Papers of the International Military Tribunal and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals

Papers of the International Military Tribunal and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals 

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was established in consequence of the London Agreement of 8 August 1945, which dealt with the punishment of the war criminals of the European Axis. The IMT was composed of representatives of France, Great Britain, the USA and the USSR under the Allied Control Commission and its purpose was to try the major war criminals. Even before the war had ended, the Amercian and British armies had established special investigating teams whose purpose was to collect documentary evidence of war crimes. The material was then sorted and the most significant documents were transmitted to Nuremberg. An opening session of the IMT was held at Berlin on 18 October 1945; the tribunal convened at Nuremberg on 14 November 1945 and concluded its business with the passing of sentence on twenty-two defendants on 1 October 1946. These defendants were Hermann Wilhelm Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Ketel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walter Funk, Karl Dnitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Saukel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss- Inquart, Albert Speer, Constantin von Neurath, Martin Bormann, Hjalmar Schact, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche. The Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) or 'subsequent proceedings' were tried by the United States in pursuance of the Allied Control Commission Law 10, which empowered the commanding officers of the four allied zones of occupation to conduct criminal trials on charges of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of an organisation aiming at such crimes. President Truman took the decision to prosecute, through the Office of the United States Goverment for Germany (OMGUS), over one hundred and seventy more Germans. Evidence was provided by the Office of the US Chief Counsel and its chief counsel, Joseph T.McNary, established six US military tribunals which conducted the twelve trials held before the NMT. The trials ran from 26 October 1946 to 14 April 1949 and the defendants included high-ranking officials, among them cabinet ministers, diplomats, military and SS leaders, industrialists, physicians who had been involved in medical crimes, as well as middle-ranking SS officers who were implicated in crimes at concentration camps or in genocide in German occupied areas. Although the trials were military, they were conducted before American civilian judges, on indictments filed by Brigadier General Telford Taylor, United States Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, acting on behalf of the USA. 

Papers of the International Military Tribunal and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals