Eighty years ago, on 20 November, 1945, the historic trials of many leaders of the Nazi Third Reich began in Nuremberg, Germany, just months after the end of WWII. The exceptional procedure laid the foundations of a new international legal model to prosecute crimes against humanity.
The four victorious Allied powers of World War II did not opt for summary justice, but instead created an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to judge Nazi criminals.
New concepts, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace were introduced on the orders of US Attorney General Robert Jackson and laid the foundations of contemporary international criminal law.
For 10 months in courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg tribunal, in front of more than 400 journalists and nearly a hundred witnesses, the world would see the extent of Nazi crimes carried out under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
Hiding behind orders
When the trial opened on 20 November, 21 of the 24 high-ranking officials of the Nazi regime appeared in court.
Key defendants were the regime's second in command Hermann Goring, Hitler's right-hand man Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, the regime's ideologue, and Hitler's architect, Albert Speer.
Defendants also included some of the highest-ranking officers of the German armed forces: Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl of the Wehrmacht High Command, and naval commanders Erich Raeder and Alfred Dönitz.
Seven institutions were also accused: the Reich Cabinet (government), Nazi Party dignitaries, the SS, the Gestapo, the SA, the General Staff, and the High Command of the German Armed Forces.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty, claiming they were acting on orders and had not been aware of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.
Their lawyers knew that their clients' guilt was beyond doubt, given the irrefutable evidence. A film depicting the horrors of the extermination camps, footage still little known at the time, was shown during the trial.
Chilling testimony of survivors
Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, delivered detailed testimony on 18 January, 1946, that stunned the assembly.
"One night, we were awakened by terrifying cries. We learned the next morning, from the men who worked at the Sonderkommando, the gas commando, that the day before, not having enough gas, they had thrown the children alive into the furnaces," she recalled.
Her testimony helped other victims to come forward, though it would take several decades before they were heard outside the courts, which for a long time were the only places they were willing to be heard.
"Through my eyes, thousands and thousands of eyes [were watching them], and through my voice, thousands of voices [were accusing them]" Vaillant-Couturier said later.
When the verdicts were handed down on 1 October, 1946, three of the defendants were acquitted, twelve were sentenced to death and executed by hanging two weeks later. While Goring was sentenced to death, he managed to hasten his execution by swallowing a cyanide capsule.
The others served prison sentences.
Only Speer admitted a share of responsibility, a tactical choice that allowed him to narrowly escape a death sentence.
Twelve further trials were held in the same courtroom over the following years, although they were largely overshadowed by the Cold War and the reconstruction of Germany.
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Ideological capital
Choosing Nuremberg as the setting for the trial had strong symbolic significance.
In the autumn of 1945, Berlin and Nuremberg were in ruins. But the vast courthouse in the centre of Nuremberg was miraculously still standing despite years of war.
Situated in Bavaria's second-largest city, steeped in its imperial past, Hitler designated it the regime's "ideological capital".
Speer built a vast architectural complex – the Reichsparteitagsgelände ("Reich Party Congress Grounds") – in the southeast of the city, where the Nazi Party, the NSDAP, held its congresses from 1933 to 1938.
It was there that the so-called Nuremberg Laws, in 1935, cemented Nazi antisemitism into the Reich's legal system.
For the past fifteen years, a memorial in the building has informed the public and attracts 160,000 visitors a year, mostly from abroad.
Nina Lutz, the memorial's director, says she is impressed by how well informed the visitors are.
"Everything has changed. Today we are aware of the importance of this trial for historical work on the crimes of the Third Reich. I'm always surprised by the interest and knowledge of our visitors," she told RFI.
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Resonance with Ukraine war
Among a group of young German visitors, some are keen to see how the legal model set up in Nuremberg could still have an influence 80 years on.
"On the one hand, we see that the trial was fair, but also that criminals were acquitted. Let’s hope it will be different in the future; we’re thinking of Ukraine, for example," one man told RFI.
"I wasn’t aware of the importance of the trial for international criminal law," another visitor admitted, while a third said it "shows that we can do something about these crimes, but the world has to work together".
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The Nuremberg trials are not only a crucial historical chapter after the fall of the Third Reich. They marked a turning point in international law that remains relevant today.
"The Nuremberg Principles are of central importance to international criminal law," says Gurgen Petrossian of the Nuremberg Principles Academy. "States have incorporated these rules into their national laws. We see this in trials today where these same principles are applied."
The trial that began this week in Koblenz, against five men accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, is just one example of how relevant the Nuremberg trials still are.
This article was adapted from RFI content in French: this piece by Pascal Thibaut and this piece by Olivier Favier.
