Thank you so much for your time and I am looking forward to getting into many discussions. On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal handed down its verdicts in the trials of 22 Nazi leaders - eleven were given the death penalty, three were acquitted, three were given life imprisonment and four were given imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years. Prisoners and guards were forced to wear heavy scarves to ward off the penetrating cold. He looked like a gaunt corpse, like a ghost. Besides Speer, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, and Jodl, Prestianni also guarded Luftwaffe Reichsmarshal Hermann Gring, Grand Admiral Dnitz, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Reich financier Hjalmar Schacht, Governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Konstantin von Neurath, Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, virulent anti-Semite Julius Streicher, diplomat Franz von Papen, Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Grand Admiral Raeder, Hess, and Hans Frank, the governor general of occupied Poland. On October 15, 1946, guards and prisoners listened to the pounding of the gallows being constructed. One was sentenced in absentia. [198] The trials targeted 177 defendants and obtained 142 convictions, including 25 death sentences;[199] the severity of sentencing was related to the defendant's proximity to mass murder. This brass pot held the holy water that an attending priest sprinkled on the condemned immediately before their execution. They had a profound affect on my dad, who always said, I would never want to be killed by hanging. Yet, the constables who allegedly murdered my Dad did just that. The judgement argued that aggressive war had already been illegal, even if no one had been punished for it, and therefore the German leaders could not count on immunity from prosecution. Series of military trials at the end of World War II, This article is about the series of international trials. During his three-month tour of duty at Nuremberg prison, Prestianni was assigned to 16 different prisoners. He said that he had the pleasure of meeting the judge known as the Hanging Judge. (November 1945) Sources: All photos copyright and courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [169][170] The judges did not agree that the conspiracy extended to anyone who participated in the affairs of the Nazi government, only taking being present at the high-level meetings discussing war plans in 1937 and 1939 as evidence of belonging to the conspiracy. I would have kept my distance from them.. He was the popular picture court room scene the second on the left of the door. Sykes supervised guards, including the iconic. The culmination of the unprecedented War Crimes trials in the German city of Nuremberg, where the Nazis had staged their infamous pre-war rallies. [165] The official interpretation of the IMT held that all of the charges had a solid basis in customary international law,[166] which was elaborated in the verdict. [236][237], The trials were the first use of simultaneous interpretation, which stimulated technical advances in translation methods. Streicher, sentenced to death, was perhaps the most despised prisoner of all due to his complete obsession with sex. Examine some of the collection's most-accessed trial topics. Their voices speak directly to the reader and reflect upon the meaning of justice in the post . Noticeable dislike existed between the prisoners and most of their Soviet guards. These were people, Neurath reasoned, of whom Germany was cleansing the world.. With the change of command by rotating countries every month, each of the countries altered the previous countrys rules. [40] Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being an alternate. [205] Where the prosecution was disappointed by some of the verdicts, the defense could take satisfaction. By creating an Aryan nation, the world would look up to and envy Germany for its racial purity.. He was short but very powerfully built. He was usually confrontational and argumentative with the other prisoners. jkeller, Aug 11, 2010 #16. macrusk Proud Daughter of a Canadian WWII Veteran. The ensuing trial pitted U.S. chief prosecutor and Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson against Hermann Gring, the former head of the Nazi air force, whom Adolf Hitler had once named to be his. [192] Members of the SS were tried in the Pohl trial, which focused on members of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that oversaw SS economic activity, including the Nazi concentration camps;[193] the RuSHA trial of Nazi racial policies; and the Einsatzgruppen trial, in which members of the mobile killing squads were tried for the murder of more than one million people behind the Eastern Front. The Ugly Truth About the Nuremberg Tribunals. All female prisoners were segregated on a third tier. My father, Jack J. [60] The American prosecution became derailed during attempts to provide evidence of the German annexation of Austria. After the first trial ended in October 1946, the United States held 12 other trials at Nuremberg under the authority of the International Military Tribunal. On that date, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France signed an agreement that included a charter for an international military tribunal to conduct trials of major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic location. In rendering these decisions, the tribunal rejected the major defenses offered by the defendants. American chow was prepared for the guards and other Army personnel. Number 4 was assigned to Erich Raeder, the Navys former grand admiral before being replaced by Dnitz. Before his execution, he aligned himself with Jodl and, to a lesser extent, Raeder and Dnitz, the military clique. [95][96] As Jackson made clear, the purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, establish individual responsibility and the crime of aggression in international law, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, delegitimize the traditional German elite,[97] and allow the Allies to distance themselves from appeasement. [12] The United States insisted on a fair trial as a means of reforming Germany. [82], Over the summer, all of the national delegations struggled to gather evidence for the upcoming trial. After his release from prison in Nuremberg, a Stuttgart court sentenced him to eight years in a work camp. [108][109], On 12 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech for the British. In the prison cellblock, each single-occupant cell had two parallel heating pipes beneath a single, heavily scratched, plastic-covered window, the top half of which could be tilted open for limited ventilation. The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials that occurred in post-World War II Germany to provide a platform for justice against accused Nazi war criminals. [43] The United States prosecution believed that Nazism was the product of a German deviation from Western history (the Sonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. . Twelve sets of trials, involving over a hundred defendants and several different courts, took place in Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949. Dnitz, who was named successor to Hitler during the waning days of the war and served 10 years in prison, remained aloof. [230] The selectivity in trying Germans but not the Allies has garnered the most persistent criticism. [37] Nineteen states ratified the charter and were admitted as observers. They were not to be shown disrespect. [143] Although a few defense lawyers inverted the arguments of the prosecution to assert that the Germans' authoritarian mindset and obedience to the state exonerated them from any personal guilt, most rejected such arguments. The crew (left to right) Private (1st Class) Carl E McCray (Salem, Va.) and Sergeant E Wilson (Texas.)'