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Legal basis

At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the exact form that the trial would take. Until the end of the negotiations, it was not clear that any trial would be held at all, due to acrimonious disputes over fundamental matters; the American delegation threatened to walk out. The Nuremberg Charter upended the traditional view of international law by holding individuals, rather t...

Judges and prosecutors

In early 1946, there were a thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two-thirds were from the United States. Besides legal professionals, there were many social-science researchers, psychologists, translators and interpreters, and graphic designers, the latter to make the many charts used during the trial.Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being an alternate. The United States' chief prosecutor was Supreme Court justice Robe...

Indictment

The work of drafting the indictment was divided up by the national delegations. 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. The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations.After this division of formulating the charges, the British and America...

The International Military Tribunal began trial on 20 November 1945, after postponement requests from the Soviet prosecution, who wanted more time to prepare its case, were rejected. All defendants pleaded not guilty. As Jackson made clear, the purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of ...

The International Military Tribunal agreed with the prosecution that aggression was the gravest charge against the accused, stating in its judgement that because war in general is evil, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that ...

Initially, it was planned to hold a second international tribunal for German industrialists, but this was never held because of differences between the Allies. Twelve military trials were convened solely by the United States in the same courtroom that had hosted the International Military Tribunal. These trials were held under Law No. 10 issued by ...

At the same time as the Nuremberg Charter was finalized, the Allies also signed the Potsdam Agreement, which provided for the mass expulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe, so that certain acts for which Nazis were convicted at Nuremberg were therefore made an official policy of the Allies.All four powers later fought indepe...

The International Military Tribunal, and the drafters of its charter, invented international criminal law essentially from nothing. During the two decades after the trial, opinions were predominantly negative. The main legal criticisms of the trial focused on questions of retroactivity, selectivity, and jurisdiction. The most controversial charge w...