaluate Nuremberg.

The demand for the creation of an International Military Tribunal was contained in the statement of the Soviet government of October 14, “On the responsibility of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices for the atrocities they committed in the occupied countries of Europe.”

The agreement on the creation of the International Military Tribunal and its charter were developed by the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France during the London Conference, held from June 26 to August 8, 1945. The jointly developed document reflected the agreed position of all 23 countries participating in the conference; the principles of the charter were approved by the UN General Assembly as generally recognized in the fight against crimes against humanity. On August 29, even before the trial, the first list of the main war criminals was published, consisting of 24 Nazi politicians, military men, and fascist ideologists.

Preparation for the process

Germany's unleashing of an aggressive war, genocide used as a state ideology, the technology of mass extermination of people in “death factories” developed and put into production, inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and their murder, became widely known to the world community and required appropriate legal qualifications and condemnation.

All this determined the nature of the trial, which was unprecedented in scale and procedure. This can also explain specific features previously unknown to judicial practice. Thus, in paragraphs 6 and 9 of the tribunal’s charter, it was established that certain groups and organizations could also become subjects of prosecution. Article 13 recognized the court as having the authority to independently determine the course of the process.

One of the charges brought at Nuremberg was consideration of war crimes (“Kriegsverbrechen”). This term had already been used in the Leipzig trial against Wilhelm II and his military leaders, and therefore there was a legal precedent (despite the fact that the Leipzig trial was not international).

A significant innovation was the provision that both the accusing party and the defense had the opportunity to question the competence of the court, which was recognized by the final court.

A principled, but not detailed, decision on the unconditional guilt of the German side was agreed upon between the allies and made public after a meeting in Moscow in October. In this regard, in relation to it as a subject of legal proceedings, it seemed unnecessary to resort to the principle of the presumption of innocence (lat. praesumptio innocentiae).

The fact that the trial would end with the admission of guilt of the accused did not raise any doubts; not only the international community, but also the majority of the German population agreed with this even before the judicial review of the actions of the accused party. The question was to specify and qualify the degree of guilt of the accused. As a result, the trial was called the trial of major war criminals (Hauptkriegsverbrecher), and the court was given the status of a military tribunal.

The first list of accused was agreed upon at a conference in London on August 8th. It did not include either Hitler or his closest subordinates Himmler and Goebbels, whose death was firmly established, but Bormann, who was allegedly killed on the streets of Berlin, was accused in absentia (lat. in contumaciam).

The rules of conduct for Soviet representatives at the trial were established by the “Commission for the Management of the Work of Soviet Representatives at the International Tribunal in Nuremberg.” It was headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Vyshinsky. To London, where the winners were preparing the charter of the Nuremberg trials, a delegation from Moscow brought a list of undesirable issues approved in November 1945. It had nine points. The first point was the secret protocol to the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty and everything connected with it. The last point concerned Western Ukraine and Western Belarus and the problem of Soviet-Polish relations. As a result, between representatives of the USSR and the allies, an agreement was reached in advance on the issues to be discussed, and a list of topics was agreed upon that should not have been touched upon during the trial.

As has now been documented (materials on this issue are in the TsGAOR and were discovered by N. S. Lebedeva and Yu. N. Zorya), at the time of the constitution of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, a special list of issues was drawn up, the discussion of which was considered unacceptable. Justice requires noting that the initiative to compile the list did not belong to the Soviet side, but it was immediately taken up by Molotov and Vyshinsky (of course, with the approval of Stalin). One of the points was the Soviet-German non-aggression pact.

- Lev Bezymensky. Preface to the book: Fleischhauer I. Pact. Hitler, Stalin and the initiative of German diplomacy. 1938-1939. -M.: Progress, 1990.

Also the point about the removal of the civilian population of the occupied territories into slavery and for other purposes was not in any way compared with the use of forced labor of the German civilian population in the USSR.

The basis for the trial in Nuremberg was set out in paragraph VI of the protocol drawn up in Potsdam on August 2.

One of the initiators of the process and its key figure was US prosecutor Robert Jackson. He drew up a scenario for the process, the course of which he had a significant influence on. He considered himself a representative of new legal thinking and did his best to establish it.

Tribunal members

The International Military Tribunal was formed on a parity basis from representatives of the four great powers in accordance with the London Agreement. Each of the 4 countries sent their own people to the process main accusers, their deputies and assistants.

