The international tribunal for fascist criminals met in. The Nuremberg trials: briefly about the main trial of history

MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. November 20, 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Nuremberg trials, which tried the case of the main Nazi criminals responsible for unleashing the Second World War. This was the first experience in history of condemning crimes of a national scale - the ruling regime, its punitive institutions, senior political and military figures.

For the first time, war criminals failed to evade responsibility, citing the need to carry out orders from above.

The Nuremberg trial is the only one of its kind in the history of world jurisprudence; it has the greatest social significance for millions of people around the globe

Geoffrey Lawrence

chairman of the tribunal

24 government and military leaders of Nazi Germany were put on trial. Cases against the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) Adolf Hitler and representatives of the Fuhrer's inner circle - Joseph Goebbels (Minister of Education and Propaganda) and Heinrich Himmler (Minister of the Interior and head of the SS) were not initiated, since they committed suicide yet before the process starts.

The issue of recognizing as criminal was also brought up for consideration by the tribunal:

SS (Schutzstaffel, security detachments, paramilitary forces of the NSDAP),
SA (Sturmabteilung, assault troops),
SD (Sicherheitsdienst, security Service),
Gestapo (Gestapo, Geheime Staatspolizei, secret state police),

as well as the government, the leadership of the NSDAP, the General Staff and the High Command of the German Armed Forces.

How the tribunal was created

The issue of punishing Nazi criminals was raised by the leaders of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA even before the end of World War II.

It was emphasized that Nazi officers and soldiers who committed “atrocities, murders and mass executions” on the territory of the occupied countries, after the end of the war, would be sent “to the places of their crimes and will be judged by the peoples against whom they committed violence.”

The agreement on the establishment of the International Military Tribunal was concluded by the governments of the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France on August 8, 1945 in London.

Tribunal Charter

On the same day, the tribunal's charter was adopted. His first article noted that the goal of the Nuremberg trials was “a speedy and fair trial and punishment of the main war criminals of the Axis countries.”

Article 6 of the statute classified three main groups of crimes:

crimes against peace (unleashing a war of aggression);

war crimes (violations of the laws and customs of warfare recorded in various international documents, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907);

crimes against humanity (murder of civilians, racism, genocide, etc.).

The defendants were accused of these crimes, as well as “participation in the creation and implementation general plan to accomplish them."

Article 27 provided for "the death penalty or such other punishment as the tribunal considers just."

To find the defendant guilty and determine his punishment, the votes of at least three members of the tribunal were required.

It is believed that the process marked the beginning of the formation and development of a new direction of jurisprudence - international criminal law and justice.

Who entered the tribunal

To make judicial decisions, each of the four parties appointed one member and one alternate to the tribunal:

USSR- Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Major General of Justice Ion Nikitchenko and Colonel of Justice Alexander Volchkov;
USA- former prosecutor general of the country Francis Biddle and judge John Parker;
Great Britain- Chief Justice Geoffrey Lawrence and Justice Norman Birket;
France- Professor of Criminal Law Henri Donnedier de Vabres and Judge Robert Falco.

An indictment committee was also established, to which each of the four governments appointed a chief prosecutor:

USSR- Prosecutor of the Ukrainian SSR Roman Rudenko;
USA- US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson;
Great Britain- lawyer Hartley Shawcross;
France - law professor François de Menton, but during the trial he was replaced by lawyers Charles Dubost and Champetier de Ribes.

Other prosecutors also took part in the trial.

Continuation

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Press about the tribunal

Media representatives from 31 countries attended the trial. In the USSR, the press reported daily on what was happening in Nuremberg. TASS information was supplemented by reports from journalists present at the meetings, including famous writers Leonid Leonov, Ilya Erenburg, Boris Polevoy and documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen.

Today at 10 a.m. local time (12 p.m. Moscow time) a meeting of the International Military Tribunal took place. For many years in a row, the Nazis held their congresses in Nuremberg, where they outlined aggressive plans for the enslavement of the world, where, to the beat of drums and the sounds of fanfare, the Nazis boasted of their victories and proclaimed " new order" in Europe

TASS correspondent

Before the opening of the meeting, the hall was filled with:

“There are 20 major German war criminals in the dock. Four defendants are missing. There is no Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy for the leadership of Hitler’s party. He cowardly fled after heart-rendingly calling on the German army and the German people to fight to the last drop of blood. Defendant Robert Ley hanged himself in prison, without waiting for trial. The defendant Gustav Krupp von Bohlen lies in Salzburg, paralyzed, and, according to the expert opinion, cannot stand trial. The defendant Kaltenbruner, a famous executioner and one of the leaders of the Gestapo, suddenly fell ill. But the court announced its decision to examine his case in his absence,” TASS reported.

It's like we're in the devil's kitchen right now. What we learn deserves such a name. Thanks to the documents brought by the prosecution, we see how a bunch of international robbers, intoxicated by their bloody successes in Western Europe, completely cold-bloodedly planned not only the dismemberment of our Motherland, not only the robbery of its peoples, but also their physical extermination

Boris Polevoy

During the trial, a film was shown about the crimes of the Nazis in the concentration camps of Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, as well as in the occupied territories of the USSR. This moment, which was called the confrontation between executioners and victims, is considered the culmination of the Nuremberg trials.

When they showed a film about the camps, Schacht turned his back to the screen - he didn’t want to watch; others looked on, and Frank cried and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. It sounds implausible, but I saw it: Frank, the same one who wrote that in Poland when he arrived there there were three and a half million Jews, and in 1944 of them a hundred thousand remained, sobbed when he saw on the screen what which I have seen a million times in reality; maybe he cried over himself - he realized what awaited him

Ilya Erenburg

12 death sentences

The process lasted 11 months.

During this time, 403 open court hearings took place. A total of 360 witnesses were questioned and about 200 thousand written testimonies were reviewed.

Most were found guilty on all charges or partially. None of them admitted their guilt.

The tribunal sentenced twelve defendants to death, and another nine to prison terms, including life sentences. Three were acquitted.

The following were sentenced to death by hanging:

Hermann Goering ("successor of the Fuhrer", President of the Reichstag, Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force);
Wilhelm Keitel (Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command);
Joachim von Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister);
Hans Frank (Governor General of occupied Poland);
Wilhelm Frick (one of the leaders of the NSDAP);
Alfred Jodl (Chief of Operations of the German High Command);
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Head of the Main Office of Reich Security);
Alfred Rosenberg (one of the main ideologists of Nazism);
Fritz Sauckel (led the forced deportations of the population from the occupied territories);
Arthur Seyss-Inquart (German Commissioner in the occupied Netherlands);
Julius Streicher (one of the ideologists of Nazism);
Martin Bormann (head of the Nazi Party chancellery; convicted in absentia because his whereabouts were unknown; in 1973, a German court officially declared him dead).

