Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, an international court consisting of justices from each of the four Allied victors—the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR—prosecuted the most prominent surviving members of the defunct Nazi government in the war-shattered city of Nuremberg, Germany. Although the original indictment listed 24 defendants, three of the indicted were not present at trial. The industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial; Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancery, was tried in absentia; and Robert Ley, chief of the German Labor Front, committed suicide after being indicted. These reductions left 21 defendants sitting in the dock at Nuremberg when the trial started. This entry discusses the background and ...