The trials of Nazi war criminals, beginning at Nuremberg in 1945 and continuing into the present day, did more than punish individual perpetrators. They created an entirely new branch of law, established the principle that those who commit atrocities cannot hide behind the authority of a state, and provided the first systematic public accounting of what had been done in the camps and the killing fields of occupied Europe. The trials are the moral and legal foundation on which the present-day understanding of the Holocaust rests.
What this section covers
This section is divided into five main areas. The Nuremberg Trials covers the International Military Tribunal of 1945 to 1946 and the twelve subsequent trials that ran until 1949, including the prosecutors, the defendants, the verdicts, and the questions the trials raised. Subsequent Trials and Prosecutions covers the later individual prosecutions, from Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 through Klaus Barbie, John Demjanjuk, and the camp guards still being prosecuted in German courts. The Ratlines covers the escape networks that took senior Nazis to South America and the Middle East, and the agencies that helped them. Nazi Hunters covers the people who refused to let the perpetrators die quietly: Simon Wiesenthal, the Klarsfelds, Tuvia Friedman, and the Office 06 unit that captured Eichmann. Holocaust Law and Legacy covers the legal innovations that came out of Nuremberg and shape international criminal law to this day, from the Genocide Convention of 1948 to the International Criminal Court.
Why the trials matter now
The legal record produced by these trials is the most authoritative documentation of what the Holocaust was. The Nuremberg trials alone generated 42 volumes of evidence, including the testimony of senior perpetrators given under oath. When deniers claim there is no proof, the trials are part of the answer. The trials also established the principle that giving lawful orders is not a defence against international criminal law, and that heads of state are not immune from prosecution, principles that shape every international criminal proceeding today.
The substantive academic record
The substantive academic record on The Trials is documented in the substantive postwar academic literature on the wartime killing programme of European Jewry. The operational features of the substantive subject are addressed in the substantive body of substantive postwar academic, judicial, and testimonial work that has been produced over the postwar period of approximately eighty years.
The substantive subject is part of the wider substantive academic reconstruction of the wartime killing programme. The substantive subject is connected to the wider operational features of the killing programme through the substantive parent topics addressed elsewhere in this section: . The substantive subject substantively contributes to the academic understanding of the substantive wartime period.
What the record shows
The substantive academic, documentary, and testimonial record on The Trials has been comprehensively produced in the substantive postwar literature and has been sustained across the substantive body of subsequent academic and testimonial work. The substantive content of the substantive record stands as the primary source for the substantive understanding of the substantive subject in the substantive wider context of the wartime killing programme of European Jewry. The substantive content stands.
Sources
- Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 2 vols, HarperCollins, 1997 and 2007
- Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2004
- Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2010
- Yisrael Gutman, ed, The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 4 vols, Macmillan, 1995