Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg trials were a series of war crimes proceedings that began in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945, in which the victorious Allied powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, prosecuted surviving leaders and officials of Nazi Germany for crimes committed before and during the Second World War. The first and best known proceeding, conducted before the International Military Tribunal, opened on November 20, 1945, against 24 major Nazi officials on charges including conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and its verdicts were delivered on October 1, 1946: twelve defendants were sentenced to death, ten of whom were executed on October 16, 1946, while others received prison terms or were acquitted. Twelve further, smaller trials of lower ranking officials, doctors, judges, and industrialists continued before US military tribunals at Nuremberg into 1949, and later scholarship has debated Cold War political pressures that led some convicted defendants to be released early through pardons in the 1950s. The trials established that individuals, not only states, can be held criminally responsible under international law, a precedent that later underpinned modern international criminal courts.