After World War II when all the camps were liberated, trials were held against the Nazi’s who took part in this genocide. These trials were called the Nuremburg trials. The trials took place between October 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946 . Although Many Nazis felt they were taking orders their punishments through the Nuremburg trials were justified due to the massive loss of life in the concentration as well as the social consequences on families. Throughout the Nuremburg trials there were 8 judges. Only 24 Nazis were indicted for war crimes. Out of those 24 only 22 were tried. 1 of the 24 was not included due to his mental/ physical status and his son committed suicide before the trials. Approximately 200 Nazis were tried for various reasons including murder, maltreatment, abduction, enslavement, and robbery. Due to these charges most got off easily and did not have much of a punishment. During the trials survivors of the Holocaust stood in front of the court to share their stories and testify against the defense. Almost all of these stories were very emotional and had several of the people in the court rooms in tears. Because not everyone spoke the same language so they had translators that you could wear to hear someone translate it from one language to the other. Sometimes, with a couple of the stories people would take their headphones off so they didn’t have to hear any more of the gruesome story. There were 12 trials in total with the major trials being the Justice trial, Einsat trial, and the Poctors trial. Only 12 Nazis were sentenced to death through the entirety of the trials. The Nuremburg trials were well thought out and fair. While many of the Nazis were in fact punished, few received harsh punishments at all. Mos... ... middle of paper ... ...ey survived. These were usually young girls. That disabled them for life and your letting the people that did this to them walk off with a short sentence to jail and then they can go off and live their lives again? This is plenty justified. These people had to stand for hours on end, threatened by dogs and whips, they were hungry and thirsty beyond belief, their families were taken from them, and their hope was taken from them. The Nazis definitely got what they had coming to them. Even after the trials had occurred many people were still looking for justice. Many people did not believe that Hitler was dead. They thought he was still alive and in hiding and they wanted to find him to kill him. They wanted to issue justice to him. They even had Nazi hunters who went all over the world tracking down and capturing Nazis to bring them back to have their own trial.
It is evident that regular Germans willingly, almost gaily, took part in the torment as well as mass killing of Jews during WWII (Rensmann 179). It comes out they were not mainly members of the Nazi Party, other than entirely common Germans (Rensmann 182). These normal citizens conveyed merely as much pain along with anguish as whichever Nazi associate, and have to be exposed on behalf of everyone who was killed in consequence of Hitler’s ultimate solution. Even though she was in agreement with the final judgment of the court, that is, that Surname Eichmann is supposed to be predestined to loss, she argued with the reasoning suggested at the court-trial as well as with the display of the court-trial itself (Arendt 201).
If you have been in a History class you have probably heard of an event that happened after World War Two called the Nuremberg Trials. These trials were conducted by the United States. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was appointed to lead the trials (Berenbaum). During these trials they charged with Crimes against the Peace, War crimes and Crimes against Humanity (Berenbaum). Many major Nazi leaders committed suicide before officials could hang them or before even being caught. The famous Doctor Goebbels killed his children then him and his wife committed suicide (Berenbaum). Only twelve out of the twenty-two who stood trial were hanged, twelve, while the rest just got prison time. Besides major Nazi officials, Physicians were put on trial, the people who were part of the mobile killing squads, Concentration camp officials, Judges and Executives who sold concentration camps Zyklon B. You can expect that they had many excuses, but m...
Was the Rosenberg trial a fair trial? This has been a very controversial and debated question throughout the 20th century. Many people believe that the Rosenbergs where innocent but had an unfair trial. Others believe that the Rosenbergs had a fair trial and are guilty because of their involvement with espionage and the Soviet Union. Overall the Trial is still a very controversial because of their involvement with communism, their convictions of espionage, and their show of treason against he United States with the Soviets. Before the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, events took place first that made America anti-Communism. According to Douglas Linder, on March 1917 the Russian Revolution began which was the beginning of Communism. Another event was in 1939, when Britain and Germany went to war (James Sweeney). America looked down on Communism after confrontations with Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1917 an Espionage Act is put into terms (Douglas Linder). According to Douglas Linder, in 1923, a Communist Party was formed into the United States. Megan Barnett thought that the Rosenberg's joined a Communist Party due to Hitler's carnage.
After the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent imprisonment at Landsberg, he was told that he would receive a public trial. This public trial brought Hitler’s spirits up as he felt that this would give him the mass media coverage he needed and the chance to show how evil, stupid and cowardly his Government truly was. He was right, a Nazi sympathizer in the Bavarian Government chose all of the judges. These judges allowed Hitler to speak as long as he wished in his own defense, interrupt his opposition, cross-examine witnesses, and use the courtroom as a tool to spread pro-Nazi propaganda throughout the press. Hitler’s political luck had allowed him to use his daring to spread thoughts throughout the people of Germany with comments such as, "I alone bear the responsibility. But I am not a criminal because of that. If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution. There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918." While Hitler’s luck had allowed him the chance to promote his beliefs, his ability to manipulate people allowed him to receive the outcome that he had desired. While Hitler was still convicted, it was only at the command of the presiding judge, and even then the sentence was weak and allowed him many extravagances that allowed him to further his power.
