The fourth and final count charged "crimes against humanity." It incorporated the allegations of count three, but added allegations dealing with the concentration camps and with the persecutions of Jews and other groups of people prior to the war, in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria.

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The Tribunal convened in Nuremberg in the autumn of 1945, headed by its president, brilliant, articulate Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence. Lord Geoffrey led off with a simple, impressive statement of the Tribunal’s function, a reminder to everybody concerned to "discharge their duties without fear or favor, in accordance with the sacred principles of law and justice….[It] is the duty of all concerned to see that the Trial in no way departs from those principles and traditions which alone give justice its authority and the place it ought to occupy in the affairs of all civilized states."

The trial lasted about 10 months, the verdicts and sentences being handed down September 30­October 1, 1946. Before it was over, the world learned much about death camps and other horrors of the Thousand-Year Reich. Most of the 21 defendants were sentenced to hang or to long prison terms; several were acquitted. The unprecedented trial was not without controversy, but the turmoil surrounding it was small indeed compared to the death and destruction the world had just witnessed.

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