75 years later: Nuremberg or the birth of international criminal law
Audio 19:30
The main defendants in the "Nuremberg trial of major war criminals".
In the background, the elevator door through which the accused entered the room, 1945/1946.
© National Archives, College Park, MD, USA
By: Pascal Thibaut Follow
23 min
On November 20, 1945, a historic trial began against 24 of the main leaders of the Nazi regime who had surrendered six months earlier.
They would answer to justice for their actions.
A historic turning point still relevant with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or the creation of the International Criminal Court.
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From our correspondent in Berlin,
The four Allies who won World War II, the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, together create an international military tribunal which will judge the defendants according to the rules of the rule of law.
Judges and prosecutors come from these four countries.
The Nazi leaders are defended by German lawyers.
Among the accused are Hermann Göring, former number two in the regime, former ministers of Hitler, and military officials.
The court adopts the Anglo-Saxon rules of procedure.
The Americans played a central role in organizing the trial.
They wanted him to be in their zone of occupation.
The 24 defendants are thus accused of being the authors of a criminal conspiracy, a concept of Anglo-Saxon law.
Nuremberg innovates on the other hand with the accusation of crimes against peace and against humanity.
For the chief prosecutor of the trial, the American Robert Jackson, it is not only a question of trying those responsible for the Nazi regime but of laying the foundations for a new international criminal order.
Since 1907, war crimes have been included in international law.
But after World War I, attempts to bring those responsible to trial were unsuccessful.
From now on, this must become the norm.
It should no longer be possible to hide behind rules which were valid at the time of the facts and which, in a dictatorship like the Third Reich, justified the worst crimes;
or to exonerate himself by presenting himself as the simple executor of orders from above.
Universal principles must allow such acts to be continued.
The main Nuremberg trial ended in the fall of 1946 with death sentences, prison terms and three acquittals.
At the same time, a similar tribunal in Tokyo finds Japanese leaders responsible for crimes in previous years.
These procedures go hand in hand with the creation of the United Nations, which in 1948 adopted a universal declaration of human rights.
Two years later, the Nuremberg principles were enacted.
They must form the basis of international criminal law.
But the cold war did not allow these principles to apply for several decades.
It was not until the 1990s with the creation of the tribunals on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda for the Nuremberg heritage to regain color.
In 2002, the International Criminal Court was created, but it is dependent on the goodwill of the signatory countries of its statutes and its results are mixed.
Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier reports the Ravensbrück and Auschwitz concentration camps, 1946 Free for publication only with a note: Photo credit: National Archives, College Park, MD, USA Frei zur Veröffentlichung nur mit dem Vermerk: Bildnachweis: National Archives, College Park, MD, USA
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Second World War
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Germany
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