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”)....
Although Elie Wiesel gives you a detailed account of how the Nazis would treat them; how it slowly started to dehumanize them. For example the Nazis took away their names. “We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel 42) Not to mention the Nazis put so much fear into the Jews that they would commit cruel acts that they never imagined they could do. The selection process was another such scarring event that Nazis inflicted on the Jews to put much fear in them. It caused them to do whatever it took to survive. The selection process is when the prisoners would get completely naked and go in front of the SS doctors for examination, the advice given to the Jews is run in front of the doctors, not to walk. Then there were also random beatings for example: “One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood. As I bit my lips in order not to howl with pain, he must have mistaken my silence for defiance and so he continued to hit me harder and harder. Abruptly, he calmed down and sent me back to work as if nothing had happened. As if we had taken part in a game in which both roles were of equal importance.” (Wiesel 53) Among all the disturbing things Nazis did, the fact that they would make Jews look in the face of a hanging corpse is something I do not think they will ever forget. “Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…
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.
After World War II the world began to here accounts of the atrocities and crimes committed by the Nazi’s to the Jews and other enemies of the Nazis. The international community wanted answers and called for the persecution of the criminals that participated in the murder of millions throughout Europe. The SS was responsible for playing a leading role in the Holocaust for the involvement in the death of millions of innocent lives. Throughout, Europe concentration camps were established to detain Jews, political prisoners, POW’s and enemies of the Third Reich. The largest camp during World War II was Auschwitz under the command of SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess; Auschwitz emerged as the site for the largest mass murder in the history of the world. (The, 2005)
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.
One of the Reichsbahn Railyard workers in the Auschwitz Railyards explains a terrible incident when cleaning out the rail cars and says, “A blackened corpse fell out. The car was still filled with the deportees who had died on the train” (Barthelmass). The fact that people died on these trains show that the employees did not treat them well. This shows how badly these Jewish deportees were treated on the trains, whether the workers knew that they died or not. Another instance that shows how badly the German workers treated the Jews is shown by a locomotive engineer from the Treblinka Death Camp, Henrik Gawkowski. This man states, “Since the locomotive was next to the cars, I could hear their screams, asking for water. The screams from the cars closest to the locomotive could be heard very well” (Gawkowski). He then goes on to say that he drank liquor to drown out these screams. This classifies the German workers as perpetrators because they did nothing to help the Jews. They knew that the Jews were dying, and they know how to help them, by giving them water, yet they still did nothing to help them. The Jews died in the trains on these workers’ watches. The fact is that the German railway workers knew that the Jews on the trains were in pain and dying, yet they did nothing to help them, so these workers can clearly be classified as perpetrators and not just
At the time of their occurrences, the Nuremburg trials really meant one thing to most people: the war really was over. The terror of war and all that came with it had come to an end, and it was time to find who was to blame. Top Nazi brass were brought in to answer for their crimes against humanity. The war was not the extent of it, as the world would find out. They had also played an instrumental part in the systematic extermination of six million people. The indictment of Nazi officials for their crimes set a precedent for international cooperation as well as the prosecution of similar criminals which has affected the world up to the present in a very virtuous way.
In the first place, when did we approve of these inhumane actions and why are we still deciding whether to prosecute Nazi’s. It’s unbelievable that we allowed genocide happen to jews. As a result of this many Jews died by the cruelty of other humans. Many say we shouldn’t prosecute them due to old age. However, the victims deserve justice as their family and friends have died.
On July 7, 1937, the imperial Japanese army marched into Manchuria, China, and began to commit horrendous acts against the Chinese and other Asian countries alike. These war crimes included, rape, mass murder, human experimentation, biological warfare, torture, cannibalism, forced labor, and more. After the war, these crimes were to be judged by what is known as the “Tokyo Trials”. The Tokyo trials were very similar to the Nuremburg trials as they were both done to judge the crimes of the losers of the war. These trails were held to make sure the losers recognized that what they had done, was in fact, wrong. However, the conclusion to the Tokyo Trials had seemingly no effect on Japan as Japan has yet, to issue any “formal” apologies to China
The Nuremberg Trials was unethically run and violated the rights of the Nazi leaders who were convicted of committing crimes against humanity. Primarily because the Allies sought to use the trials as a way to remind the Germans, who won the war ‘again’. Thus making it similar to the Treaty of Versailles in (19- ), through implying this notion of “Victors’ Justice”. Nevertheless, the Allies did to an extent ‘try’ to make the tribunal as ethical as possible,
So far, Judgement at Nuremberg is an interesting film. I’ve only seen half of it, but I have a feeling that I already know the general tone of the film which is to prove that not all Germans are monsters, and that many of them were pressured into pledging allegiance to the Fuhrer because of fear of punishment by the government and other fanatical citizens at the time. This is clearly shown through the housekeepers where the Judge is staying, and, whom I believe is his love interest, Mrs. Bertholt. They are characterized as innocent people who did nothing wrong besides being a German in Germany during Nazi rule. This theme is also demonstrated through the drunk German men outside of a bar. We are introduced to these characters during the scene