The Road to Nuremberg: Why Trials Instead of Executions?

In the war’s final months, the Allies fiercely debated the fate of the senior Nazi leadership. Winston Churchill initially favored summary execution—declaring top figures “outlaws” to be shot upon capture. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suggested show trials with predetermined outcomes, while U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. proposed de-industrializing Germany and executing major war criminals without hearing. Morgenthau’s plan would have turned Germany into a pastoral state, but it was U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson who forcefully argued that the credibility of the post-war order demanded something radically different: a public legal proceeding with documentation, due process, and a permanent historical record. Stimson’s vision, backed by President Harry S. Truman, won out after months of intense inter-Allied negotiation. The resulting Nuremberg Trials, as archived by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, were designed to be a “civilizing instrument” rather than vengeance. The London Conference of June–August 1945 hammered out the precise terms, leading to the London Agreement of August 8, 1945, which established the International Military Tribunal (IMT).

The legal foundation was laid by the London Agreement, which defined three novel categories of crime—crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—plus a fourth count of conspiracy. The IMT Charter stripped defendants of the traditional defense of sovereign immunity, declaring that “the official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility.” This provision directly challenged centuries of state-centered international law. The Charter also required that defendants receive a fair trial: the right to counsel, to present evidence, and to cross-examine witnesses. The four Allied powers—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France—each supplied one judge and one alternate, with Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Britain serving as president of the tribunal.

The Defendants: Who Stood Trial?

The first and most famous trial, the Trial of the Major War Criminals, opened on November 20, 1945, and indicted 24 individuals and seven organizations (including the SS, Gestapo, SD, and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party). Due to Robert Ley’s suicide before trial and Gustav Krupp’s medical unfitness, 22 men ultimately faced judgment, with Martin Bormann tried in absentia. The dock contained a grim gallery of Hitler’s inner circle: Hermann Göring, Hitler’s designated successor and Reichsmarschall, who had founded the Gestapo and commanded the Luftwaffe; Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer who had flown to Scotland in 1941 on an unauthorized peace mission; Joachim von Ribbentrop, the sycophantic Foreign Minister; Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi racial theorist who orchestrated the plunder of art and the eastern occupation policies; Albert Speer, Armaments Minister who admitted responsibility but distanced himself from Hitler; Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Armed Forces High Command, who signed many notorious orders; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Security Main Office, which controlled the Gestapo and the concentration camps. Industrialists like Walther Funk, Reichsbank president and Economics Minister, represented the economic engine of genocide. The trial thus targeted not only political leaders but those who enabled mass atrocity through military command, economic exploitation, and bureaucratic administration.

Over 216 court days, the IMT heard testimony from 236 witnesses and reviewed more than 200,000 affidavits and captured documents. The prosecution’s strategy relied overwhelmingly on the Nazis’ own meticulous records—orders, meeting minutes, and photographs that required little interpretation. One of the most visceral moments came on November 29, 1945, when the courtroom screen flickered with a one-hour documentary titled “Nazi Concentration Camps,” compiled from American and British military footage. The film showed bulldozers pushing piles of emaciated bodies into mass graves at Belsen, the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and the survivors with hollow eyes. Several defendants squirmed visibly; others stared stonily ahead. According to the Robert H. Jackson Center, U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson insisted on letting the documents speak, famously stating: “We will establish incredible events by credible evidence.” The prosecution also called survivors and witnesses, such as former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, whose detached testimony confirmed the systematic annihilation of millions.

The “Just Following Orders” Dilemma

Central to the defense mounted by actors like Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl was the assertion that they were soldiers bound by oath and superior orders. This “Nuremberg Defense” was systematically dismantled by the prosecution. Article 8 of the IMT Charter explicitly stated: “The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment.” The tribunal thus encoded a profound shift for military ethics: soldiers and commanders retain an inescapable duty to refuse manifestly illegal commands. Keitel’s plaintive cry—"I could not believe that a soldier’s duty to obey orders would ever be called criminal"—was answered with a death sentence. The defense of duress was also rejected; the court ruled that a soldier who knowingly participates in a massacre is criminally liable even under threat of punishment.

Verdicts and Sentences

On October 1, 1946, the judges delivered their verdicts after lengthy deliberations. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, including Göring (who committed suicide by cyanide hours before execution), Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Jodl, and Hess’s deputy, Fritz Sauckel. Three received life imprisonment: Hess, Walther Funk, and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach got 20-year terms, while others received shorter sentences. Three defendants—Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche—were acquitted, a result that stoked controversy but demonstrated the tribunal’s commitment to legal standards over political revenge. The Allied Control Council also declared the SS, Gestapo, SD, and Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party criminal organizations, opening the door for thousands of subsequent prosecutions under Control Council Law No. 10.