Life imprisonment received:

Rudolf Hess (one of Hitler's closest associates, committed suicide in Berlin Spandau prison in 1987);
Erich Raeder (Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, released in 1955 for health reasons);
Walter Funk (Minister of Economics, released in 1957 for health reasons).

Sentenced to 20 years in prison:

Baldur von Schirach (one of the leaders of the NSDAP);
Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments).

Konstantin von Neurath (one of the leaders of the SS) was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Karl Doenitz (Hitler's successor as head of state) was sentenced to 10 years.

The leadership of the Nazi Party, SS, SD and Gestapo were declared criminal organizations.

The SA (assault troopers), the government of Nazi Germany, the general staff and the high command of the German armed forces were not recognized as criminal.

Acquitted

Acquittals were made against diplomat Franz von Papen, financier Helmar Schacht and head of the internal propaganda department of the German Ministry of Education and Propaganda Hans Fritsche.

The representative of the USSR at the tribunal, Iona Nikitchenko, issued a statement in which he expressed disagreement with the acquittals.

Continuation

Subsequently, materials from the Nuremberg trials were used during trials against fascist criminals in other countries. In particular, on their basis, a prominent figure of the NSDAP, Erich Koch (1959, Poland; the execution was later commuted to life imprisonment) and one of the Gestapo leaders responsible for the extermination of Jews, Adolf Eichmann (1961, Israel) were sentenced to death. .

Execution of the sentence

On the night of October 16, 1946, death sentences were carried out in the building of the Nuremberg prison (Herman Goering took potassium cyanide 2.5 hours before his execution).

The bodies of the war criminals were burned in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes were scattered from the plane.

Journalists were present at the execution of the sentence - two people from each of the four Allied powers.

History has never seen such a trial. The leaders of the defeated country were not killed, they were not treated as honorable prisoners, and they were not given asylum by any neutral state. The leadership of Nazi Germany, almost in its entirety, was detained, arrested and put in the dock. They did the same with Japanese war criminals, holding the Tokyo People's Court, but this happened a little later. The Nuremberg trials gave a criminal and ideological assessment of the actions statesmen, with whom world leaders negotiated, concluded pacts and trade agreements until 1939 inclusive. Then they were received, visited, and generally treated with respect. Now they sat in the dock, silent or answering the questions asked. Then, accustomed to honor and luxury, they were taken to cells.

Retribution

US Army Sergeant J. Wood was an experienced professional executioner with extensive pre-war experience. IN hometown In San Antonio (Texas), he personally executed almost three and a half hundred notorious scoundrels, most of whom were serial killers. But this was the first time he had to work with such “material.”

The permanent leader of the Nazi youth organization "Hitler Youth" Streicher resisted and had to be dragged to the gallows by force. Then John strangled him manually. Keitel, Jodl and Ribbentrop suffered for a long time with their airways already clamped in a noose; for several minutes they could not die.

At the last moment, realizing that they could not pity the executioner, many of the condemned still found the strength to accept death for granted. Von Ribbentrop said words that have not lost their relevance today, wishing Germany unity and mutual understanding between East and West. Keitel, who signed the surrender and, in general, did not participate in the planning of aggressive campaigns (except for the never carried out attack on India), paid tribute to the fallen German soldiers by remembering them. Yodel gave a final greeting home country. And so on.

Ribbentrop was the first to ascend the scaffold. Then it was Kaltenbrunner's turn, who suddenly remembered God. His last prayer was not denied.

The execution continued for a long time, and in order to speed up the process, the convicts began to be brought into the gym where it took place, without waiting for the end of the agony of the previous victim. Ten were hanged, two more (Goering and Ley) were able to avoid shameful execution by committing suicide.

After several examinations, the corpses were burned and the ashes scattered.

Preparation of the process

The Nuremberg trials began in the late autumn of 1945, on November 20. It was preceded by an investigation that lasted six months. In total, 27 kilometers of tape film were used, thirty thousand photographic prints were made, and a huge number of newsreels (mostly captured ones) were viewed. Based on these figures, unprecedented in 1945, one can judge the titanic work of the investigators who prepared the Nuremberg trials. Transcripts and other documents took up about two hundred tons of writing paper (fifty million sheets).

To make a decision, the court needed to hold more than four hundred meetings.

Charges were brought against 24 officials who held various positions in Nazi Germany. It was based on the principles of the Charter adopted for a new court called the International Military Tribunal. For the first time, the legal concept of a crime against humanity was introduced. The list of persons subject to prosecution under the articles of this document was published on August 29, 1945, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Criminal plans and plans

Aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the USSR and, as the document says, “the whole world,” was blamed on the German leadership. The conclusion of cooperation agreements with fascist Italy and militaristic Japan was also called criminal acts. One of the charges was an attack on the United States. In addition to specific actions, the former German government was accused of aggressive plans.

But that was not the main thing. Whatever insidious plans Hitler’s elite had, they were judged not for their thoughts about conquering India, Africa, Ukraine and Russia, but for what the Nazis did in their own country and beyond.

Crimes against peoples

The hundreds of thousands of pages that occupy the materials of the Nuremberg trials irrefutably prove the inhumane treatment of civilians of the occupied territories, prisoners of war and the crews of ships, military and merchant, who sank the ships of the German Navy. There were also large-scale ethnic cleansings carried out along national lines. The civilian population was transported to the Reich to be used as labor resources. Death factories were built and operated at full capacity, in which the process of exterminating people took on an industrial character, for which unique technological techniques invented by the Nazis were used.

Information about the progress of the investigation and some materials from the Nuremberg trials have been published, although not all.

Humanity shuddered.

From unpublished

Already at the stage of formation of the International Military Tribunal, some delicate situations arose. The Soviet delegation brought with it to London, where preliminary consultations on the organization of the future court took place, a list of issues the consideration of which was considered undesirable for the leadership of the USSR. The Western allies agreed not to discuss topics relating to the circumstances of the conclusion of the mutual non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany in 1939, and especially the secret protocol attached to it.

There were other secrets of the Nuremberg trials that were not made public due to the far from ideal behavior of the leadership of the victorious countries in the pre-war situation and during the fighting at the fronts. It was they who could shake the balance that had developed in the world and Europe thanks to the decisions of the Tehran and Potsdam conferences. The boundaries of both states and spheres of influence, agreed upon by the Big Three, were established by 1945, and, according to their authors, were not subject to revision.

What is fascism?

Almost all documents of the Nuremberg trials have now become publicly available. It was this fact that in a certain sense cooled interest in them. They are appealed to during ideological discussions. An example is the attitude towards Stepan Bandera, who is often called Hitler’s henchman. Is it so?

German Nazism, also called fascism and recognized by the international court as a criminal ideological base, is essentially an exaggerated form of nationalism. Giving advantages to an ethnic group may well lead to the idea that members of other peoples living within the territory of a nation-state can either be forced to abandon their own culture, language or religious beliefs, or forced to emigrate. In case of non-compliance, the option of forced expulsion or even physical destruction is possible. There are more than enough examples in history.

