October 1, 1946, Nuremberg Defendants Sentenced:
Sixty-four years ago today, on October 1, 1946, 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted.
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 war crimes, to crimes against humanity. All of these offenses are felonies under generally accepted principles of international law, thus the international nature of the tribunal.
Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the British member, presided over the proceedings, which lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions.
Nuremberg judges, left to right: John Parker, Francis Biddle, Alexander Volchkov, Iola Nikitchenko, Geoffrey Lawrence, Norman Birkett
Perhaps unfortunately, the two biggest offenders (Hitler and Joseph Geobbels) avoided trial by offing-themselves in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin just before the Red Army made it there to arrest the sick bastages.
On October 1, 1946, the 12 surviving 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.
Feldmarschal Alfred Jodl...big shot Nazi
Defendants Rudolf Hess (first row, left), Joachim von Ribbentrop (first row, right), Karl Doenitz (second row, left), Erich Raeder (second row, middle), and Balder von Schirach (second row, right) sit in the dock during the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-46.
On October 16, the 10 of the architects of Nazi policy sentenced on October 1 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.
Goering testifies.
BTW,There is evidence an American MP officer the still charming Hermann Goering had befriended during incarceration., while not directly implicated, may have "looked the other way" when Goering killed himself. No one knows how or where Goering hid his cyanide capsules during his imprisonment and trial.
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 well into the 1950s and resulted in the conviction of 5,025 other defendants and the execution of 806.
It should also be noted, of those Germans who were convicted but not sentenced to death, none remained in prison by 1960 as the West German government released them at the end of the Allied occupation. Opinions vary as to why this was so, but most scholars acknowledge the releases had a great deal to do with the fact that Germans generally didn't wish to continue to impose "victors' justice" on their fellow Germans, most of whom were "just following orders."
That "just following orders" defense has forever since been called the "Nuremberg defense" in legal circles. It didn't work at the tribunals because the prosecution was effective in convincing the tribunal that war crimes of the nature and scope committed by the defendants were so heinous it was their duty to humanity to disobey those orders, even if doing so meant death at the hands of their Nazi superiors.
One more fact I've always found interesting. Capital punishment is no longer the law in any European country. None of them. However, it was not outlawed in any European state until the last convicted war criminal was snuffed in the latter half of the 1950's. Hmmmm.
