WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
On November 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal began hearings in war crimes cases against senior leaders of the German Nazi regime and its military apparatus. The proceedings were held in the city of Nuremberg, which had been the scene of the Nazi’s annual rallies, and they became known as the Nuremberg trials.
The tribunal had been established in the wake of Germany’s defeat to the Allied powers in May. The US, Britain, and the Soviet Union were represented by the chief prosecutors at the trials, which were also presided over by judges from the Allied nations.
The 24 defendants included top officials of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the General Staff and High Command. They were indicted for “Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; Participating in war crimes, and Crimes against humanity.”
In his opening address on November 21, US prosecutor Robert H. Jackson stated that the defendants were “symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life.”
He warned, “Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.”
The trial would hear extensive evidence of the Nazi regime’s preparations for wars of aggression and their prosecution, and the genocide of six million European Jews, as well as Roma, political dissidents and the disabled.
Notwithstanding the trials, the Allied powers would leave thousands of former Nazi officials in places of prominence, as they sought to stave off the prospect of socialist revolution and ensure the stabilization of capitalism in Germany and throughout Europe.
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