About Bandera

In connection with the latest events in Ukraine, such an odious personality as Bandera deserves special attention. The Nuremberg trials did not directly examine the activities of the UPA. There were references to this organization in the court materials, but they concerned the relations between the occupying German troops and representatives of Ukrainian nationalists, and these did not always work out well. Thus, according to document No. 192-PS, which is a report from the Reichskommissar of Ukraine to Alfred Rosneberg (written in Rovno on March 16, 1943), the author of the document complains about the hostility of the Melnik and Bandera organizations towards the German authorities (p. 25). There, on the following pages, mention is made of “political impudence” expressed in demands to grant Ukraine state independence.

This is precisely the goal that Stepan Bandera set for the OUN. The Nuremberg trials did not consider the crimes committed by the UPA in Volyn against the Polish population, and other numerous atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists, perhaps because this topic was among the “undesirable” for the Soviet leadership. At the time when the International Military Tribunal was taking place, pockets of resistance in Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk and other western regions had not yet been suppressed by MGB forces. And it was not the Ukrainian nationalists who were involved in the Nuremberg trials. Bandera Stepan Andreevich tried to take advantage of the German invasion to implement own idea national independence. He failed. He soon found himself in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, however, as a privileged prisoner. For the time being...

Documentary

A cinematic documentary chronicle of the Nuremberg trials in 1946 has become more than just accessible. The Germans were forced to watch it, and if they refused, they were deprived of food rations. This order was in effect in all four occupation zones. It was hard for people who had been consuming Nazi propaganda for twelve years to see the humiliation suffered by those whom they had only recently believed. But it was necessary, otherwise it would hardly have been possible to get rid of the past so quickly.

The film “The Judgment of Nations” was shown on a wide screen both in the USSR and in other countries, but it evoked completely different feelings among the citizens of the victorious countries. Pride in their people, who made a decisive contribution to the victory over the personification of absolute evil, filled the hearts of Russians and Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Tajiks, Georgians and Armenians, Jews and Azerbaijanis, in general, all Soviet people, regardless of nationality. The Americans, French, and British also rejoiced, this was their victory. “The Nuremberg trials gave justice to the warmongers,” thought everyone who watched this documentary.

"Little" Nurembergs

The Nuremberg trials ended, some war criminals were hanged, others were sent to Spandau prison, and others managed to avoid just retribution by taking poison or making a homemade noose. Some even ran away and lived the rest of their lives in fear of discovery. Others were found decades later, and it was not clear whether punishment awaited them, or deliverance.

In 1946-1948, in the same Nuremberg (there was already a prepared room there, a certain symbolism also played a role in the choice of location), trials of Nazi criminals"second echelon". The very good American film “The Nuremberg Trials” of 1961 tells about one of them. The picture was shot on black and white film, although in the early 60s Hollywood could afford the brightest Technicolor. The cast includes stars of the first magnitude (Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy and many other wonderful artists). The plot is quite real, Nazi judges are being tried, handing down terrible sentences under the absurd articles that filled the codes of the Third Reich. main topic- repentance, which not everyone can come to.

This was also the Nuremberg trial. The trial stretched out over time, it involved everyone: those who carried out the sentences, and those who just wrote papers, and those who simply wanted to survive and sat on the sidelines, hoping to survive. Meanwhile, young men were executed “for disrespect for great Germany,” men who some considered inferior were forcibly sterilized, and girls were thrown into prison on charges of having relations with “subhumans.”

Decades later

With each passing decade, the events of the Second World War seem more and more academic and historical, losing their vitality in the eyes of new generations. Quite a bit more time will pass, and they will begin to seem something like Suvorov’s campaigns or the Crimean campaign. There are fewer and fewer living witnesses, and this process, unfortunately, is irreversible. The Nuremberg trials are perceived today in a completely different way than by contemporaries. The collection of materials, available to readers, reveals many legal gaps, shortcomings in the investigation, and contradictions in the testimony of witnesses and accused. The international situation in the mid-forties was not at all conducive to the objectivity of judges, and the restrictions initially established for the International Tribunal sometimes dictated political expediency to the detriment of justice. Field Marshal Keitel, who had nothing to do with the Barbarossa plan, was executed, and his “colleague” Paulus, who took an active part in the development of the aggressive doctrines of the Third Reich, testified as a witness. At the same time, both surrendered. The behavior of Hermann Goering is also of interest, as he clearly explained to his accusers that the actions of the allied countries were sometimes also criminal, both in war and in domestic life. Nobody, however, listened to him.

Humanity in 1945 was outraged, it thirsted for revenge. There was little time, but there were a lot of events to evaluate. The war has become an invaluable treasure trove of stories, human tragedies and destinies for thousands of novelists and film directors. Future historians have yet to evaluate Nuremberg.

Nuremberg trials (international military tribunal) – trial over the leaders of Nazi Germany following the results of the Second World War. The trial took place from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946, 10 months. Within the framework of an international tribunal, the victorious countries (USSR, USA, England and France) accused the leaders of Nazi Germany for war and other crimes committed by the latter from 1939 to 1945.

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Creation of an international tribunal

The International Tribunal for the Trial of German War Crimes was formed on August 8, 1945 in London. Agreements were signed there between the USSR, USA, Great Britain and France. The agreement was based on the principles of the UN (United Nations Organization) and the parties repeatedly emphasized this, including in the Agreement itself.

The tribunal will take place in Germany.
The organization, jurisdiction and functions are separately created for the tribunal.
Each country undertakes to present at the tribunal all important war criminals who are in their captivity.
The signed agreements do not cancel the Moscow Declaration of 1943. Let me remind you that according to the declaration of 1943, all war criminals were to be returned to the localities where they committed their atrocities, and there they were to be tried.
Any UN member can join the charge.
The agreement does not cancel other courts that have already been created or will be created in the future.
The agreement comes into force from the moment of signing and valid for 1 year.

It was on this basis that the Nuremberg Trials were created.

Preparation for the process

Before the Nuremberg Trials began, 2 meetings were held in Berlin at which organizational issues were discussed. The first meeting took place on October 9 in the building of the Control Council in Berlin. Minor issues were raised here - the uniform of judges, the organization of translation into 4 languages, the format of the defense, and so on. The second meeting was held on October 18 in the same building of the Control Council. This meeting, unlike the first, was open.

The International Military Tribunal in Berlin was convened to accept the indictment. This was announced by the chairman of the meeting, Major General of Justice I.T. Nikitchenko. The indictment was directed against the high command of the Wehrmacht, as well as against the organizations controlled by it: the government, the party leadership, the security forces of the SS party, the security service of the SD party, the Gestapo (secret police), the assault troops of the SA party, the general staff and the high command of the German army. The following persons were charged: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Ley, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Funk, Schacht, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Krupp, Bohlen, Halbach, Doenitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel, Jodl, Bormann, Papen, Seis-Inkvert, Speer, Neurath and Fritzsche.

The charges of the Nuremberg Tribunal consisted of 4 main points:

Conspiracy to seize power in Germany.
War crimes.
Crimes against humanity.

Each of the charges is extensive and must be considered separately.

Conspiracy to seize power

The accused were charged with the fact that they were all members of the National Socialist Party and participated in a conspiracy to seize power, realizing the consequences this would lead to.

The party created 4 postulates that became the basis of the conspiracy. These postulates made it possible to control the entire German public by imposing doctrine on them - the superiority of the German race (Aryans), the need for war for justice, the full power of the “Fuhrer” as the only person worthy to rule Germany. Actually, Germany grew up on these doctrines, which kept Europe at war for 6 years.

Further accusations of this paragraph relate to the establishment of total control over all spheres of life of the German state, with the help of which military aggression became possible.

These crimes are associated with the outbreak of wars:

September 1, 1939 – against Poland
September 3, 1939 – against France and Great Britain
9 April 1940 – against Denmark and Norway
10 May 1940 – against the Benelux countries
April 6, 1941 – against Greece and Yugoslavia
April 22, 1941 – against the USSR
December 11, 1941 – v. USA

Here's a nuance that attracts attention. Above are 7 dates on which the international tribunal accused Germany of starting wars. There are no questions about 5 of them - wars against these states actually began on these days, but what wars were started on September 3, 1939 and December 11, 1941? On what sector of the front did the German military command (which was tried at Nuremberg) start the war on September 3, 1939 against England and France, and on December 11, 1941 against the United States? Here we are dealing with a substitution of concepts. In fact, Germany started a war with Poland, for which on September 3, 1939 England and France declared war on it. And on December 11, 1941, the United States declares war on Germany after the latter had already fought with a huge number of countries (including the USSR) and after Pearl Harbor, which was perpetrated by the Japanese, not the Germans.

War crimes

The leadership of Nazi Germany was accused of the following war crimes:

Murder and cruelty to civilians. It is enough to give only the figures that, according to the indictment, in the USSR alone, this crime on the part of Germany affected about 3 million people.
The abduction of civilians into slavery. The indictment refers to 5 million citizens of the USSR, 750 thousand citizens of Czechoslovakia, about 1.5 million French, 500 thousand Dutch, 190 thousand Belgians, 6 thousand Luxembourgers, 5.2 thousand Danes.
Murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war.
Killing hostages. It's about about thousands killed.
Imposition of collective fines. This system used by Germany in many countries, but not in the USSR. Collective responsibility involved the payment of a fine by the entire population for the actions of individuals. It would seem not the most important article of the charge, but during the war years, collective fines amounted to more than 1.1 trillion francs.
Theft of private and public property. The statement of the Nuremberg Tribunal states that as a result of the theft of private and public property, the damage to France amounted to 632 trillion francs, Belgium - 175 billion Belgian francs, the USSR - 679 trillion rubles, Czechoslovakia - 200 trillion Czechoslovak crowns.
Pointless destruction, unconditional military necessity. We are talking about the destruction of cities, villages, settlements and so on.
Forced recruitment of labor. First of all, among the civilian population. For example, during the period from 1942 to 1944 in France, 963 thousand people were forcibly transferred to work in Germany. Another 637 thousand French worked for the German army in France. Data for other countries are not specified in the indictment. They only talk about the huge number of prisoners in the USSR.
Forced to swear allegiance to a foreign state.

Accused and charges

The participants were charged with helping to bring the Nazis to power, strengthening their order in Germany, preparing for war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, including crimes against individuals. This is what everyone was accused of. Each had their own additional charges. They are presented in the table below.

Accused in the Nuremberg trials

Accused	Job title	Charge*
Goering Hermann Wilhelm	Party member since 1922, head of SA troops, SS general, commander-in-chief of the air force
Von Ribbentrop Joachim	Party member since 1932, minister foreign policy, general of the SS troops	Active participation in preparations for war and war crimes.
Hess Rudolf	Party member 1921-1941, deputy Fuhrer, general of the SA and SS troops	Active participation in preparations for war and war crimes. Creation of foreign policy plans.
Kaltenbrunner Ernst	Party member since 1932, general of police, head of the Austrian police	Strengthening Nazi power in Austria. Creation of concentration camps
Alfred Rosenberg	Party member since 1920, party leader on issues of ideology and foreign policy, Minister of Eastern Occupied Territories	Psychological preparation to war. Numerous crimes against individuals.
Frank Hans	Member of the party since 1932, Governor-General of the occupied Polish lands.	Crimes against humanity and war crimes in the occupied territories.
Borman Martin	Member of the party since 1925, secretary of the Fuhrer, head of the party chancellery, member of the Council of Ministers for State Defense.	Charged on all counts.
Frick Wilhelm	Party member since 1922, director of the center for the annexation of occupied territories, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.	Charged on all counts.
Leigh Robert	Party member since 1932, organizer of the inspection for monitoring foreign workers.	The criminal use of human labor to wage aggressive war.
Sauckel Fritz	Party member since 1921, governor of Thuringia, organizer of the inspection for monitoring foreign workers.	Forcing residents of occupied countries into slave labor in Germany.
Speer Albert	Party member since 1932, General Commissioner for Armaments.	Promoting the exploitation of human labor for warfare.
Funk Walter	Party member since 1932, Hitler's economic adviser, secretary of the Ministry of Propaganda, Minister of Economics.	Economic exploitation of the occupied territories.
Shakht Gelmar	Party member since 1932, Minister of Economics, President of the German Bank.	Development of economic plans for warfare.
Von Papen Franz	Member of the party since 1932, vice-chancellor under Hitler.	He was not accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Krupp Gustav	Member of the party since 1932, member of the economic council, president of the association of German industrialists.	The use of people from occupied territories at work to wage war.
Von Neurath Constantin	Member of the party since 1932, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.	Implementation of foreign policy plans to prepare for war. Active participation in crimes against persons and property in the occupied territories.
Von Shirach Baldur	Party member since 1924, Minister for Youth Education, head of the Hitler Youth (Hitler Youth), Gauleiter of Vienna.	Contributing to the psychological and educational preparation of organizations for warfare. Not accused of war crimes.
Seys-Inquart Arthur	Member of the party since 1932, Minister of Security of Austria, Deputy Governor-General of the Polish territories, Commissioner of the Netherlands.	Consolidation of power over Austria.
Streicher Julius	Party member since 1932, Gauleiter of Franconia, editor of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturme.	Responsibility for the persecution of Jews. Not accused of war crimes.
Keitel Wilhelm	Party member since 1938, head of the High Command of the German Armed Forces.	Cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians. Not accused of bringing the Nazis to power.
Jodl Alfred	Party member since 1932, head of the army operations department, chief of staff of the high command of the German armed forces.	Charged on all counts.
Raeder Erich	Party member since 1928, Commander-in-Chief of the German navy.	War crimes related to naval warfare.
Doenitz Karl	Member of the party since 1932, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, adviser to Hitler.	Crime against persons and property on the high seas. He was not accused of becoming the Nazis.
Fritsche Hans	Member of the party since 1933, head of the radio service, director of the Ministry of Propaganda.	Exploitation of occupied territories, anti-Jewish measures.

