FREE ESSAY ON NUREMBERG TRIALS

NUREMBERG TRIALS

After World War II, numerous war-crimes trials tried and convicted many Axis leaders.
Judges from Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States tried
twenty-two Nazi leaders for: crimes against humanity (mostly about the Holocaust),
violating long-established rules of war, and waging aggressive war. This was known as the
"Nuremberg Trials."
Late in 1946, the German defendants were indicted and arraigned before a war crimes
tribunal at Nuremberg. Twenty of the defendants were physicians who, as governmental,
military, or SS officials, stood at or near the top of the medical hierarchy of the Third
Reich. The other three occupied administrative positions which brought them into close
connection with medical affairs. 
It all started when people started hearing about the Nazi's in human acts, just about
four months after World War II started. No one would believe that such a thing would
happen. While the people were thinking like that the Jews were being shipped out of the
country. Some of them were put in working camps or at a person's farm. This was the
beginning of the Final Solution of the German's Problem (the Holocaust). On August 8 the
Four Power nation signed the London Agreement. They later named it the International
Military Tribunal (IMT), it had 8 judges, one judge and one alternate. This was made so
that they would try to stop the Nazi crimes (Rice Jr. 81). They had supplementary
Nuremberg hearings that were broken down into twelve trials. In connection with these
trials, the U.S. military tribunals had thirty-five defendants and released nineteen of
them because they could find anything to get them on (Rice Jr. 76). They made Nuremberg
Laws because of Hitler's concentration camps and his other inhuman acts (Rice Jr. 31). He
didn't go by the lead system, he made himself the Supreme Judge. Hitler could imprison or
execute anyone he wanted to. He made laws keeping Jews out of certain public places or
jobs. He wouldn't let Jews have German citizenship. The Nuremberg Laws stated that there
would be no more inhuman acts or segregation of Jews. One of the positive sides of the
Nuremberg incident was the trials documented Nazi crimes for posterity. Many citizens of
the world remember hearing about the Nazi's brutalities and inhuman acts (Rice Jr., 5).
Hundreds of official Nazi documents entered into evidence at Nuremberg tell the horrible
tale of the Third Reich in the Nazi's own words. Six million Jews, and others not liked
by the Nazis were killed. Not one convicted Nazi denied that the mass killing had
occurred. Each disclaimed only personal knowledge and responsibility. The negative things
that happened at Nuremberg were the establishment of the I.M.T. has yet to lead to a
permanent counterpart before which crimes against humanity can be tried. Twenty-four wars
between nations and ninety-three civil wars or insurgencies between 1945 and 1992, no
international body had been convened to try aggressor nations or individuals accused of
war crimes. To prosecute and punish aggression rest still on the wavering will of an
international community ever reluctant to impose sanctions on offending governments (Rice
Jr. 100). Despite the reluctance of nations to unite in common cause and move swiftly
toward a lasting road to aggression, hope yes abides for the best of Nuremberg's
brightest promise. The world had a problem of what to do about the Nazi regime that had
presided over the extermination of some six million Jews and deaths of millions of others
with no basis in military necessity. Never before in history had the victors tried the
vanquished for crimes committed during a war (Rice Jr., 97). Yet never in history had the
vanquished perpetrated crimes of such inhumanity. The I.M.T., like the courts in many
countries, have held to the principle that persons committing a criminal violation of
international law are responsible for violation, on the grounds that crimes of this
nature are the result of their own acts (Rice 1492). The tribunal thought for crimes
carried out on orders from above, since many of the crimes had been committed in one with
the Reich policy (Rice 1493). The portion of the I.M.T. judgment dealing with war crimes
and crimes against humanity committed by the defendants in the trial and by the criminal
organizations concerns, in large measure, the persecution and murder of the Jewish
people. In its analysis of these crimes, the I.M.T. found it appropriate to single out
the persecution of the Jews as a manifestation of consistent and systematic in humanity
on a huge scale (Rice 1493). The testimony given at the Nuremberg Trial, the document
presented by the prosecution, and the entire record of its proceedings constitute an
incomparable source for the study of the Holocaust. The Nuremberg debates may continue
for decades. But because of the tribunal's rulings at Nuremberg, the initiating and
waging of aggressive war is now irrefutably criminal under international law. And that in
itself is not a bad legacy.