Nuremberg Trials

What happened during the trial?

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layout of the courtroom


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The chief prosecutor was Robert Jackson. He was the one who did the opening statement for the trials.

"The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

In the prisoners' dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.

What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are 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. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. 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."


Brought to the witness stand were S. S. General Otto Ohlendorf concernting Einstazgrubben atrocities, Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier who talked about the Auschwitz gassing, and Abam Suzkever who discussed the Einsatzgruppen atrocities in Vilna. All of the people accused were also put on the stand.


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the view from where the press sat

Who was on the court?

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The head of the trial was the British judge Geoffrey Lawrence. The British alternate judge was Norman Birkett. From America Francis Biddle, previous attorney general under President Franklin Roosevelt, was appointed. John Parker was the alternate judge from America for the Nuremberg Trials. The French sent Judge Henri Donnedieu de Vabres who spoke fluent German. The alternate judge from France was Robert Falco who had served on France's highest court. Ion Nikitchenko was a prosecutor from the Soviet Union but was recalled to Moscow and then appointed as a judge from the trials. The alternate judge was Alexander Volchkov. 

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To the left is a pictures of all of the judges during the Nuremberg Trials. Some judges were part of only specific trials.