* - In addition to the above.

This full list, according to which the Nuremberg trials accused the top of Nazi Germany.

Martin Bormann's case was tried in absentia. Krupp, who was declared ill, could not be taken to the courtroom, as a result of which the case was suspended. Ley committed suicide on October 26, 1945 - the case was closed due to the death of the suspect.

At the interview of the defendants on November 20, 1945, everyone pleaded innocent, uttering approximately the following words: “I do not plead guilty in the sense as charged.” A very ambiguous answer... But the best answer to the question of guilt was Rudolf Hess, who said: “I plead guilty before God.”

Judges

The composition of the judges at the Nuremberg trials was as follows:

From the USSR - Nikitchenko Ion Timofeevich, his deputy - Volchkov Alexander Fedorovich.
From the USA - Francis Biddle, his deputy - John Parker.
From the United Kingdom - Geoffrey Lawrence, his deputy - Norman Birkett.
From the French Republic - Henri Donnedier de Vabre, his deputy - Robert Falco.

Sentence

The Nuremberg Tribunal concluded with a verdict on October 1, 1946. According to the verdict, 11 people will be hanged, 6 will go to prison and 3 will be acquitted.

The verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal

Sentenced to death by hanging	Sentenced to prison	Found not guilty
Goering Hermann Wilhelm	Rudolf Hess	Von Papen Franz
Joachim von Ribbentrop	Speer Albert	Shakht Gelmar
Streicher Julius	Doenitz Karl	Fritsche Hans
Keitel Wilhelm	Funk Walter
Alfred Rosenberg	Von Neurath Constantin
Kaltenbrunner Ernst	Raeder Erich
Frank Hans
Frick Wilhelm
Sauckel Fritz
Von Shirach Baldur
Seys-Inquart Arthur
Jodl Alfred

Double process standards

I suggest turning off your emotions (it’s hard, but necessary) and think about this: Germany was judged by the USA, USSR, England and France. The list of charges was above in the text. But the real problem was that the tribunal used double standards- what the Allies accused Germany of, they themselves did! Not everything, of course, but a lot. Examples of charges:

Poor treatment of prisoners of war. But the same France used German captured soldiers for forced labor. France treated the captured Germans so cruelly that the United States even took some of the prisoners from them and directed protests.
Forced deportation of civilians. But in 1945, the US and USSR agreed to deport more than 10 million Germans from eastern and central Europe.
Planning, unleashing and waging an aggressive war. But in 1939, the USSR did the same in relation to Finland.
Destruction civilian objects(cities and villages). But England has hundreds of bombings of peaceful German cities using vortex bombs to cause maximum damage to buildings.
Looting and economic losses. But we all remember very well the famous “2 days for plunder” that all allied armies had.

This in the best possible way emphasizes the duality of standards. This is neither good nor bad. There was a war, and terrible things always happen in war. It’s just that a situation arose in Nuremberg that completely refutes the system international law: The winner condemned the loser, and the verdict of “guilty” was known in advance. In this case, everything is viewed from one side.

Was everyone convicted?

The Nuremberg trials today raise more questions than they answer. One of the main questions is who should be tried for cruelty and war? Before answering this question, I want to recall Keitel's last words at the Nuremberg Tribunal. He said he regretted that he, a soldier, was used for such purposes. And this is what the chairman of the court responded to.

An order from command, even if given to a soldier, cannot and should not be blindly followed if it requires the commission of such cruel and large-scale crimes without military necessity.
From the prosecutor's speech

It turns out that any person who carried out criminal orders had to appear before an international court. But then these should be German generals, officers and soldiers, concentration camp employees, doctors who conducted inhumane experiments on prisoners, generals of all countries that took part in the war against the USSR on the side of Germany and others. But no one tried them... In this regard, there are 2 questions:

Why weren’t Germany’s allies, Italy and Japan, assigned to the trial?
Troops and generals from the following countries took part in the campaign against the USSR: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, Holland, Belgium. Why were the representatives of these countries and the military who took part in the war not convicted?

Undoubtedly, representatives of both categories cannot be condemned for the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, but they must be condemned for war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all, this is exactly what the Nuremberg trials accused the German army of, integral part which were the armies of the countries mentioned above.

Why was the process carried out?

The Nuremberg trials today raise a huge number of questions, the main one of which is why was this process needed at all? Historians answer - for the triumph of justice, so that all those responsible for the world war and those who have blood on their hands are punished. Beautiful phrase, but it is very easy to refute it. If the Allies were looking for justice, then in Nuremberg they should have judged not only the top of Germany, but also Italy, Japan, the generals of Romania, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark and other countries that took an active part in the German European War .

Let me give you an example with Moldova, which was located on the border and was hit in the first days of the war. The Germans attacked here, but they very quickly began to move deeper into the country, followed by the Romanian army. And when they talk about the atrocities of the Germans in Moldova during the war, then 90% of these are the atrocities of the Romanians who carried out the genocide of the Moldovans. Shouldn't these people have to answer for their crimes?

I see only 2 reasonable explanations why the international tribunal over Germany took place:

One country was needed on which all the sins of the war could be blamed. Burning Germany was best suited for this.
It was necessary to shift the blame to specific people. These people were found - the leadership of Nazi Germany. It turned out to be a paradox. For 6 years world war with tens of millions of dead, 10-15 people are to blame. Of course, this was not the case...

The Nuremberg trials summed up the outcome of the Second World War. He identified the perpetrators and the degree of their guilt. At this point, the page of history was turned, and no one seriously dealt with the questions of how Hitler came to power, how he reached the borders of Poland without firing a single shot, and others.

After all, neither before nor after this, a tribunal was ever held over the vanquished.

France is the winning country

The Nuremberg trials recorded that 4 countries won the war: the USSR, the USA, England and France. It was these 4 countries that judged Germany. If there are no questions about the USSR, USA and England, then there are questions about France. Can we call it a victorious country? If a country wins a war, then it must have victories. The USSR goes from Moscow to Berlin in 4 years, England helps the USSR, fights at sea and bombs the enemy, the USA is known for Normandy, but what about France?

In 1940, Hitler quite easily defeated her army, after which he organized the famous dance near the Eiffel Tower. After this, the French begin to work for the Wehrmacht, including in military terms. But something else is more telling. After the end of the war, 2 conferences were held (Crimean and Berlin), at which the winners discussed post-war life and the fate of Germany. There were only 3 countries at both conferences: the USSR, the USA and England.

