Nuremberg Trials
The International Military Tribunal for Europe (also known as the Nuremberg Trials) refers to the dozens of military trials conducted by the victorious Powers of World War II against the military, political, and economic leaders of the Axis powers in Europe between November 21, 1945 and October 1, 1946. Since the trial was mainly conducted in Nuremberg, Germany, it is generally referred to as the Nuremberg Trial.
On October 18, 1945, the first trial of the International Military Tribunal was held in Berlin, and from November 20, 1945, it was moved to the German city of Nuremberg. After 216 hearings, it ended on 1 October 1946. The court pronounced sentences on 22 of the 24 accused, 12 of whom were sentenced to death by hanging. They are:
1. Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the no. 2 figure of the Nazi German regime, chief of the General Staff of the Air Force, and field marshal. (Suicide before execution)
Hermann William Goering
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a political and military leader of the Third Reich in Germany and had considerable influence within the Nazi Party.
He served as Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Chief of the Gestapo, Head of the "Four-Year Plan", Speaker of the National Assembly, Commander-in-Chief of the SA, Minister of Economy, Prime Minister of prussia, and many other important positions across the three branches of the Party, government and army, and was designated by Führer Hitler as his successor, and had a close relationship with the Führer.
Goering was a well-known "ace pilot" in World War I, with a record of shooting down 22 enemy aircraft, and was awarded the Highest Military Medal of Germany, the Grand Iron Cross, and later in the war served as the last commander of the 1st Fighter Wing, led by "Red Baron" Manfred von Richterhofen. After the war, Goering joined the Nazi Party, became one of its earliest members, and participated unsuccessfully in the "Beer Hall Coup" of 1923.
In 1933, Goering created the Secret Police, the Gestapo. In 1935, Göring was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe by Führer Hitler, and with his personal political influence he gained a large budget and independent status for the Air Force, allowing it to quickly build an army.
After World War II, Goering was captured by the Allies. In the "Nuremberg Trials" that tried German party, government, and army leaders, he was convicted of "conspiracy," "crimes of breaching peace," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity," and sentenced to hanging. On October 15, 1946, the night before his execution, Goering committed suicide by taking poison.
2. Joachim von Ribbentrop, second Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a politician in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's government, he served as ambassador and foreign minister to Britain, and played an important role in the formation of the German-Japanese-Italian Triple Alliance, and Ribbentrop was directly involved in the blitzkriegs against Poland and the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Captured by British forces after World War II, he was hanged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in October 1946.
3. William Keitel, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Field Marshal.
William Keitel
Wilhelm Baldwin Johann Gustav Keitel (22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946), former Commander-in-Chief of the German High Command; he was one of the most senior German commanders during World War II, and was sentenced to death by hanging at the Nuremberg Trial after the war.
Born in 1882 in Gandersheim, Keitel has a stubborn personality. In 1901, the farmer's son joined the 46th Regiment of Field Artillery in Wolfenbüttel after graduating from high school. During his tenure as lieutenant aide-de-camp to the regiment, he fought in the battles of Namur and the Marne in world war I, where he was awarded the Iron Cross of the Order of the Second and First Classes for his combat exploits, and was promoted to commander of an artillery company in the winter of 1914. In the spring of 1915 he was promoted to captain and transferred to the 10th Reserve Army, where he took part in the Bloody Battle of Verdun in 1916. In the same year, Keitel was transferred to the Division's Chief Staff Officer and was awarded the Royal Order of Hohenzollern. In the last year of the war, he served as a staff officer for the Marine Corps in Flanders.
After World War I, Keitel remained in the military. In October 1931 he became Colonel of the Organization Division of the Military Agency, and in 1933 he was promoted to major general and ordered to form the 22nd Division in Bremen. In 1935, Keitel was appointed directly from division commander to head of the War Department, and in February 1938 he was promoted to chief of staff of the Wehrmacht, making him Hitler's most trusted military adviser. Although he had advised Hitler when he decided to attack Poland, he was unable to persuade Hitler on major policy decisions.
