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American culture and its influence
American culture and its influence
American culture and its influence
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The Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trial was built up to be the trial of the century. In the word's of Norman Birkett, who served as a British alternate judge: it was "the greatest trial in history" . The four most intriguing characters of this trial were of vast contradiction to each other; there was Herman Georing the relentless leader, Joachim von Ribbentrop the guilty and indecisive follower of Hitler, Hjalmar Schacth the arrogant financial wizard of the Rich and Albert Speer the remorseful head of armament and munitions. Three of the four allies wanted the Nazi leaders to be executed without a trial Winston Churchill said, "They should be rounded up and shot like dog's" but the Americans persuaded the other allies that a trial would be most beneficial from a public relations standpoint, so now with the allies agreed the stage for Nuremberg was set.
The four most fascinating leaders of the Nazi party that were put on trial were Georing, von Ribbentrop, Schacth and Speer, not so much individually but together. Georing was presumably the most famous and high ranking of all the defendants tried at Nuremberg. He had joined the Nazi party in 1922 and ascended to the post of president of the Reichstag in essence Hitler's number two man. He like many of the others tried was very intelligent, but seemed to be much too aware of it. He defend himself and Hitler vigorously saying "the victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused. " Von Ribbentrop was the German foreign minister in theory, but in reality he was just a messenger of Hitler's will with no real power. He was said by all Nazi leaders to be very week and indecisive to the point of asking prison barbers and guards for advice for his defense. The onc...
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...onsidered the evidence with great care, and comes to the conclusion that this necessary inference (the Nazi party) has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt." Not guilty. The last verdict was Speer who had thrown his mercy to the court. The judge sympathized with him but also denounced him. Guilty on counts three and four, twenty years impresentment.
What was the legacy of the Nuremberg trials? It was meant to change how wars are fought forever, but did not complete that goal of a permanent tribunal with only one other human rights tribunal since then. The trial is a successes in it self but it's legacy is a failure. Robert Jackson said what the Nuremberg trial was about best in his closing argument "They have been given the kind of trial which they in the days of their pomp and power, never gave any man…" Fairness and a more civilized society.
Speer’s well structured and thought out defence shaped historical interpretation for years to come. At Nuremberg he presented himself as a pure technician and not involved in the politics or ideology of the party. He also claimed collective responsibility for crimes against Jews but also his ignorance of the Nazi intentions. As he stated at a later time: “I just stood aside and said to myself that as long as I did not personally participate it had nothing to do with me. My toleration for the anti Semitic campaign made me responsible for it.” This admission of guilt won a fair amount of sympathy from the court. The reasons he gave for being with the Nazi party was that he was taken by Hitler’s personality and also realised that if he was to achieve his dream as an architect he will have to sell his soul to the party. This image of Speer was to be accepted for a while by most historians and was given little attention. This was probably because Speer was a little less ‘spectacular’ than Hitler’s other henchmen. There were however some suspicions. John Galbraith, a member of the US team that debriefed Speer before the Nuremberg trial, said in Life magazine 1945 that Speer’s claims contained “elements of fantasy”. He also believed that Speer’s confession was a part of his “well developed strategy of self vindication and survival.”
Adolf Eichmann was a high-ranking German officer who was one of a few top-ranking officials responsible for the "legal work" of the extermination of millions of Jews. He was a wanted Nazi war criminal because he escaped just before the end of World War II. He was not immediately captured and thus evaded the Nuremberg Trials as he fled to the country of Argentina where he attempted to fade into history. Israeli secret service agents somehow managed to track Eichmann down, kidnap him, and bring him back to Israel to face the consequences of his past. Throughout the trial, Eichmann's defense was simply that he was basically a puppet of Nazi Germany saying that he was "a tool in the hands of superior powers and authorities."
The Holocaust or the Ha-Shoah in Hebrew meaning ‘the day of the Holocaust and heroism’ refers to the period of time from approximately January 30,1933, when Adolf Hitler became the legal official of Germany, to May 8,1945. After the war was over in Europe, the Jews in Europe were being forced to endure the horrifying persecution that ultimately led to the slaughter of over 6 million Jews with about 1.5 million of them being children as well as the demolition of 5,000 Jewish communities.
“The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal” (Sells, Michael A.). Adolf Eichmann was one of the head Nazis. He had a lot of authority in enacting what Hitler had told the Nazis to do. He was just about as responsible as Hitler was for killing all of those innocent
In 1692 everyone was sure that the Devil had come to Salem when young girls started screaming, barking like dogs and doing strange dances in the woods. The Salem Witch Trials originated in the home of Salem's reverend Samuel Parris, who had a slave from the Caribbean named Tibuta. Tibuta would tell stories about witchcraft back from her home. In early 1692 several of Salem's teenage girls began gathering in the kitchen with Tibuta. When winter turned to spring many Salem residents were stunned at the acts and behaviors of Tibuta's young followers. It was said that in the woods nearby they danced a black magic dance, and several of the girls would fall on the floor screaming uncontrollably. These behaviors soon began to spread across Salem. This soon led to ministers from nearby communities coming to Salem to lend their advice on the matter. Many believed that the girls were bewitched. It is believed that the young girls accusations began the Salem witch trials, and they would gather at reverend Parris's house to play fortune-telling games with magic and with Tibuta. One of the games was for them to crack a raw egg into a glass of water and see what shape it made in the glass.
The Milgram experiment was designed and performed by Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961. Milgram created this experiment predominately to determine what would have motivated Germans to so readily conform to the demands put forth by the Nazi party. Milgram wished to answer his question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (McLeod). At the time of these experiments, debates about the Nuremberg trials, particularly the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major perpetrators in the Holocaust, were still ongoing. At these trials, many Nazi party officials and military officers were put on trial for committing “crimes against humanity.” Although some defendants pleaded guilty, others claimed that they were innocent and only following orders that were given to them by a higher authority, Adolf Hitler. In the end, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life in prison, four to approximately fifteen year prison terms, and three were acquitted (“The Nuremberg Trials”)....
The Salem Witch Trials were a time in history where people were wrongly accused of being witches. In the spring of 1692 the Salem witch trials began. During the trials women were wrongly accused of being witches. When accused of being a witch they were tortured, tested, put on trial, and most of the time executed if not put in jail. The townspeople tortured the accused witches in the most inhumane ways. This was a very dark and eerie time for the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts (P., Shaunak).
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the summer and into the fall of the year 1692, and during this dark time of American history, over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft and put in jail. Twenty of these accused were executed; nineteen of them were found guilty and were put to death by hanging. One refused to plead guilty, so the villagers tortured him by pressing him with large stones until he died. The Salem Witch Trials was an infamous, scary time period in American history that exhibited the amount of fear people had of the devil and the supernatural; the people of this time period accused, arrested, and executed many innocent people because of this fear, and there are several theories as to why the trials happened (Brooks).
Heinrich Himmler was the Reich Leader of the SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. Himmler controlled a huge ideological and bureaucratic empire that made him distinct for many, both inside and outside the Third Reich, as the second most influential man in Germany behind Hitler himself, during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing execution of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to rid Europe of Jews. Himmler was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in Munich, Germany, on October 7, 1900. His father, taught at Ludwig high school gymnasium in Munich. In 1913, Himmler's family relocated to Landshut, a town located about 40 miles northeast of Munich, after Himmler’s father took the job of assistant principal of the Gymnasium in Landshut. An intelligent man with good capacity for organization, young Himmler was passionately patriotic. During World War I, he fantasized of service on the front as an officer, left high school to begin training as an officer. On November 11, 1918, however, before Himmler's training was through, Germany signed the armistice that would end World War I. Crushing Himmler’s dream of serving.
During the early winter of 1692 two young girls became inexplicably ill and started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucinations. Unable to find any medical reason for their condition the village doctor declared that there must be supernatural forces of witchcraft at work. This began an outbreak of hysteria that would result in the arrest of over one hundred-fifty people and execution of twenty women and men. The madness continued for over four months.
The witch trials of the late 1600's were full of controversy and uncertainty. The Puritan town of Salem was home to most of these trials, and became the center of much attention in 1692. More than a hundred innocent people were found guilty of practicing witchcraft during these times, and our American government forced over a dozen to pay with their lives. The main reasons why the witch trials occurred were conflicts dealing with politics, religion, family, economics, and fears of the citizens.
The Rosenberg trial, which ended in a double execution in 1953, was one of the century's most controversial trials. It was sometimes referred to as, "the best publicized spy hunt of all times" as it came to the public eye in the time of atom-spy hysteria. Husband and wife, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. Most of the controversy surrounding this case came from mass speculation that there were influences being reinforced by behind-the-scenes pressure, mainly from the government, which was detected through much inconsistencies in testimonies and other misconduct in the court. Many shared the belief that Ethel Rosenberg expressed best as she wrote in one of her last letters before being executed, "-knowing my husband and I must be vindicated by history.
The Salem Witchcraft was a series of undesirable events, which was powered by paranoia and fear. Though several witch trials occurred before the Salem Witch Trial, this was the most well known of all. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft which resulted to 19 men and women that were hanged, 17 innocents that died in unsanitary prisons, and an 80-year old man that was crushed to death by putting stones on top of his stomach until he confesses (movie: The Crucible). In some accounts, it was reported that two dogs were stoned to death for cooperating with the Devil. Why did the Salem Witch trial occur? Were these trials appropriate? Or were they truly a Devil's work? The Salem Witch Trials might have occurred for a variety of reasons such as people's ignorance that led to superstitions. It might have also occurred because people's crave for power, or it might also be because of fear.
In the end we can see that Hitler and in turn the whole Nazi party
Hitler then vindicates the actions of the Night of Long Knives in a speech to the Reichstag after the assassinations as he says, ‘I did not resort to the regular courts of justice for the conviction of the offenders.... ... middle of paper ... ... As Bullock states, ‘The balance of power in Germany had shifted decisively in Hitler’s favour.