The year 2015 goes down in history - the seventieth year since the end of World War II. Rodina published hundreds of articles, documents, and photographs dedicated to the holy anniversary this year. And we decided to devote the December issue of our “Scientific Library” to some of the results and long-term consequences of the Second World War.
Of course, this does not mean that along with the anniversary year it will become a thing of the past from the pages of Rodina. military theme. The June issue is already being planned, which will be dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, in the editorial portfolio there are analytical materials of prominent Russian and foreign scientists waiting in the wings, letters about native front-line soldiers continue to arrive for the column ""...
Write to us, dear readers. In our " Scientific library"There are still a lot of unfilled shelves.

Editorial "Motherland"

Public trials of the Nazis

The history of World War II is an endless list of war crimes of Nazi Germany and its allies. For this, humanity openly tried the main war criminals in their lair - Nuremberg (1945-1946) and Tokyo (1946-1948). Due to its political-legal significance and cultural imprint, the Nuremberg Tribunal has become a symbol of justice. In its shadow remained other show trials of European countries against the Nazis and their accomplices and, first of all, open trials held in the territory of Soviet Union.

On the most brutal war crimes in 1943-1949, trials took place in 21 affected cities of five Soviet republics: Krasnodar, Krasnodon, Kharkov, Smolensk, Bryansk, Leningrad, Nikolaev, Minsk, Kiev, Velikiye Luki, Riga, Stalino (Donetsk), Bobruisk, Sevastopol, Chernigov, Poltava, Vitebsk, Chisinau, Novgorod, Gomel, Khabarovsk. They publicly convicted 252 war criminals from Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Japan and several of their accomplices from the USSR. Open trials in the USSR of war criminals carried not only a legal meaning of punishing the perpetrators, but also a political and anti-fascist one. So films were made about the meetings, books were published, reports were written - for millions of people around the world. Judging by the reports of the MGB, almost the entire population supported the accusation and wanted the most severe punishment for the defendants.

At the show trials of 1943-1949. The best investigators, qualified translators, authoritative experts, professional lawyers, and talented journalists worked. About 300-500 spectators came to the meetings (the halls could no longer accommodate), thousands more stood on the street and listened to radio broadcasts, millions read reports and brochures, tens of millions watched newsreels. Under the weight of evidence, almost all the suspects admitted to their crime. In addition, in the dock there were only those whose guilt was repeatedly confirmed by evidence and witnesses. The verdicts of these courts can be considered justified even by modern standards, so none of the convicts were rehabilitated. But despite the importance of open processes, modern researchers know too little about them. The main problem is the inaccessibility of sources. The materials of each process amounted to up to fifty extensive volumes, but they were almost never published 1 because they are stored in archives former departments KGB and are still not completely declassified. There is also a lack of culture of memory. A large museum opened in Nuremberg in 2010, which organizes exhibitions and methodically examines the Nuremberg Tribunal (and the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials). But in the post-Soviet space there are no such museums about local processes. Therefore, in the summer of 2015, the author of these lines created a kind of virtual museum “Soviet Nuremberg” 2 for the Russian Military Historical Society. This website, which caused a great stir in the media, contains information and rare materials about 21 open courts in the USSR in 1943-1949.

Justice in time of war

Before 1943, no one in the world had experience of trying the Nazis and their collaborators. There were no analogues of such cruelty in world history, there were no atrocities of such a temporal and geographical scale, therefore there were no legal norms for retribution - neither in international conventions nor in national criminal codes. In addition, for justice it was still necessary to free the crime scenes and witnesses, and capture the criminals themselves. The Soviet Union was the first to do all this, but also not right away.

From 1941 until the end of the occupation, open trials were held in partisan detachments and brigades - over traitors, spies, looters. Their spectators were the partisans themselves and later residents of neighboring villages. At the front, traitors and Nazi executioners were punished by military tribunals until the issuance of Decree N39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 19, 1943 “On punitive measures for Nazi villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices." According to the Decree, cases of murder of prisoners of war and civilians were submitted to military courts attached to divisions and corps. Many of their meetings, on the recommendation of the command, were open, with the participation of the local population. In military tribunals, partisan, people's and military courts, the accused defended themselves, without lawyers. A common sentence was public hanging.

Decree N39 became the legal basis for systemic responsibility for thousands of crimes. The evidence base was detailed reports on the scale of atrocities and destruction in the liberated territories; for this purpose, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of November 2, 1942, the “Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to citizens was created, collective farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR" (ChGK). At the same time, in the camps, investigators interrogated millions of prisoners of war.

The open trials of 1943 in Krasnodar and Kharkov became widely known. These were the world's first full-fledged trials of the Nazis and their collaborators. The Soviet Union tried to ensure a worldwide resonance: the meetings were covered by foreign journalists and the best writers of the USSR (A. Tolstoy, K. Simonov, I. Ehrenburg, L. Leonov), and filmed by cameramen and photographers. The entire Soviet Union followed the processes - reports of the meetings were published in the central and local press, and readers' reactions were also posted there. Brochures were published about the processes different languages, they were read aloud in the army and behind the lines. Almost immediately, the documentaries “The Verdict of the People” and “The Trial is Coming” were released and were shown in Soviet and foreign cinemas. And in 1945-1946, documents from the Krasnodar trial on “gas chambers” (“gassenwagens”) were used by the international tribunal in Nuremberg.

According to the principle of “collective guilt”

The most thorough investigation was carried out as part of ensuring open trials of war criminals in late 1945 - early 1946. in the eight most affected cities of the USSR. According to the directives of the government, special operational investigative groups of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-NKGB were created on the ground; they studied archives, acts of the ChGK, photographic documents, interrogated thousands of witnesses from different regions and hundreds of prisoners of war. The first seven such trials (Bryansk, Smolensk, Leningrad, Velikie Luki, Minsk, Riga, Kyiv, Nikolaev) sentenced 84 war criminals (most of them were hanged). Thus, in Kyiv, the hanging of twelve Nazis on Kalinin Square (now Maidan Nezalezhnosti) was seen and approved by more than 200,000 citizens.

Since these trials coincided with the beginning of the Nuremberg Tribunal, they were compared not only by newspapers, but also by the prosecution and defense. Thus, in Smolensk, state prosecutor L.N. Smirnov built a chain of crimes from the Nazi leaders accused at Nuremberg to the specific 10 executioners in the dock: “Both of them are participants in the same accomplice.” Lawyer Kaznacheev (by the way, he also worked at the Kharkov trial) also spoke about the connection between the criminals of Nuremberg and Smolensk, but with a different conclusion: “The sign of equality cannot be placed between all these persons” 3 .

