International Military Tribunal

The International Military Tribunal was a court established in 1945 by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union under the London Agreement and Charter of August 8, 1945, to try major officials of Nazi Germany for war crimes committed during the Second World War. Each of the four Allied powers supplied one judge and one alternate judge, along with a prosecution team, among them US chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson. The tribunal opened proceedings in Nuremberg, Germany, on November 20, 1945, hearing charges against 24 defendants, 22 of whom stood trial, and delivered its verdicts on October 1, 1946, convicting 19 and acquitting three, with 12 sentenced to death; it excluded the topmost Nazi leaders, Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, who had already died by suicide before the trial began, and its judgment has drawn later scholarly debate over victor's justice, since no Allied wartime conduct was subject to the same tribunal. The tribunal's charter and judgment established foundational principles of international criminal law, including individual criminal responsibility for acts committed on behalf of a state.