. my father david c bergeron was a 1st LT with the guards at the war trials. [73] Also on trial were propagandists Julius Streicher and Hans Fritzsche; Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy who had flown to Britain in 1941; Hans Frank, governor-general of the General Governorate of Poland; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach; Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the leader of Himmler's Reich Main Security Office. Recently one of our readers in the US contacted us with a photo of a pair of sunglasses that were in a box in his grandfather's garage. [77] Gring, the most famous surviving Nazi, headlined the trial. Raeder kept to himself, voraciously reading and writing his memoirs, but when he interacted with the others, it was often to lash out in anger. Institutional rivalries hampered the search. John C. Woods, hangman at Nuremberg Anyone else might have been embarrassed about botching such a high-level execution. [135] The Soviet Union also called two Holocaust survivors as witnesses, Samuel Rajzmana Treblinka survivorand poet Abraham Sutzkever, who eloquently described the murder of tens of thousands of Jews from Vilna, although their testimony did not directly incriminate any of the defendants. [1] The defendants included some of the most famous Nazis, including Hermann Gring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel. The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.. Another favorite was Alfred Jodl, former chief of the operations staff of the Army high command, who was found guilty and executed. They just never admitted to it. They wanted to run the whole show. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Generally, due to rivalries and animosity toward each other during their glory years, most adhered to this policy and opted to walk, stand, or sit alone, not engaged in conversations to any degree. The material which the Library possesses on this topic can be loosely divided into the following sections: Nuremberg Trial. The British worked on putting together the aggressive war charge; the French and Soviet delegations were assigned the task of covering crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on the Western Front and the Eastern Front, respectively. [229] Some defenders of the trial argued that the legal principle of nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without law) was not binding in international proceedings. It was an appointment that, when coupled with his Baltic origin, brought him into sharp conflict with most of those in Hitlers entourage. He still resides in Framingham after retiring from a 33-year career in supervisory positions with the U.S. Home; Services; New Patient Center. Prestianni and another guard handcuffed Streicher and walked him silently to the gallows chamber, where they rapped on the door with their truncheons. [79] Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Gestapo, the SA, the SS and the SD, and the General Staff and High Command of the Wehrmacht. I never treated him differently than I did the others I guarded.. He always was respectful, always the consummate gentleman. Speer was convicted and served 20 years in prison. Join historians and history buffs alike with our Unlimited Digital Access pass to every military history article ever published (over 3,000 articles) in Sovereigns military history magazines. Master Sgt. I have a brass pot, called an aspersorium, obtained by my father. Although controversial at the time for their use of ex post facto law, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law established international criminal law. [189], One set of trials focused on the actions of German professionals: the Doctors' trial focused on human experimentation and euthanasia murders, the Judges' trial on the role of the judiciary in Nazi crimes, and the Ministries trial on the culpability of bureaucrats of German government ministries, especially the Foreign Office. Koch ordered skin emblazoned with tattoos to be stripped from the cadavers of prisoners and made into lampshades. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment. Others were deemed "unfit" for Nazi society: Jews, lesbians, sex workers or homeless women. [85] The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents[40] and entered 4,600 into evidence,[87] along with 30 kilometres (19mi) of film and 25,000 photographs. He was not tall at all and didnt really stand out in any way from the others, Prestianni said. The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949 to try those accused of Nazi war crimes. I had no idea of the magnitude of what they had done. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany waged war across Europe, invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Low Countries, France, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union, among others. Three others were acquitted. Jobs People Learning . By. For added security outside the prison, three American Sherman tanks, manned by MPs, were positioned at the front, side, and rear entries to the prison. A defendant was entitled to receive a copy of the indictment, to offer any relevant explanation to the charges brought against him, and to be represented by counsel and confront and cross-examine the witnesses. Your Moms birthday and maiden name. To maintain the steady flow of Speer pencil sketches, guards always provided him with an adequate supply of paper and sharpened pencils. [222] By the late 1950s, the West German consensus on release began to erode, due to greater openness in political culture and new revelations of Nazi criminality, including the first trials of Nazi perpetrators in West German courts. The only part of the French charges that were accepted by the judges was the deportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe. Because of the tragic manner in which my father died, we did not often speak of the trials. [202] All four powers later fought independence movements using methods that had been ruled illegal at Nuremberg. 1 They were convened under the authority of Control Council Law No..
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