October 18: Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials convened on this date in 1945. The court first investigated and indicted twenty-four “major war criminals” and six “criminal organizations.” The chief prosecutors, from the U.S., USSR, Great Britain, and France, relied chiefly on evidence provided by Nazi record-keeping. Among the thirty eyewitnesses to testify were Avram Sutzkever, the Yiddish poet and partisan fighter of Vilna. In general, the Nazi crimes against the Jews were not considered separately from other Nazi war crimes. Twelve of the accused at Nuremberg would be sentenced to death, while three would be acquitted. Herman Goering, who had testified frankly about the Holocaust, would escape the executioner by committing suicide, and Martin Bormann, tried in absentia, had already killed himself in Berlin in 1945. Between December, 1946 and April, 1949, the U.S. would try 177 more people and gain convictions of 97, including members of the German High Command and key German industrialists.

“The purpose of the Nuremberg trial was not merely, or even principally, to convict the leaders of Nazi Germany ... Of far greater importance . . . was the making of a record of the Hitler regime which would withstand the test of history.”
—Robert Storey, head of the U.S. prosecution team