The Nuremberg legacy

Only a few of the accused admitted their crimes or showed remorse. Most considered themselves innocent and said they were simply following orders.

When the Nuremberg trials ended 60 years ago on October 1, 12 of Hitler’s closest associates were sentenced to death, three given life terms and four lengthy prison sentences for the atrocities they inflicted in the name of the Nazi regime. Three were acquitted.
The International Military Tribunal that conducted the trials came to the conclusion that most of the accused were guilty of crimes against humanity.
The tribunal also found them guilty of a “conspiracy against world peace” and organising a war of aggression.
The verdicts, which came at the end of a 218-day trial in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, marked the climax of a legal process that attracted worldwide attention not only because of the gruesome nature of the crimes but also the legal principles involved.
For the first time, a government and those who served in it was called to account for the crimes committed on its behalf, and not the state itself or its people.
The four victorious powers — Britain, France, Russia and the United States — agreed on the rules of evidence after a lengthy debate, setting the scene for later courts to follow their example.
On December 11, 1946, the United Nations declared that the rules of evidence adopted at the trial would become international law, prompting lawyers to speak to this day of the “Nuremberg Principles.”
One aspect the international panel of judges in Nuremberg had to take into account was a request from the Americans for the differing degrees of guilt of the accused to be measured.
During the 11 months of proceedings, some 236 witnesses were questioned, and about 300,000 statutory declarations and 5,330 documents were examined. The protocols of the trials comprise four million words that fill 22 volumes with some 15,000 pages in total.
Some 7,300 metres of film were shown, much of it documenting Nazi atrocities in concentration camps. Such graphic footage failed to arouse any sense of wrongdoing in any but a few Nazi leaders.
Hermann Goering, chief of the air force and Hitler’s designated successor, remained uncontrite until the end, openly admitting his role in establishing concentration camps and the use of slave labour.
When Goering was given the death sentence, he cheated his captors by crunching on a cyanide capsule and dying in his cell on the eve of his execution set for October 16. His body was taken to the Nuremberg gymnasium where 10 fellow war criminals were hanged.
Their remains were later cremated and their ashes strewn in the Conwentzbach, a tributary of the Isar river which flows through southern Germany.
The Palace of Justice resembled a fortress during the trial, cordoned off and protected by troops of the allied powers to guard against an attack by the Nazi resistance movement “Werwolf.”
Tanks were positioned in the suburb where the court was located and trams were forbidden to halt outside the building on the journey to the Nuremberg city centre.
Historians believe Nuremberg was chosen as the venue for the trials because of its historic significance for the “Third Reich” and its location as Nazi party conference venue.
Other considerations were a tunnel leading from the Justice Palace to the nearby prison and the fact that the building was largely unscathed by allied bombing.