After the Battle of the West, Keitel was promoted to field marshal. At this time, Hitler was determined to attack the East. Keitel disagreed and submitted an opinion not to attack the Soviet Union. Hitler ignored this. From this point on, Keitel turned to Hitler at every turn, and on July 25, 1941, Admiral Raeder wrote an opinion proposing a military sweep in the Mediterranean sea area and strengthening the fighting forces in North Africa. Keitel, in order to avoid causing Hitler's displeasure, proposed a radical revision of the opinion.
In the course of the Battle of the East, Keitel unreservedly agreed to Hitler's removal of the meritorious generals. He even aided and abetted the abuse, endorsing the execution of many high-ranking officers whose sole crime was failure to obey Hitler's orders. In February 1944, Keitel demanded the execution of Rivno's garrison commander, which was opposed by Zetzler, chief of staff of the army. But Imperial Marshal Goering supported Keitel's opinion. Hitler ordered a military trial. After interrogation confirming the guilt of the garrison commander, Keitel demanded the execution of a division commander in the Rivne area, which was ultimately prevented by Manstein due to the opposition of Marshal Manstein.
In the summer of 1944, the Western Front collapsed, Keitel's mistakes were exposed, and his absolute obedience fueled the disaster on the front. On 29 July, Hitler summoned Marshals Lundstedt, Rommel and Speller, as well as Admiral Crank and Guderian, Director of the Panzer Corps, to Berchtesgaden for a battle conference. At the meeting, Lundstedt and Rommel demanded that Hitler stop the war, but Hitler still stubbornly predicted the "victory" of the overall war.
After the meeting, Rommel asked Keitel to talk earnestly and explained to him that the war situation was hopeless, the war must end as soon as possible, and Keitel also believed that there was no hope of victory, and although he promised to speak to Hitler, he still believed in the "genius" of the "leader" and hoped that the war would be solved without winning or losing. Keitel was loyal until the day Hitler committed suicide.
He was captured on 13 May 1945 and sentenced to death at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on 1 October 1946. He was hanged on 16 October. When he heard the verdict, there was no expression on his face, and the same was true when he boarded the gallows. He had been completely subdued by Hitler's magic.
4. Ernst Kaltenbruna, second director of the Central Security Bureau.
Ernst Kaltenbruna
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was the leader of the Austrian SS, Secretary of State for Public Security of Austria, and the second head of the German Central Security Service.
Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party and SS in Austria in 1932. In 1938 he was promoted to SS Regional Commander and awarded the rank of SS Brigadier General. In 1940, Kaltenbrunner was appointed major general in the SS. In 1941, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to major general of police. In 1943, Kaltenbrunner succeeded Heydrich as head of the Gestapo. After the July 20 incident, Kaltenbrunner received a hotline directly to Hitler and was directly responsible for investigating the assassination. In 1945, Kaltenbrunner was captured by the Allies in Austria. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced Kaltenbrunner to death by hanging, and on 16 October 1946 he was hanged.
5. Alfred Rosenborg, Thought Leader of the Nazi Party, Minister of Affairs for the Eastern Occupation Zone.
Alfred Rosenborg
Alfred Rosenberg (12 January 1893 – 16 October 1946), an important member of Nazi Germany in World War II, was the ideological leader of the Nazi Party and one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, nine months before Hitler joined the Nazis.
Alfred Rosenberg, who served as editor-in-chief of Nazi publications and head of the German occupation zone in the soviet union, often addressed party members on ethnic cleansing, geopolitics, living space, and Nazism.
Alfred Rosenborg was a philosopher, theoretician, religious scholar, and one of the most prominent leaders of Nazi Germany at the time, holding many important positions. Rosenborg was born into a wealthy German merchant family living in Tsarist Russia. He received his Ph.D. from Moscow University in 1917. He returned to Germany after the October Revolution of 1918 and joined the Nazis in January 1919 (Hitler joined the party in October of the same year). He soon became the nazi core theorist and founded the so-called "Institute of Jewish Problems." His extremely influential book, Race, became a classic in Nazi Germany and a theoretical basis for the persecution of Jews. He also sought a new religious identity for Nazi Germany. He rejected Christianity and tried to establish a so-called "blood religion" with Aryan majority. He considered the Aryans to be the best race of humanity. At the same time, he proposed the so-called "colonial" theory for Germany's quest for expansion. This theory led to a strategic offensive by the Germans against Russia.
After the war, Alfred Rosenborg was captured by the Allies and hanged on October 16, 1946.
