Unprecedented in history, the Nuremberg Trial brought high-ranking Nazis to
justice. This is the story of how the trial took shape in postwar Germany.

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By Robert Barr Smith

They didn't look like much. With a couple of exceptions, they were just a gaggle of wan, morose, rumpled men, mostly middle-aged or elderly. Some paid close attention to what went on around them. Some seemed not to care. Taken as a group they were unimpressive, the kind of people one could pass on the street and never notice.

But once they had come extremely close to ruling the world.

The trial had begun on November 20, 1945, 50 years ago this month. Twenty-one tired-looking men sat in two rows in a Nuremberg courtroom, on trial for their lives. They were what remained of the top leadership of the Thousand-Year Reich, and just short months before, they had cast very long shadows indeed. Now those days were just a bitter memory, already fading in the hunger and depression of postwar occupied Germany.

The ground rules for the war crimes prosecutions were straightforward in theory, although they were sometimes a little hard to administer in practice. Traitors would be dealt with by their own nations. The British, for example, duly tried the odious William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw, for his propaganda broadcasts from Nazi Germany. Too late, American-born Joyce tried to repudiate his claim to British citizenship. His apostasy did not save him from the gallows.

Small fry–the ordinary killers and such–would be tried by courts-martial. And those Germans who had committed crimes centered in the countries that Germany had occupied during the conflict would be dealt with in those countries. Thus Karl-Hermann Frank, the repulsive Reichsprotektor of the Czech Protectorate, was tried and publicly executed in Prague in 1946, as some 5,000 approving Czechs looked on.

A number of trials also took place in the Far East. Many Japanese, both civilian and military, were tried for wartime atrocities. Twenty-eight of the top leaders were tried by the International Military Tribunal, with 11 nations represented among the judges. The trial lasted two years, and all the defendants were convicted.

In Europe, most of the minor trials were held within the zones of occupation by the respective occupiers. American courts tried the concentration-camp staff at Dachau; the British dealt with the brutal Belsen guards; other Germans were tried in Denmark, Belgium, Russia, or wherever their crimes were alleged to have taken place.

For the rest, many of the more important European trials were held in Berlin. The ones that drew the most attention, however, took place in Nuremberg. There were 12 of them altogether, all involving important figures in World War II Germany.

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg would deal with "major defendants," in the words of Robert Jackson, America's chief prosecutor. Less clearly, the Tribunal would also address the criminal character of certain organizations, including the Sicherheistdienst (State Security Service), the SS, and the Gestapo. And here the character of the trials diverged from the ordinary course of criminal justice. "Findings in the main trial," said Jackson, "that an organization is criminal in nature will be conclusive in any subsequent proceedings against individual members…."

This was an uncomfortable concept, this idea of "guilt by membership." And, as it turned out, the theory was largely unnecessary to the prosecutions; the accused German leaders had done enough ugly things that party membership was not necessary to convict them of serious crimes. The offenses charged against the defendants fell generally into three categories. First, there were "war crimes," a fairly well-defined class of offenses long recognized by most soldiers, which included maltreatment of POWs (prisoners of war), murdering wounded men, and similar offenses.

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