Eight Soviet trials of 1945-1946 ended, and the Nuremberg Tribunal also ended. But among the millions of prisoners of war there were still thousands of war criminals. Therefore, in the spring of 1947, by agreement between the Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov and the Minister of Foreign Affairs V. Molotov, preparations began for the second wave of show trials against German military personnel. The next nine trials in Stalino (Donetsk), Sevastopol, Bobruisk, Chernigov, Poltava, Vitebsk, Novgorod, Chisinau and Gomel, held by resolution of the Council of Ministers of September 10, 1947, sentenced 137 people to prison terms in Vorkutlag.

The last open trial of foreign war criminals was the Khabarovsk trial of 1949 against Japanese developers of biological weapons, who tested them on Soviet and Chinese citizens (more on this on page 116 - Ed.). These crimes were not investigated at the International Tribunal in Tokyo because some potential defendants received immunity from the United States in exchange for experimental data.

Since 1947, instead of individual open trials, the Soviet Union began to conduct closed ones en masse. Already on November 24, 1947, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, the USSR Ministry of Justice, the USSR Prosecutor's Office N 739/18/15/311 issued an order, which ordered that the cases of those accused of committing war crimes be considered at closed sessions of the military tribunals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops at the place of detention of the defendants (that is, practically without calling witnesses) without the participation of the parties and sentence the perpetrators to imprisonment for a period of 25 years in forced labor camps.

The reasons for the curtailment of open processes are not entirely clear; no arguments have yet been found in the declassified documents. However, several versions can be put forward. Presumably, the open trials carried out were quite enough to satisfy society; propaganda switched to new tasks. In addition, conducting open trials required highly qualified investigators; there were not enough of them locally due to the post-war personnel shortage. It is worth taking into account the material support of open processes (the estimate for one process was about 55 thousand rubles), for the post-war economy these were significant amounts. Closed courts made it possible to quickly and en masse consider cases, sentence defendants to a predetermined period of imprisonment and, finally, corresponded to the traditions of Stalinist jurisprudence. In closed trials, prisoners of war were often tried on the principle of “collective guilt”, without concrete evidence of personal participation. Therefore, in the 1990s, the Russian authorities rehabilitated 13,035 foreigners convicted under Decree N39 for war crimes (in total, during 1943-1952, at least 81,780 people were convicted under the Decree, including 24,069 foreign prisoners of war) 4.

Statute of limitations: protests and controversy

After Stalin's death, all foreigners convicted in closed and open trials were handed over to the authorities of their countries in 1955-1956. This was not advertised in the USSR - residents of the affected cities, who well remembered the speeches of the prosecutors, clearly would not have understood such political agreements.

Only a few who came from Vorkuta were imprisoned in foreign prisons (this was the case in the GDR and Hungary, for example), because the USSR did not send investigative files with them. She was walking cold war", Soviet and West German justice authorities cooperated little in the 1950s. And those who returned to Germany often said that they were slandered, and confessions of guilt in open trials were extracted by torture. Most of those convicted of war crimes by the Soviet court were allowed to return to civilian professions, and some then even enter the political and military elite.

At the same time, part of West German society (primarily young people who themselves did not experience the war) sought to seriously overcome the Nazi past. Under public pressure, open trials of war criminals took place in Germany in the late 1950s. They determined the creation in 1958 of the Central Department of Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany for the prosecution of Nazi crimes. The main goals of his activities were to investigate crimes and identify persons involved in crimes who could still be prosecuted. When the perpetrators have been identified and it has been established which prosecutor’s office they fall under the competence of, the Central Agency completes its preliminary investigation and transfers the case to the prosecutor's office.

Nevertheless, even identified criminals could be acquitted by a West German court. According to the post-war German Criminal Code, the statute of limitations would have expired for most World War II crimes in the mid-1960s. Moreover, the twenty-year statute of limitations applied only to murders committed with extreme cruelty. In the first post-war decade, a number of amendments were made to the Code, according to which those guilty of war crimes who did not directly participate in their execution could be acquitted.

In June 1964, a “conference of democratic lawyers” meeting in Warsaw heatedly protested against the application of a statute of limitations to Nazi crimes. On December 24, 1964, the Soviet government made a similar declaration. The note dated January 16, 1965 accused the Federal Republic of Germany of seeking to completely abandon the prosecution of Nazi executioners. Articles published in Soviet publications on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Nuremberg Tribunal spoke about the same thing.

The situation seems to have been changed by the resolution of the 28th session of the UN General Assembly of December 3, 1973, “Principles of international cooperation regarding the detection, arrest, extradition and punishment of persons guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” According to its text, all war criminals were subject to search, arrest, and extradition to the countries where they committed their atrocities, regardless of time. But even after the resolution foreign countries were extremely reluctant to hand over their citizens to Soviet justice. Motivating that the USSR's evidence was sometimes shaky, because many years had passed.

In general, due to political obstacles, the USSR in the 1960-1980s tried not foreign war criminals, but their accomplices, in open trials. For political reasons, the names of the punishers were almost never heard at the open trials of their foreign masters in 1945-1947. Even the trial of Vlasov took place in closed mode. Because of this secrecy, many traitors with blood on their hands were missed. After all, the orders of the Nazi organizers of executions were willingly carried out by ordinary traitors from the Ostbattalions, Jagdkommandos, and nationalist formations. Thus, at the Novgorod trial of 1947, Colonel V. Findeisen 6, the coordinator of punitive forces from the Shelon battalion, was tried. In December 1942, the battalion drove all the residents of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok onto the ice of the Polist River and shot them. The punishers hid their guilt, and the investigation was unable to link the cases of hundreds of executioners from “Shelon” with the case of V. Findeisen. Without understanding, they were given the same sentences for traitors and, together with everyone else, were amnestied in 1955. The punishers disappeared somewhere, and only then was the personal guilt of each gradually investigated from 1960 to 1982 in a series of open trials 7 . It was not possible to catch everyone, but punishment could have overtaken them back in 1947.

There are fewer and fewer witnesses left, and the already unlikely chance of a full investigation into the atrocities of the occupiers and holding open trials is decreasing every year. However, such crimes have no statute of limitations, so historians and lawyers need to search for evidence and bring to justice all suspects still alive.

Notes
1. One of the exceptions is the publication of materials of the Riga trial from the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia (ASD NH-18313, vol. 2. LL. 6-333) in the book by Yu.Z. Kantor. Baltics: war without rules (1939-1945). St. Petersburg, 2011.
2. For more details, see the project “Soviet Nuremberg” on the website of the Russian Military Historical Society http://histrf.ru/ru/biblioteka/Soviet-Nuremberg.
3. Trial in the case of Nazi atrocities in the city of Smolensk and the Smolensk region, meeting on December 19 // News of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies of the USSR, N 297 (8907) dated December 20, 1945, p. 2.
4. Epifanov A.E. Responsibility for war crimes committed on the territory of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. 1941 - 1956 Volgograd, 2005. P. 3.
5. Voisin V. ""Au nom des vivants", de Leon Mazroukho: une rencontre entre discours officiel et hommage personnel" // Kinojudaica. Les representations des Juifs dans le cinema russe et sovietique / dans V. Pozner, N. Laurent (dir.). Paris, Nouveau Monde editions, 2012, R. 375.
6. For more details, see Astashkin D. Open trial of Nazi criminals in Novgorod (1947) // Novgorod historical collection. V. Novgorod, 2014. Issue. 14(24). pp. 320-350.
7. Archive of the FSB department for the Novgorod region. D. 1/12236, D. 7/56, D. 1/13364, D. 1/13378.