6. Hans Franck, judicial leader of the Nazi Party and governor of occupied Poland.
Hans Franck
Hans Franck (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a lawyer who specialized in the defense of the Nazi Party from the 1920s to the 1930s and later became one of the leaders of Nazi Germany.
Born in Karlsruhe, southwest of the Grand Duchy of Baden, the German Empire, his father was a lawyer; Franco was the second in his family, he joined the German Army in World War I in 1917, after the war he was a member of the far-right Liberal Legion, and in 1919 joined the predecessor of the Nazi Party, the "German Labor Party", and was an early member of the Nazi Party.
He specialized in law, and in 1926 he qualified as a lawyer and served as Hitler's personal legal adviser; as a result of this time, he became familiar with Hitler as a person.
When the Nazi Party gained power, Frank also became a lawyer for the party and handled more than 2,400 lawsuits for the party; he often went to court to talk to other lawyers, and on one occasion, his mentor as a student in law school appealed to him: "I ask you to spare those people!" (Accusing them) of nothing! Finally, with the addition of an ominous prophecy, he was advised to "start with a political movement in the Criminal Court and end in the Criminal Division!" "Become a famous quote.
He was elected to the German Parliament in 1930, Minister of Justice of Bavaria in 1933, and since 1933 he was a member of the "Nazi Law Society" and president of the "German Law School"; Frank still maintained his opposition to executions without trial, including the atrocities in the Dachau concentration camp and the Coup d'état of the Night of the Long Knife.
From 1934 he was Minister of The German Government. In September 1939, Marshal Gert von Lundstedt appointed Frank as Chairman of the Polish Administration, and on 26 October he became the new Governor-General of Poland as the German occupation of Poland, and he was also awarded the rank of SS General; since then, he has been sentenced to capital punishment after the war for committing racial purification and the slaughter of Jews.
At the Nuremberg Trials, he was indicted for serving as Governor-General of Poland during the war, and he was sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity; executed on 16 October 1946.
7. William Flick, Legislative Leader of the Nazi Party, Minister of the Interior.
William Flick
William Flick (12 March 1876 – 16 October 1946) was a Nazi official who served as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. On 13 March 1938, a decree on the merger of Austria and Germany was signed and commissioned to implement it. Flik, a fanatical anti-Semite, drafted, signed, and enforced a number of decrees designed to exclude Jews from German life and the economic sphere. At the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, Frick was sentenced to death by hanging by the court and executed on the evening of October 16, 1946.
8. Julius Streicher, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic journal Vanguard.
Julius Streischer
Julius Streischer (1885–1946) was one of the Nazi leaders and editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic magazine Vanguard.
In his speech, Julius Streischer accused Jews of intending to control the world by exploiting non-Jewish races for a living.
According to Streicher, Germany's primary mission was to solve the "Jewish problem." The full text of the speech: The German people are blamed as if they were creating anti-Semitism-anti-Semitic wars, as if they were a barbaric people. Anyone who says such a thing is lying. Thousands of years ago, non-Jewish peoples were forced to guard against Jewish invasions. If this struggle has not ended until now, it is the Jewish people who have been blamed for exploiting other peoples for their livelihood and who have praised themselves as the masters of the world. In this world, peace among nations can only be achieved when the beneficiaries of war can no longer incite wars between peoples, when it is truly recognized that there can be no solution to the problems of mankind without solving the problems of the Jews.
After Germany's defeat, Julius Strascher, publisher of the incendiary newspaper Vanguard, fled into the "Alpine Barricades" in April 1945 and hid with his wife in a mountain village near Weidling in Tirol. He was found there by the U.S. military.
At the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, Julius Streischer was sentenced to death by hanging by the court and executed on October 16, 1946.
9. Alfred Yodel, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, General of the Army.
Alfred Yodel
Alfred Jodl (10 May 1890 – 16 October 1946) was a General in the Army of Nazi Germany and director of the Operations Bureau of the German High Command. Became William Keitel's deputy, responsible for crafting many of Germany's military operations in World War II. At the Nuremberg Trials he was convicted of war and sentenced to death by hanging; however, six years after his execution, he was acquitted of the main crimes charged in Nuremberg.
In August 1939, Alfred Yodel was promoted to Head of Operations (Major General) of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. Since then, Jodl has become one of Hitler's main advisers in military operations, directly involved in the planning of various aggressive expansion plans and actions of the German army. In the Nazi wars against Norway, Denmark and Yugoslavia, Yodel played an irreplaceable role. From 1940 to 1941, he was one of the main concoctors of the operational plan for the offensive against the Soviet Union, code-named "Plan Barbarossa", and issued the plan. During the war, he issued a military order for the massacre of Soviet prisoners of war, which further contributed to the german atrocities of the already existing massacre of prisoners of war. In 1945, Jodl and Admiral Fredburg went together to the Anglo-American Allied Headquarters in Reims, east of Paris, France, to sign a letter of unconditional surrender on behalf of the Germans to the Anglo-American Allies. Soon after, Yodel was arrested by the Anglo-American Allies and tried at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. He was hanged at 1 a.m. on October 16 and retried six years after the execution and declared innocent.
10 Fritz Shoker, Saus and SS General, Plenipotentiary in Charge of Labour Affairs.
Fritz Schocker
Fritz Schaucer (27 October 1894 – 16 October 1946) was a Nazi German leader who served successively as Governor of thuringia and Plenipotentiary for the All-German Labor Force, was one of the 12 war criminals sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials, and was hanged on 16 October 1946 for crimes against humanity.
Fritz Schocker joined the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1927 he became leader of the Thuringian region. He was a member of the Thuringia Parliament from 1927 to 1933. In 1932 he was appointed governor of Thuringia. He also received the title of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the SA and SS.
On 21 March 1942, Hitler appointed Schäcker as Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labour, giving him full power to "mobilize all available labour power, including the unified supervision of labour and prisoners of war recruited from abroad." Shoker was instructed to work in the areas of the four-year plan. On March 27, 1942, Goering issued an order in his capacity as plenipotentiary for the four-year plan, entrusting Schocker with the task of his labor deployment office. On 30 September 1942, Hitler authorized Schäcker that he had full power to appoint plenipotentiaries in the occupied territories and to "take all necessary measures" to carry out the order of 21 March 1942.
Shokel's order also stipulated that he was responsible for transporting the workers to Germany, for assigning them to business owners, for managing them, and for the other units involved in the implementation of these measures. He was reported to him about the harsh conditions at that time. He issued the following order: "The food, accommodation and treatment of all these people should be: at the minimum expense, so that they are made to exert maximum labor efficiency." ”
At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the International Military Tribunal sentenced Schäcker to death by hanging on charges of "humane violation". On October 16, 1946, he was hanged.
11. Artur Seth-Inquart, Governor-General of Austria, Governor-General of Dutch Occupation, Became Foreign Minister after Hitler's death.
Artur Seth-Enquart
Artur Seth-Enquart (22 July 1892 – 16 October 1946) was a representative of the Austrian Nazi Party who joined and wounded Austro-Hungarian forces during World War I, the last Prime Minister of the First Austrian Republic, who completed the German-Austrian amalgamation during his only five-day term and became governor of the Eastern Krai (i.e., Austria). During World War II, he served as Administrator of Southern Poland, Deputy Governor of Poland, and Governor-General of the Netherlands. In Hitler's political will, he was appointed German Foreign Minister (not in office) and later sentenced to hanging at the Nuremberg Trials.
12. Martin Baumann, Hitler's secretary, became secretary of the Nazi Party after Hitler's death. (Trial in absentia, many sources say he died in 1945)
Martin Bowman
Martin Baumann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was chief of staff of the Nazi Party, secretary general of the Nazi Party, hitler's personal secretary, and Nazi "war criminal number two". He held the Nazi Party's purse, known as the "Fuehrer's Shadow." In the last days of Hitler's regime's dying struggle, Baumann became the second most important figure after Hitler, the director of the Nazi Party headquarters. On 29 April 1945, he was appointed by Hitler as the executor of the Fuehrer's will. After committing suicide, Hitler secretly fled the basement of the Presidential Palace on the night of May 1. Dawn died in Berlin on 2 May. After the end of World War II, the Nuremberg International Tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia for war crimes and crimes against humanity in October 1946. Bowman's body was not found until 1972, and DNA tests in 1998 revealed that the body was indeed Bowman.