Main prosecutors and deputies:

• from the USSR: Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Major General of Justice I. T. Nikitchenko;

• from the USA: former Attorney General F. Biddle;

• from the UK: Judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales Geoffrey Lawrence (English);

• from France: professor of criminal law Henri Donnedier de Vabre (English);

Assistants:

Accusations

1. Nazi Party Plans:
   • Using Nazi control for aggression against foreign countries.
   • Aggressive actions against Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland
   • Aggressive war against the whole world (-).
   • The German invasion of the territory of the USSR in violation of the non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939.
   • Cooperation with Italy and Japan and the war of aggression against the United States (November 1936 - December 1941).
2. Crimes against peace:
   • « All of the accused and various other persons, for a number of years prior to May 8, 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation and conduct of aggressive wars, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and obligations».
3. War crimes:
   • Killings and ill-treatment of civilians in occupied territories and on the high seas.
   • Removal of the civilian population of the occupied territories into slavery and for other purposes.
   • Killings and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of countries with which Germany was at war, as well as persons sailing on the high seas.
   • The aimless destruction of cities and towns and villages, devastation not justified by military necessity.
   • Germanization of the occupied territories.
4. :
   • The accused pursued a policy of persecution, repression and extermination of opponents of the Nazi government. The Nazis imprisoned people without a trial, subjected them to persecution, humiliation, enslavement, torture, and killed them.

From Robert Jackson's indictment:

Hitler did not take all the responsibility with him to the grave. All the blame is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. These living have chosen these dead as their accomplices in this grandiose brotherhood of conspirators, and each of them must pay for the crime they committed together.

It can be said that Hitler committed his last crime against the country he ruled. He was a mad messiah who started a war for no reason and continued it senselessly. If he could no longer rule, then he didn’t care what happened to Germany...

They stand before this court as blood-stained Gloucester stood before the body of his slain king. He begged the widow as they beg you: “Tell me I didn’t kill them.” And the queen replied: “Then say that they are not killed. But they are dead." If you say that these people are innocent, it is the same as saying that there was no war, no dead, no crime.

From the indictment speech of the chief prosecutor from the USSR R. A. Rudenko:

Gentlemen Judges!

To carry out the atrocities they had planned, the leaders of the fascist conspiracy created a system of criminal organizations, to which my speech was devoted. Now those who set out to establish domination over the world and exterminate nations are awaiting the coming verdict with trepidation. This sentence should reach not only the authors of bloody fascist “ideas”, the main organizers of the crimes of Hitlerism, who were put in the dock. Your verdict must condemn the entire criminal system of German fascism, that complex, widely branched network of party, government, SS, and military organizations that directly carried out the villainous plans of the main conspirators. On the battlefields, humanity has already pronounced its verdict on criminal German fascism. In the fire of the greatest battles in the history of mankind, the heroic Soviet Army and the valiant troops of the allies not only defeated Hitler’s hordes, but established the high and noble principles of international cooperation, human morality, and humane rules of human coexistence. The prosecution fulfilled its duty to the high court, to the blessed memory of the innocent victims, to the conscience of the people, to its own conscience.

May the judgment of the peoples be carried out on the fascist executioners - fair and severe.

Progress of the process

Due to the post-war aggravation of relations between the USSR and the West, the process was tense, this gave the accused hope that the process would collapse. The situation became especially tense after Churchill’s Fulton speech. Therefore, the accused behaved boldly, skillfully played for time, hoping that the coming war would put an end to the trial (Goering contributed most to this). At the end of the trial, the USSR prosecution provided a film about the concentration camps Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, shot by front-line cameramen of the Red Army.

Sentence

International Military Tribunal sentenced:

• To death by hanging: Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart , Martin Bormann (in absentia) and Alfred Jodl.
• To life imprisonment: Rudolf Hess, Walter Funk and Erich Raeder.
• To 20 years in prison: Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer.
• To 15 years in prison: Konstantin von Neurath.
• To 10 years in prison: Karla Dönitz.
• Justified: Hans Fritsche, Franz von Papen and Hjalmar Schacht.

The Tribunal found the SS, SD, Gestapo and leadership of the Nazi Party criminal.

None of the convicts admitted their guilt or repented of their actions.

Soviet judge I. T. Nikitchenko filed a dissenting opinion, where he objected to the acquittal of Fritsche, Papen and Schacht, the non-recognition of the German cabinet, the General Staff and the OKW as criminal organizations, as well as life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty) for Rudolf Hess.

Jodl was posthumously completely acquitted when the case was reviewed by a Munich court in 1953, but this decision was later annulled under US pressure.

A number of convicts submitted petitions to the Allied Control Commission for Germany: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Sauckel, Jodl, Keitel, Seyss-Inquart, Funk, Doenitz and Neurath - for pardon; Raeder - on replacing life imprisonment with the death penalty; Goering, Jodl and Keitel - about replacing hanging with shooting if the request for clemency is not granted. All of these requests were rejected.

On August 15, 1946, the American Office of Information published a review of surveys, according to which the overwhelming number of Germans (about 80%) considered the Nuremberg trials fair and the guilt of the defendants undeniable; about half of those surveyed responded that the defendants should be sentenced to death; only 4% responded negatively to the process.