The initial list of accused included:

1. Hermann Wilhelm Goering, Reichsmarshal, Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force.

2. Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in charge of the Nazi Party.

3. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany.

4. Robert Ley, head of the Labor Front.

5. Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces.

6. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA.

7. Alfred Rosenberg, one of the main ideologists of Nazism, Reich Minister for Eastern Affairs.

8. Hans Frank, head of the occupied Polish lands.

9. Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Interior.

10. Julius Streicher, Gauleiter, Chief Editor anti-Semitic newspaper "Sturmovik".

11. Hjalmar Schacht, Reich Minister of Economics before the war.

12. Walter Funk, Minister of Economics after Schacht.

13. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of the Friedrich Krupp concern.

14. Karl Doenitz, admiral of the fleet of the Third Reich.

15. Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.

16. Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, Gauleiter of Vienna.

17. Fritz Sauckel, head of the forced deportations to the Reich of labor from the occupied territories.

18. Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the OKW Operations Command.

19. Franz von Papen, Chancellor of Germany before Hitler, then Ambassador to Austria and Turkey.

20. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Chancellor of Austria, then Imperial Commissioner of occupied Holland.

21. Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments.

22. Konstantin von Neurath, in the first years of Hitler's reign, Minister of Foreign Affairs, then governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

23. Hans Fritsche, head of the press and broadcasting department at the Ministry of Propaganda.

Groups or organizations to which the defendants belonged were also charged.

The defendants were charged with planning, preparing, unleashing or waging a war of aggression in order to establish the world domination of German imperialism, i.e. in crimes against peace; in the killing and torture of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, the deportation of civilians to Germany for forced labor, the killing of hostages, the looting of public and private property, the aimless destruction of cities and villages, in devastation not justified by military necessity, i.e. in war crimes; in extermination, enslavement, exile and other cruelties committed against the civilian population for political, racial or religious reasons, i.e. in crimes against humanity.

The question was also raised about recognizing such organizations as criminal fascist Germany, as the leadership of the National Socialist Party, the assault (SA) and security detachments of the National Socialist Party (SS), the security service (SD), the state secret police (Gestapo), the government cabinet and the general staff.

October 18, 1945 the indictment was received by the International Military Tribunal and handed to each of the accused in German a month before the start of the trial.

On November 25, 1945, after reading the indictment, Robert Ley committed suicide, and Gustav Krupp was declared terminally ill by the medical commission, and the case against him was dropped before trial.

The remaining accused were brought to trial.

In accordance with the London Agreement, the International Military Tribunal was formed on a parity basis from representatives of four countries. The British representative, Lord Geoffrey Lawrence, was appointed chief judge. From other countries, members of the tribunal were approved:

From the USSR: Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Major General of Justice Iona Nikitchenko;

From the US: former Attorney General Francis Biddle;

From France: Professor of Criminal Law Henri Donnedier de Vabres.

Each of the four countries sent its own chief prosecutors, their deputies and assistants to the trial:

From the USSR: Prosecutor General of the Ukrainian SSR Roman Rudenko;

From the USA: Member of the Federal Supreme Court Robert Jackson;

From UK: Hartley Shawcross;

For France: François de Menton, who was absent during the first days of the trial and was replaced by Charles Dubost, and then Champentier de Ribes was appointed instead of de Menton.

During the trial, 403 open court hearings were held, 116 witnesses were questioned, numerous written testimonies and documentary evidence were considered (mainly official documents of German ministries and departments, the General Staff, military concerns and banks).

Due to the unprecedented gravity of the crimes committed by the defendants, doubts arose whether democratic norms of legal proceedings would be observed in relation to them. For example, representatives of the prosecution from the UK and the USA suggested not giving the defendants the last word. However, the French and Soviet sides insisted on the opposite.

The trial was tense not only because of the unusual nature of the tribunal itself and the charges brought against the defendants. The post-war aggravation of relations between the USSR and the West after Churchill’s famous Fulton speech also had an effect and the defendants, feeling the prevailing political situation, skillfully played for time and hoped to escape the well-deserved punishment. In such a difficult situation, the tough and professional actions of the Soviet prosecution played a key role. The film about concentration camps, shot by front-line cameramen, finally turned the tide of the process. The terrible pictures of Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz completely removed the doubts of the tribunal.

The International Military Tribunal sentenced:

To death by hanging: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann (in absentia), Jodl (was posthumously acquitted during a review of the case by a Munich court in 1953).

To life imprisonment: Hess, Funk, Raeder.

To 20 years in prison: Schirach, Speer.

To 15 years in prison: Neurata.

To 10 years in prison: Denitsa.

Acquitted: Fritsche, Papen, Schacht.

The Tribunal recognized the SS, SD, SA, Gestapo and the leadership of the Nazi Party as criminal organizations and did not recognize the government cabinet of Nazi Germany, the General Staff and the High Command of the Wehrmacht as criminal. A member of the Tribunal from the USSR stated in a dissenting opinion his disagreement with the decision not to recognize these organizations as criminal, with the acquittal of Shakht, Papen, Fritzsche and the undeservedly lenient sentence for Hess.

(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. in 8 volumes - 2004)

Most of the convicts filed petitions for clemency; Raeder - on commuting a life sentence death penalty; Goering, Jodl and Keitel - about replacing hanging with shooting if the request for clemency is not granted. All of these requests were rejected.

Death sentences were carried out on the night of October 16, 1946 in the building of the Nuremberg prison. Goering poisoned himself in prison shortly before his execution.

The sentence was carried out by American Sergeant John Wood.

Funk and Raeder, sentenced to life imprisonment, were pardoned in 1957. After Speer and Schirach were released in 1966, only Hess remained in prison. The right-wing forces of Germany repeatedly demanded to pardon him, but the victorious powers refused to commute the sentence. On August 17, 1987, Hess was found hanged in his cell.

The Nuremberg Tribunal, having created a precedent for the jurisdiction of senior government officials by an international court, refuted the medieval principle “Kings are subject to the jurisdiction only of God.” It was with the Nuremberg trials that the history of international criminal law began.

The principles of international law contained in the Charter of the Tribunal and expressed in the verdict were confirmed by the resolution of the UN General Assembly of December 11, 1946.

The Nuremberg trials legally secured the final defeat of fascism.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources