THE NUREMBERG TRIALS.

BACKGROUND

• The purpose of the Nuremberg trials was to bring Nazi war criminals to justice
• It was a series of 13 trials that occurred in Nuremberg Germany between 1945-1949. The major war criminals trial took place in November 1945 and lasted till October 1946.
• The defendants included Nazi party officials, high ranking military officers, along with German industrialist, lawyers, and doctors.
• They were indicted on crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

WHO WAS INVOLVED?

• Judges from the Allied powers—Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—were present at the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals.
• The indicted include Hermann Goering (Hitler's heir designate), Rudolf Hess (deputy leader of the Nazi party), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm Keitel (head of the armed forces), including 20 others.

JOSEF MENGELE "THE WHITE ANGEL"

• Josef was the head SS physician of Auschwitz. He was the one who determined if millions of Jews would live or be sent to the gas chambers.
• He was known for his inhumane medical experimentations. He would keep eyeballs of his murder victims to perform test on artificial changing of eye color. He was also fascinated by twins, he even sewed twins together and performed experiments on them.
• In 1945 Mengele was in U.S. custody, but unaware that he was wanted for war crimes, the U.S. Let him go.

CONTINUED.

• In the summer of 1945- to the spring of 1949 Dr. Josef Mengele lived in Bavaria as a farmhand. Without legal documentation, he eventually settled in Argentina.
• In 1959 West German authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. However, with recent actions in the finding of another Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, he moved to Paraguay, then Brazil were he died from a stroke in the year 1979, under the name Wolfgang Gerhard.

ALBERT SPEERS

• Albert Speers was in the inner circle of Hitler. Speers was very close to hitter during the nazis reign of terror. Speers was appointed Minister of armaments of war by hitler. He insisted he was ignorant of the Holocaust during his trial. Speers was given 20 years in prison for his crimes. He was only found guilty of forced labor.
• Also Mr. O'Neal has his signature.

PUNISHMENTS

• Some of the people were hung
• Some received 15-life in prison
• Some were let free
• Depending what you did during WWII pretty much decided what your punishment was
• Some got away like Mengele and Adolf Eichmann

OTHER FACTS

• The city of Nuremberg (also known as Nurnberg) in the German state of Bavaria was selected as the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was relatively undamaged by the war and included a large prison area.
• Heinrich Himmler (1900-45) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-45), had each committed suicide in the spring of 1945 before they could be brought to trial.
• The findings at Nuremberg led directly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

SOURCES

• History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 15 June 2016.
• "The Nuremberg Trials." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 15 June 2016.
• Nuremberg Trials." Nuremberg Trials. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2016.
• Cowell, Alan. "Nuremberg Journal;War's Crimes and Punishments, Then and Now." The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 Nov. 1995. Web. 15 June 2016.
• "Albert Speer." - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2016.
• "Nuremberg War Crime Trials - History Learning Site." History Learning Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2016.