Execution and cremation of bodies of prisoners sentenced to death

The death sentences were carried out on the night of October 16, 1946 in the gym of Nuremberg prison. Goering poisoned himself in prison shortly before his execution (there are several assumptions about how he received the poison capsule, including that it was given by his wife during their last date with a kiss). The sentence was carried out by American soldiers - professional executioner John Woods and volunteer Joseph Malta. One of the witnesses to the execution, writer Boris Polevoy, published his memoirs about the execution.

Going to the gallows, most of them retained their presence of mind. Some behaved defiantly, others resigned themselves to their fate, but there were also those who cried out for God's mercy. All but Rosenberg made short statements at the last minute. And only Julius Streicher mentioned Hitler. In the gym, in which 3 days ago American guards were playing basketball, there were three black gallows, two of which were used. They hanged one at a time, but in order to finish it quickly, the next Nazi was brought into the hall while the previous one was still hanging on the gallows.

The condemned walked up 13 wooden steps to an 8-foot-high platform. Ropes hung from beams supported by two posts. The hanged man fell into the inside of the gallows, the bottom of which was covered with dark curtains on one side and covered with wood on three sides so that no one could see the death throes of the hanged.

After the execution of the last convict (Seys-Inquart), a stretcher with Goering's body was brought into the hall so that he would take a symbolic place under the gallows, and also so that journalists could be convinced of his death.

After the execution, the bodies of the hanged and the corpse of the suicide Goering were laid in a row. “Representatives of all the Allied powers,” wrote one Soviet journalist, “examined them and signed the death certificates. Photographs were taken of each body, clothed and naked. Then each corpse was wrapped in a mattress along with the last clothes it was wearing, and rope on which he was hanged and placed in a coffin. All the coffins were sealed. While the rest of the bodies were being handled, Goering’s body, covered with an army blanket, was brought on a stretcher... At 4 o’clock in the morning the coffins were loaded into 2.5-ton trucks, waiting in the prison yard, were covered with a waterproof tarpaulin and driven along by a military escort, with an American captain in the lead vehicle, followed by a French and American general, followed by trucks and a jeep guarding them with specially selected soldiers and a machine gun. The convoy drove through Nuremberg and Having left the city, he headed south.

At dawn they approached Munich and immediately headed to the outskirts of the city to the crematorium, the owner of which had been warned about the arrival of the corpses of “fourteen American soldiers.” There were actually only eleven corpses, but they said so in order to lull possible suspicions of the crematorium staff. The crematorium was surrounded, and radio contact was established with the soldiers and tank crews of the cordon in case of any alarm. Anyone who entered the crematorium was not allowed to return until the end of the day. The coffins were opened and the bodies were checked by American, British, French and Soviet officers present at the execution to ensure they had not been switched along the way. After this, cremation began immediately and continued throughout the day. When this matter was finished, a car drove up to the crematorium and a container with ashes was placed in it. The ashes were scattered from the plane into the wind.

The fate of other convicts

Other Nuremberg trials

After the main trial (Main War Criminal Trial), a number of more private trials followed with a different composition of prosecutors and judges:

Meaning

Having convicted the main Nazi criminals, the International Military Tribunal recognized aggression as the gravest crime of an international character. The Nuremberg trials are sometimes called " By the court of history", since he had a significant influence on the final defeat of Nazism.

At the Nuremberg trial I said: “If Hitler had friends, I would be his friend. I owe to him the inspiration and glory of my youth as well as later horror and guilt.”

In the image of Hitler, as he was in relation to me and others, one can discern some sympathetic features. One also gets the impression of a person who is gifted and selfless in many respects. But the longer I wrote, the more I felt that it was about superficial qualities.

Because such impressions are countered by an unforgettable lesson: the Nuremberg trials. I will never forget one photographic document depicting a Jewish family going to death: a man with his wife and his children on the way to death. It still stands before my eyes today.

In Nuremberg I was sentenced to twenty years in prison. The verdict of the military tribunal, no matter how imperfectly the story was portrayed, attempted to articulate guilt. The punishment, always ill-suited to measuring historical responsibility, put an end to my civil existence. And that photograph stripped my life of its foundation. It turned out to last longer than the sentence.

The main Nuremberg trials are dedicated to:

Trials of lesser war criminals continued in Nuremberg until the 1950s (see Subsequent Nuremberg Trials), but not in the International Tribunal, but in an American court. Dedicated to one of them:

• American feature film “The Nuremberg Trials” ()

Criticism of the process

The German press expressed doubts about the moral right of a number of prosecutors and judges to accuse and judge the Nazis, since these prosecutors and judges were themselves involved in political repression. Thus, the Soviet prosecutor Rudenko was involved in the massive Stalinist repressions in Ukraine, his British colleague Dean was known for his participation in the extradition of Soviet citizens accused of collaboration to the USSR (many of them were accused without reason), US judges Clark and Beadle organized concentration camps for Japanese residents of the USA. Soviet judge I. T. Nikitchenko participated in the pronouncement of hundreds of sentences on innocent people during the Great Terror.

German lawyers criticized the following features of the process:

• The proceedings were conducted on behalf of the allies, that is, the injured party, which did not correspond to centuries-old legal practice, according to which a mandatory requirement for the legality of the verdict was the independence and neutrality of judges, who should in no way be interested in making a particular decision.
• Two new clauses, previously unknown to the traditions of legal proceedings, were introduced into the formulation of the process, namely: “ Preparation of a military attack" (Vorbereitung des Angriffskrieges) and " Crimes against peace"(Verschwörung gegen den Frieden). Thus, the principle was not used Nulla poena sine lege, according to which no one can be charged without a previously formulated definition of the crime and the corresponding degree of punishment.
• The most controversial, according to German lawyers, was the clause “ Crimes against humanity"(Verbrechen gegen Menschlichkeit), since, within the framework of the legislation known to the court, it could equally be applied both to the accused (bombing of Coventry, Rotterdam, etc.) and to the accusers (bombing of Dresden, atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc.) d.)

The validity of using such a clause would be legally justified in two cases: either on the assumption that they are possible in a military situation and were also committed by the accusing party, therefore becoming legally void, or upon recognition that the commission of crimes similar to the crimes of the Third Reich is subject to condemnation in any case, even if they were committed by the victorious countries.

The Catholic Church expressed its regrets about the insufficient humanism shown by the court. Representatives of the Catholic clergy gathered in Fulda for a conference, without objecting to the need for trial and condemnation, noted that the “special form of law” used during the trial led to multiple manifestations of injustice in the process of subsequent denazification and had a negative impact on the morality of the nation. This opinion was communicated to the representative of the American military administration by Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne on August 26, 1948.

Leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Zhukov, argued that during the trial, the Soviet delegation entered into a gentleman’s agreement with the delegations to forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Munich Agreement.

Consideration of the Katyn case in Nuremberg

Participants in the process from neutral countries - Sweden and Switzerland - raised the question of taking into account mutual guilt in violating the human right to life, including massacres.

This issue became particularly acute in connection with the presentation of materials on Katyn to the court, since at that time the Soviet government categorically excluded its responsibility for the murder of 4,143 captured Polish officers and the disappearance of another 10,000 officers on its territory. On the morning of February 14, unexpectedly for everyone, one of the Soviet prosecutors (Pokrovsky), in the context of accusations of crimes against Czechoslovak, Polish and Yugoslav prisoners, began to talk about the German crime in Katyn, reading the conclusions from the report of the Soviet Burdenko commission. As the documents show, the Soviet prosecution was firmly convinced that, in accordance with Article 21 of the Tribunal Charter, the court would accept the conclusions of the official commission of the allied country as proven fact. However, to the indignation of the Soviet delegation, the court agreed to the request of Goering’s lawyer, Dr. Stammer, to hold special hearings on this issue, however, limiting the number of witnesses (3 on each side).

Hearings on the Katyn case took place on July 1-2, 1946. The witnesses for the prosecution were the former deputy mayor of Smolensk, professor-astronomer B.V. Bazilevsky, professor V.I. Prozorovsky (as a medical expert) and the Bulgarian expert M.A. Markov. After his arrest, Markov radically changed his views on Katyn; his role in the trial was to compromise the conclusions of the international commission. At the trial, Bazilevsky repeated the testimony given before the NKVD-NKGB commission and then before foreign journalists at the Burdenko commission; in particular, stating that the burgomaster B. G. Menshagin informed him about the execution of the Poles by the Germans; Menshagin himself calls this a lie in his memoirs.

The main witness for the defense was the former commander of the 537th Signal Regiment, Colonel Friedrich Arens, who was declared by the commissions of the “authorities” and Burdenko to be the main organizer of the executions as Oberst-Lieutenant (Lieutenant Colonel) Arens, commander of the “537th Construction Battalion.” The lawyers easily proved to the court that he appeared in Katyn only in November 1941 and, due to his occupation (communications), could not have anything to do with mass executions, after which Arens turned into a witness for the defense, along with his colleagues Lieutenant R. von Eichborn and General E. Oberheuser. A member of the international commission, Dr. François Naville (Switzerland), also volunteered to act as a witness for the defense, but the court did not call him. On July 1-3, 1946, the court heard witnesses. As a result, the Katyn episode did not appear in the verdict. Soviet propaganda tried to pass off as the tribunal’s recognition of German guilt for Katyn the fact that this episode was present in the “trial materials” (that is, in the prosecution materials), but outside the USSR they clearly perceived the outcome of the hearings on Katyn as proof of the innocence of the German side and, therefore, , Soviet guilt.

The strange death of Nikolai Zori

At first, it was decided that the prosecutor from the Soviet side would be 38-year-old Nikolai Zorya, appointed to the post of Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR. On February 11 of the year, he interrogated Field Marshal Paulus. All the newspapers wrote about the interrogation the next day, but at the moment when Zorya announced that now “materials and testimonies of people who have reliable information about how the preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union actually took place” would be presented, the Soviet translator booths were turned off . Stalin ordered that Paulus be further questioned by the chief Soviet prosecutor, Roman Rudenko.

Zorya received an order to prevent Ribbentrop from testifying about the existence of a secret protocol to the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty. Ribbentrop and his deputy Weizsäcker revealed its contents under oath. This happened on May 22, 1946. The next day, Zorya was found dead at 22 Güntermüllerstrasse in Nuremberg in his bed with a pistol lying neatly next to him. It was announced in the Soviet press and on the radio that he had handled his personal weapons carelessly, although his relatives were informed of suicide. Zori's son Yuri, who subsequently devoted himself to researching the Katyn case, associated his father's death with this case. According to his information, Zorya, who was preparing for the Katyn sessions, came to the conclusion that the Soviet accusation was false and he could not support it. On the eve of his death, Zorya asked his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, to urgently organize a trip for him to Moscow to report to Vyshinsky about the doubts that arose in him while studying the Katyn documents, since he could not speak with these documents. The next morning Zorya was found dead. There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin said: “bury him like a dog!” .

Museum

In 2010, the Museum of the History of the Nuremberg Trials was opened in the premises where the court hearings took place.

More than 4 million euros were spent on the creation of the museum.

Photos

see also

• List of accused and defendants of the Nuremberg trials
• “The Nuremberg Trials” is a feature film by Stanley Kramer (1961).
• Nuremberg is a 2000 American television film.
• “Countergame” is a 2011 Russian television series.
• “Nuremberg Alarm” is a 2008 two-part documentary film based on the book by Alexander Zvyagintsev.
• “Nuremberg epilogue” / Nirnberski epilog (Yugoslav film, 1971)
• “Nuremberg Epilogue” / Epilog norymberski (Polish film, 1971)
• “The Trial” is a performance at the Leningrad State Theatre. Leninsky Komsomol based on Abby Mann's script for the feature film "

Organization of the tribunal

In 1942, British Prime Minister Churchill stated that the Nazi leadership should be executed without trial. He expressed this opinion more than once in the future. When Churchill tried to impose his opinion on Stalin, Stalin objected: “Whatever happens, there must be ... an appropriate judicial decision. Otherwise people will say that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were simply taking revenge on their political enemies! " Roosevelt, hearing that Stalin was insisting on a trial, in turn declared that the trial procedure should not be "too legalistic."

The demand for the creation of an International Military Tribunal was contained in the statement of the Soviet government of October 14, 1942 “On the responsibility of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices for the atrocities they committed in the occupied countries of Europe.”

The agreement on the creation of the International Military Tribunal and its charter were developed by the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France during the London Conference, held from June 26 to August 8, 1945. The jointly developed document reflected the agreed position of all 23 countries participating in the conference; the principles of the charter were approved by the UN General Assembly as generally recognized in the fight against crimes against humanity. On August 29, the first list of the main war criminals was published, consisting of 24 Nazi politicians, military men, and fascist ideologists.

List of defendants

The defendants were included in the initial list of accused in the following order:

1. Hermann Wilhelm Goering (German) Hermann Wilhelm Goering), Reichsmarschall, Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force
2. Rudolf Hess (German) Rudolf Heß), Hitler's deputy in charge of the Nazi Party.
3. Joachim von Ribbentrop (German) Ullrich Friedrich Willy Joachim von Ribbentrop ), Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany.
4. Wilhelm Keitel (German) Wilhelm Keitel), Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces.
5. Robert Ley (German) Robert Ley), head of the Labor Front
6. Ernst Kaltenbrunner (German) Ernst Kaltenbrunner), head of the RSHA.
7. Alfred Rosenberg (German) Alfred Rosenberg), one of the main ideologists of Nazism, Reich Minister for Eastern Affairs.
8. Hans Frank (German) Dr. Hans Frank), head of the occupied Polish lands.
9. Wilhelm Frick (German) Wilhelm Frick), Reich Minister of the Interior.
10. Julius Streicher (German) Julius Streicher), Gauleiter, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Sturmovik" (German. Der Stürmer - Der Stürmer).
11. Walter Funk (German) Walther Funk), Minister of Economy after Shakht.
12. Hjalmar Schacht (German) Hjalmar Schacht), Reich Minister of Economics before the war.
13. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (German) Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach ), head of the Friedrich Krupp concern.
14. Karl Dönitz (German) Karl Donitz), Grand Admiral of the Navy of the Third Reich, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, after the death of Hitler and in accordance with his posthumous will - President of Germany
15. Erich Raeder (German) Erich Raeder), Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.
16. Baldur von Schirach (German) Baldur Benedikt von Schirach), head of the Hitler Youth, Gauleiter of Vienna.
17. Fritz Sauckel (German) Fritz Sauckel), head of the forced deportations to the Reich of labor from the occupied territories.
18. Alfred Jodl (German) Alfred Jodl), Chief of Staff of the OKW Operations Command
19. Martin Bormann (German) Martin Bormann), the head of the party chancellery, was accused in absentia.
20. Franz von Papen (German) Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen ), Chancellor of Germany before Hitler, then Ambassador to Austria and Turkey.
21. Arthur Seyss-Inquart (German) Dr. Arthur Seyß-Inquart), Chancellor of Austria, then Imperial Commissioner of occupied Holland.
22. Albert Speer (German) Albert Speer), Reich Minister of Armaments.
23. Constantin von Neurath (German) Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath ), in the first years of Hitler's reign, Minister of Foreign Affairs, then governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
24. Hans Fritsche (German) Hans Fritzsche), head of the press and radio broadcasting department at the Ministry of Propaganda.

Remarks to the accusation

The accused were asked to write on it their attitude towards the accusation. Raeder and Ley wrote nothing (Ley's response was actually his suicide shortly after the charges were filed), but the remaining defendants wrote the following:

1. Hermann Wilhelm Goering: “The winner is always the judge, and the loser is the accused!”
2. Rudolf Hess: “I don’t regret anything”
3. Joachim von Ribbentrop: "The wrong people have been charged"
4. Wilhelm Keitel: “An order for a soldier is always an order!”
5. Ernst Kaltenbrunner: “I am not responsible for war crimes, I was only fulfilling my duty as head of the intelligence agencies, and I refuse to serve as some kind of ersatz Himmler”
6. Alfred Rosenberg: “I reject the charge of 'conspiracy'. Anti-Semitism was only a necessary defensive measure.”
7. Hans Frank: “I view this trial as a supreme court pleasing to God, designed to understand the terrible period of Hitler’s reign and bring it to an end.”
8. Wilhelm Frick: "The entire accusation is based on the assumption of participation in a conspiracy"
9. Julius Streicher: “This trial is the triumph of world Jewry”
10. Hjalmar Schacht: “I don’t understand at all why I’ve been charged”
11. Walter Funk: “Never in my life have I, either consciously or out of ignorance, done anything that would give rise to such accusations. If, out of ignorance or as a result of delusions, I committed the acts listed in the indictment, then my guilt should be considered in the light of my personal tragedy, but not as a crime.”
12. Karl Dönitz: “None of the charges have anything to do with me. American inventions!
13. Baldur von Schirach: "All troubles come from racial politics"
14. Fritz Sauckel: “The gulf between the ideal of a socialist society, nurtured and defended by me, a former sailor and worker, and these terrible events - the concentration camps - deeply shocked me”
15. Alfred Jodl: “The mixture of just accusations and political propaganda is regrettable”
16. Franz von Papen: “The accusation horrified me, firstly, with the awareness of the irresponsibility as a result of which Germany was plunged into this war, which turned into a world catastrophe, and secondly, with the crimes that were committed by some of my compatriots. The latter are inexplicable from a psychological point of view. It seems to me that the years of godlessness and totalitarianism are to blame for everything. It was they who turned Hitler into a pathological liar."
17. Arthur Seyss-Inquart: “I would like to hope that this is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War”
18. Albert Speer: “The process is necessary. Even an authoritarian state does not relieve each individual of responsibility for the terrible crimes committed.”
19. Constantin von Neurath: “I have always been against accusations without a possible defense”
20. Hans Fritsche: “This is the most terrible accusation of all time. Only one thing can be more terrible: the impending accusation that the German people will bring against us for abusing their idealism.”

Groups or organizations to which the defendants belonged were also charged.

Even before the start of the trial, after reading the indictment, on November 25, 1945, the head of the Labor Front, Robert Ley, committed suicide in his cell. Gustav Krupp was declared terminally ill by a medical commission, and his case was dropped before trial.

The remaining accused were brought to trial.

Progress of the process

The International Military Tribunal was formed on a parity basis from representatives of the four great powers in accordance with the London Agreement.

Tribunal members

• from the USA: former Attorney General of the country F. Biddle.
• from the USSR: Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Major General of Justice I. T. Nikitchenko.
• for Great Britain: Chief Justice, Lord Geoffrey Lawrence.
• from France: professor of criminal law A. Donnedier de Vabres.

Each of the 4 countries sent their own to the process main accusers, their deputies and assistants:

• from the USA: US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.
• from the USSR: Prosecutor General of the Ukrainian SSR R. A. Rudenko.
• from UK: Hartley Shawcross
• from France: François de Menton, who was absent during the first days of the trial and was replaced by Charles Dubost, and then Champentier de Ribes was appointed instead of de Menton.

A total of 216 court hearings were held, the chairman of the court was the representative of Great Britain J. Lawrence. Various evidence was presented, among them the so-called for the first time appeared. “secret protocols” to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (presented by I. Ribbentrop’s lawyer A. Seidl).

Due to the post-war aggravation of relations between the USSR and the West, the process was tense, this gave the accused hope that the process would collapse. The situation became especially tense after Churchill's Fulton speech, when the real possibility of war against the USSR arose. Therefore, the accused behaved boldly, skillfully played for time, hoping that the coming war would put an end to the trial (Goering contributed most to this). At the end of the trial, the USSR prosecution provided a film about the concentration camps of Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, shot by front-line cameramen of the Soviet army.

Accusations

1. Nazi Party Plans:
   • Using Nazi control for aggression against foreign countries.
   • Aggressive actions against Austria and Czechoslovakia.
   • Attack on Poland.
   • Aggressive war against the whole world (-).
   • The German invasion of the territory of the USSR in violation of the non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939.
   • Cooperation with Italy and Japan and the war of aggression against the United States (November 1936 - December 1941).
2. Crimes against peace:
   • « All of the accused and various other persons, for a number of years prior to May 8, 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation and conduct of aggressive wars, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and obligations».
3. War crimes:
   • Killings and ill-treatment of civilians in occupied territories and on the high seas.
   • Removal of the civilian population of the occupied territories into slavery and for other purposes.
   • Killings and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of countries with which Germany was at war, as well as persons sailing on the high seas.
   • The aimless destruction of cities and towns and villages, devastation not justified by military necessity.
   • Germanization of the occupied territories.
4. Crimes against humanity:
   • The defendants pursued a policy of persecution, repression and extermination of the enemies of the Nazi government. The Nazis imprisoned people without a trial, subjected them to persecution, humiliation, enslavement, torture, and killed them.

Hitler did not take all the responsibility with him to his grave. All the blame is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. These living have chosen these dead as their accomplices in this grandiose brotherhood of conspirators, and each of them must pay for the crime they committed together.

It can be said that Hitler committed his last crime against the country he ruled. He was a mad messiah who started a war for no reason and continued it senselessly. If he could no longer rule, then he did not care what would happen to Germany...

They stand before this court as blood-stained Gloucester stood before the body of his slain king. He begged the widow as they beg you: “Tell me I didn’t kill them.” And the queen replied: “Then say that they are not killed. But they are dead." If you say that these people are innocent, it is the same as saying that there was no war, no dead, no crime.

From Robert Jackson's indictment

Sentence

International Military Tribunal sentenced:

• To death by hanging: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia), Jodl.
• To life imprisonment: Hess, Funk, Raeder.
• To 20 years in prison: Schirach, Speer.
• To 15 years in prison: Neyrata.
• To 10 years in prison: Dönitz.
• Justified: Fritsche, Papen, Schacht

Soviet judge I. T. Nikitchenko filed a dissenting opinion, where he objected to the acquittal of Fritzsche, Papen and Schacht, the non-recognition of the German cabinet, the General Staff and the High Command of criminal organizations, as well as life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty) for Rudolf Hess.

Jodl was posthumously completely acquitted when the case was reviewed by a Munich court in 1953, but later, under US pressure, the decision to overturn the verdict of the Nuremberg court was annulled.

The Tribunal recognized the SS, SD, SA, Gestapo and the leadership of the Nazi Party as criminal organizations.

A number of convicts submitted petitions to the Allied Control Commission for Germany: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Sauckel, Jodl, Keitel, Seyss-Inquart, Funk, Doenitz and Neurath - for pardon; Raeder - on replacing life imprisonment with the death penalty; Goering, Jodl and Keitel - about replacing hanging with shooting if the request for clemency is not granted. All of these requests were rejected.

The death penalty was carried out on the night of October 16, 1946 in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison. Goering poisoned himself in prison shortly before his execution (there is an assumption that his wife gave him a capsule with poison during their last kiss).

Trials of lesser war criminals continued in Nuremberg until the 1950s (see Subsequent Nuremberg Trials), but not in the International Tribunal, but in an American court.

On August 15, 1946, the American Office of Information published a review of surveys conducted, according to which an overwhelming number of Germans (about 80 percent) considered the Nuremberg trials fair and the guilt of the defendants undeniable; about half of those surveyed responded that the defendants should be sentenced to death; only four percent responded negatively to the process.

Execution and cremation of the bodies of convicts

One of the witnesses to the execution, writer Boris Polevoy, published his memories and impressions of the execution. The sentence was carried out by American Sergeant John Wood - “at his own request.”