Principles and Precedents: The Nuremberg Legacy for International Law

The full impact of Nuremberg radiated outward through the formulation of the Nuremberg Principles by the International Law Commission in 1950. These seven principles codified that individuals have international duties that transcend national obedience, that international crimes must be punishable, and that the fact that an act is not criminal under national law is no defense. The Principles also established that the official position of a defendant does not exempt them from responsibility, and that superior orders are no absolute defense. This directly fueled the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which set global standards for protecting civilians, prisoners of war, and the wounded. The trials permanently shattered the notion that state sovereignty could shield perpetrators of systematic brutality, creating a precedent for international human rights law.

Military Implications: Redefining Command Responsibility

For armed forces everywhere, Nuremberg’s most enduring operational consequence is the doctrine of command responsibility. Previously, generals might claim ignorance of troops’ conduct. After Nuremberg, military leaders became legally obligated to prevent, stop, or punish war crimes committed by subordinates under their effective control. This principle, later reinforced by the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court (ICC), flows directly from the conviction of defendants like Keitel and Jodl, who were held liable not just for direct orders but for knowingly permitting atrocities to occur within their chains of command. The trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita in Manila in 1945 further solidified this doctrine: he was convicted for failing to control his troops in the Philippines despite lacking proof of direct knowledge. Modern military manuals, including the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual, explicitly incorporate Nuremberg-derived norms. Every soldier receives training on the duty to disobey a manifestly illegal order—a direct rejection of the “Befehl ist Befehl” (an order is an order) culture. The 1971 court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam invoked Nuremberg principles when establishing that obedience to ambiguous or criminal field orders is no shield. Contemporary operational law specialists routinely advise commanders during targeting to ensure compliance with proportionality and distinction, principles whose enforcement owes much to the legal architecture raised in Courtroom 600.

Criticisms and Controversies: Victor’s Justice or Fair Tribunal?

Despite its monumental achievements, the IMT was not immune to charges of “victor’s justice.” The prosecution of “crimes against peace” applied only to the Axis powers, ignoring Soviet aggression against Poland and Finland, the British-American strategic bombing campaign that incinerated Dresden and Hamburg, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The inclusion of a Soviet judge who had presided over the show trials of the 1930s under Stalin further undermined the court’s moral symmetry. Critics also pointed out that the legal principle of nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without law) was strained by retroactively applying an unprecedented category like crimes against humanity. Nonetheless, supporters argued that the moral enormity of Nazi crimes demanded a novel legal response, and the alternative of letting mass murderers walk free was politically and ethically untenable. The tribunal itself acknowledged some of these tensions; for example, the prosecution did not pursue charges for the Katyn massacre despite Soviet attempts to blame Germany. Despite these flaws, the Nuremberg Trials established a benchmark that later tribunals would strive to meet, proving that even imperfect justice is preferable to none.

Beyond Nuremberg: Subsequent Trials and the Creation of the ICC

The major war criminal trial was only the beginning. The United States conducted twelve subsequent Nuremberg proceedings under Control Council Law No. 10, targeting doctors, judges, industrialists, and Einsatzgruppen commanders. The Doctors’ Trial alone produced the Nuremberg Code, the foundational ethical framework for human medical experimentation—requiring informed consent, voluntary participation, and a favorable risk-benefit ratio. The Judges’ Trial condemned German jurists who had perverted the legal system in service of Nazi racial laws. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo tried 28 Japanese leaders, reinforcing the doctrine of command responsibility through the conviction of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, as noted above. The Tokyo Trials also introduced the concept of “crimes against peace” against Japanese leaders who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The ad hoc international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) in the 1990s explicitly grounded their statutes in Nuremberg precedents. The ICTY prosecuted Slobodan Milošević and others for war crimes during the Balkan conflicts, while the ICTR convicted those responsible for the 1994 genocide. Both tribunals refined the definition of genocide and sexual violence as a war crime. Finally, the International Criminal Court, established by the Rome Statute in 2002, stands as Nuremberg’s permanent institutional heir. The ICC now prosecutes genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, and its proceedings against militia leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo, heads of state like Omar al-Bashir, and suspects in the Ukraine conflict trace a direct bloodline back to the verdicts read in October 1946. However, the ICC’s jurisdiction remains limited by state consent and the Security Council’s referral power, echoing the selectivity that once plagued Nuremberg.

Conclusion: Enduring Echoes in Modern Conflict

The Nuremberg Trials were at once an imperfect judicial spectacle and a civilizational milestone. They transformed “never again” from aspiration into a legal project with teeth, proving that even the most powerful military machine can be held to account. For today’s soldiers, commanders, and policymakers, the message of Courtroom 600 is unambiguous: the uniform does not erase the human, and the duty to disobey an atrocity is absolute. The principles of individual criminal responsibility, command accountability, and the prohibition of wars of aggression continue to shape international relations and military doctrine. As war convulses regions from Ukraine to Gaza, and as the international community scrambles to collect evidence for future prosecutions—through mechanisms like the International Criminal Court’s investigations into Russian atrocities—the ghost of Nuremberg presides. It stands as a stern reminder that war does not grant a license for barbarism, and that justice, however delayed and imperfect, can span borders and decades, binding all of humanity to a common moral law.