Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II.
The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the British member, presided over the proceedings, which lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions.
On October 1, 1946, 12 architects of Nazi policy were sentenced to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Of the original 24 defendants, one, Robert Ley, committed suicide while in prison, and another, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was deemed mentally and physically incompetent to stand trial. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, leader of the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe; Alfred Jodl, head of the German armed forces staff; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior.
On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged. Goering, who at sentencing was called the "leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews," committed suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia (but is now believed to have died in May 1945). Trials of lesser German and Axis war criminals continued in Germany into the 1950s and resulted in the conviction of 5,025 other defendants and the execution of 806.
Thank you for that info. I never knew and/or forgot but those stats "resulted in the conviction of 5,025 other defendants and the execution of 806" are shocking to say the least.
Did we get really pissed at the Germans?
How many Japanese were brought to trial an convicted?
Not only that Pat, how many Soviets were tried for war crimes?
Rudolph,
of course as the saying goes, recorded history is written by the victors.. lolo as I remember, the Russians were with Hitler at the start,,, hmmm I know Ive read of Soviet "re-education camps" etc etc,, "Gulags" or some such,, Ive read that as many as ten million, compared to Germany's six million,, BUT of course after Barbarossa,,,,,,
Nemesis/Montana:
While not as well known in the States, there was a protracted effort to bring Japanese war criminals to justice as described below:
Soon after the war, the Allied powers indicted 25 individuals as Class-A war criminals, and 5,700 individuals were indicted as Class-B or Class-C war criminals by Allied criminal trials. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received some prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. These numbers included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Koreans.[70] The Class-A charges were all tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as "the Tokyo Trials". Other courts were formed in many different places in Asia and the Pacific.
It seems the initial trials and the death sentences, unlike what happened at Nuremberg, were rarely commuted and many of the lower class convicted were executed immediately.
Dan
the exception was for Japanese Royalty - Prince Asaka Yasuhiko commander of Japanese forces during the Rape of Nanking played golf the rest of his life, which lasted to 1981
Its a fair assumption that any German soldier who served in the East is a low level war criminal
806 executions sounded a lot first.
This thread also reminded how the Nazi and Soviet regimes treated not just their enemies but their own people.
I recently read about how the both armies ensured the soldiers would battle on. Nazis executed at least 15 - 20 000 soldiers of their own (1), while Soviet human waves required possibly as many as 422 000 (2) of their own soldiers to be punished / shot behind their lines.
These are mind blowing numbers.
Regarding Nazis, 806 death sentences sounds about right, then.
Learned about Japanese sentences reading this. Seems to me a true honest effort was taken to take the war criminals of the Pacific theatre to courts as well.
(1) Anthony Beevor, "Berlin", 2002
(2) Anthony Beevor, "Stalingrad", 2000, although the number includes those who died in punishment battalions.
(Some edits after posting)
As is usual when treading near political water it's best to seperate the human condition from the political condition. In the East many Japanese were held locally, tried, convicted and executed by local governments as simple criminals rather than war criminals.
Many were executed without being part of any official post war effort.
I believe this is a good way to approach post war crime and punishment issues, although the standards and morality of human conduct during war often becomes an atrocity itself.
So...how do we equate international laws such as the Geneva Convention (unsigned by Japan until after WWII) against the local standards and norms? It's akin to making it more of a crime to kill someone from another race than to kill one of your own. I.E., are "hate crimes" worse than "crimes"?
I believe the answer can be found in human nature itself, the pack mentality, and why we've been killing each other since we could pick up a rock.
Figures such as Stalin's Purges and his estimated (up to) 20 million Russian murders trivializes dehumanizes and makes an abstraction of it all to me.
When I read about one beaten and tortured Polish boy stumbling through the Warsaw ghetto and leading a group of SS into an ambush at the cost of his own life...in retribution for his mother and father who were burned alive...I get it.
MacArthur was accused of being a collaborator during the war crimes. Respectfully and with all due aplomb rendered unto his Caesership, but he was accused.
His legal group functioned as a defense team for the Emporer and the rest of his royal family that were granted immunity from prosecution. He forgave hundreds of convicted criminals including the surgical teams who vivisected Allied aircrew limb by limb without anaesthea. Why? Historians don't seem to know, but I'm sure at least in part he was trying to put down the sword and forge that plowshare, and I'm not sure any more should be read into it.
The official version appears to be that pardoning the Emporer and His Family was the best way to get an unconditional surrender from Japan and this was a guarantee prior to the armistice. It has the ring of truth to it...but how "unconditional" is a surrender with conditions attached?
I believe we may have done a disservice by exempting the Japanese royal family from responsibility. In a culture that has openly accepted paying compensation for it's war crime victims, we still see no evidence of a real apology which would include dogeza.
Such a gesture would be lost on much of the world including my little corner of it, but it appears as though China, Korea, the Phillipines and many other neighboring Asian nations will continue to debate over it for generations to come.