Going to the gallows, most of them tried to appear brave. Some behaved defiantly, others resigned themselves to their fate, but there were also those who cried out for God's mercy. All but Rosenberg made short statements at the last minute. And only Julius Streicher mentioned Hitler. In the gym, where American guards were playing basketball just 3 days ago, there were three black gallows, two of which were used. They hanged one at a time, but in order to finish it quickly, the next Nazi was brought into the hall while the previous one was still hanging on the gallows.

The condemned walked up 13 wooden steps to an 8-foot-high platform. Ropes hung from beams supported by two posts. The hanged man fell into the interior of the gallows, the bottom of which was covered with dark curtains on one side and covered with wood on three sides so that no one could see the death throes of the hanged.

After the execution of the last convict (Seys-Inquart), a stretcher with Goering's body was brought into the hall so that he would take a symbolic place under the gallows, and also so that journalists could be convinced of his death.

After the execution, the bodies of the hanged and the corpse of the suicide Goering were laid in a row. “Representatives of all the Allied powers,” wrote one Soviet journalist, “examined them and signed the death certificates. Photographs were taken of each body, clothed and naked. Then each corpse was wrapped in a mattress along with the last clothes it was wearing, and with the rope on which he was hanged and placed in a coffin. All the coffins were sealed. While the rest of the bodies were being handled, Goering’s body, covered with an army blanket, was also brought on a stretcher... At 4 o’clock in the morning the coffins were loaded into 2.5-ton trucks, waiting in the prison yard, they were covered with a waterproof tarpaulin and driven along by a military escort, with an American captain in the lead vehicle, followed by a French and an American general. Then followed by trucks and a jeep guarding them with specially selected soldiers and a machine gun. The convoy drove through Nuremberg and Having left the city, he headed south.

At dawn they approached Munich and immediately headed to the outskirts of the city to the crematorium, the owner of which had been warned about the arrival of the corpses of “fourteen American soldiers.” There were actually only eleven corpses, but they said so in order to lull possible suspicions of the crematorium staff. The crematorium was surrounded, and radio contact was established with the soldiers and tank crews of the cordon in case of any alarm. Anyone who entered the crematorium was not allowed to return until the end of the day. The coffins were opened and the bodies were checked by American, British, French and Soviet officers present at the execution to ensure they had not been switched along the way. After this, cremation began immediately and continued throughout the day. When this matter was finished, a car drove up to the crematorium and a container with ashes was placed in it. The ashes were scattered from the plane into the wind.

Conclusion

Having convicted the main Nazi criminals, the International Military Tribunal recognized aggression as the gravest crime of an international character. The Nuremberg trials are sometimes called " By the court of history", since he had a significant influence on the final defeat of Nazism. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Funk and Raeder were pardoned in 1957. After Speer and Schirach were released in 1966, only Hess remained in prison. The right-wing forces of Germany repeatedly demanded to pardon him, but the victorious powers refused to commute the sentence. On August 17, 1987, Hess was found hanged in a gazebo in the prison yard.

The American film “Nuremberg” is dedicated to the Nuremberg trials ( Nuremberg) ().

At the Nuremberg trial I said: “If Hitler had friends, I would be his friend. I owe to him the inspiration and glory of my youth as well as later horror and guilt.”

In the image of Hitler, as he was in relation to me and others, one can discern some sympathetic features. One also gets the impression of a person who is gifted and selfless in many respects. But the longer I wrote, the more I felt that it was about superficial qualities.

Because such impressions are countered by an unforgettable lesson: the Nuremberg trials. I will never forget one photographic document depicting a Jewish family going to death: a man with his wife and his children on the way to death. It still stands before my eyes today.

In Nuremberg I was sentenced to twenty years in prison. The verdict of the military tribunal, no matter how imperfectly the story was portrayed, attempted to articulate guilt. The punishment, always ill-suited to measuring historical responsibility, put an end to my civil existence. And that photograph stripped my life of its foundation. It turned out to last longer than the sentence.

Museum

Currently, the courtroom (“Room 600”), where the Nuremberg trials took place, is the usual working premises of the Nuremberg Regional Court (address: Bärenschanzstraße 72, Nürnberg). However, on weekends there are excursions (from 13 to 16 hours every day). In addition, the documentation center for the history of Nazi congresses in Nuremberg has a special exhibition dedicated to the Nuremberg trials. This new museum (opened November 4) also has audio guides in Russian.

Notes

Literature

• Gilbert G. M. Nuremberg Diary. The process through the eyes of a psychologist / trans. with him. A. L. Utkina. - Smolensk: Rusich, 2004. - 608 pp. ISBN 5-8138-0567-2

see also

• “The Nuremberg Trials” is a feature film by Stanley Kramer (1961).
• “Nuremberg Alarm” is a 2008 two-part documentary film based on the book by Alexander Zvyagintsev.