NUREMBERG TRIALS EXECUTION ON 16 OCTOBER 1946

66 years ago on this day, 10 Nazi war criminals were executed by hanging. They were sentenced to death by the Judges of the Nuremberg Trials. In memory of the 6 million Jews and the millions who died during World War II in Europe, we remember that justice was served. I will give my comments at the end of this article.

            I got some of the information from Wikipedia and also there is more on this website:

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945–46, at the Palace of Justice.

The first and best known of these trials, described as "[t]he greatest trial in history" by Norman Birkett, one of the British judges who presided over it, was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was tasked with trying 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich, though one of the defendants, Martin Bormann, was tried in absentia, while another, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement. Absent from the 23 were Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide several months before the indictment was signed.

The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on those trials.

The 8 Judges of The Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg judges, left to right: John Parker, Francis Biddle, Alexander Volchkov, Iona Nikitchenko, Geoffrey Lawrence, Norman Birkett

Trial:

The Rorschach test was administered to the defendants, along with the Thematic Apperception Test and a German adaptation of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test. With the exception of Julius Streicher, who had an IQ of 106, all were above average intelligence, several considerably.

The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 20, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command," comprising several categories of senior military officers. These organizations were to be declared "criminal" if found guilty.

The indictments were for:

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3. War crimes
4. Crimes against humanity

The 24 accused were, with respect to each charge, either indicted but acquitted (I), indicted and found guilty (G), or not charged (-), as listed below by defendant, charge, and eventual outcome:

See more here about the trial. 

Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants survive; they were edited into book form and published in 2004.

The defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk, Hjalmar Schacht. Back row from left to right: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin van Neurath, Hans Fritzsche.

Overview of the trial:

• November 20, 1945 start of the trial
• November 21, 1945 Robert Jackson opens for the prosecution with a speech lasting several hours, leaving a deep impression on court and public
• November 26, 1945 Hossbach Memorandum (of a conference in which Hitler explained his war plans) presented
• November 29, 1945 film "Nazi concentration camps" screened
• November 30, 1945 witness Erwin Lahousen testifies, e.g. that Keitel and von Ribbentrop gave orders to murder Poles, Jews and Russian POWs
• December 12, 1945 film "The Nazi plan" is screened, showing long-term planning and preparations for war by the Nazis
• January 3, 1946 witness Otto Ohlendorf, former head of Einsatzgruppe D, detachedly admits the murder of around 90,000 Jews
• January 3, 1946 witness Dieter Wisliceny, describes the organisation of RSHA, Department IV-A-4, in charge of the Final solution
• January 7, 1946 witness former SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, admits to organized mass murder of Jews and other groups in the Soviet Union
• January 28, 1946 witness Marie Vaillant-Couturier, member of the French resistance and KZ survivor, first victim giving testimony on the holocaust
• February 11/12, 1946 witness former General Paulus, who had been secretly brought to Nuremberg, on the question of waging a war of aggression
• February 14, 1946 the Soviet prosecutors try to blame the massacre of Katyn on the Germans
• February 19, 1946 film "Cruelties of the German-Fascist Intruders" on atrocities in the death camps
• February 27, 1946 witness Abram Suzkever on the murder of almost 80,000 Jews in Vilnius by the German occupiers
• March 8, 1946 first witness for the defense, former General Karl Bodenschatz
• March 13-22, 1946 Göring takes the stand
• April 15, 1946 witness Rudolf Höss, former commandant of Auschwitz, confirms that Kaltenbrunner had never been there but admits to mass murder
• May 21, 1946 witness Ernst von Weizsäcker explains the German-Soviet pact of 1938 and the secret protocol
• June 20, 1946 Albert Speer takes the stand, he is the only defendant admitting a personal responsibility
• June 29, 1946 defense for Martin Bormann
• July 1-2, 1946 the court hears six witnesses on the Katyn massacre, Soviets fail to put the blame on Germany
• July 2, 1946 written testimony by Chester W. Nimitz regarding attacks on merchant vessels without warning, admitting that the US did the same
• July 4, 1946 final statement by the defense
• July 26, 1946 final statement by the prosecution
• July 30, 1946 start of the trial "criminal organizations"
• August 31, 1946 last statement by the defendants
• September 1, 1946 court adjourns
• September 30, 1946 sentencing takes two days, with the individual sentences read out on the afternoon of October 1.

The accusers were successful in unveiling the background of developments that had led to the outbreak of World War II, which cost at least 40 million lives in Europe alone, as well as the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences, and three were acquitted. 

The death sentences were carried out 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop. The U.S. army denied claims that the drop length was too short which caused the condemned to die slowly from strangulation instead of quickly from a broken neck. But evidence remains that some of the condemned men died agonizingly slowly taking from between 14 minutes to choke to death to as longs as struggling for 28 minutes. The executioner was John C. Woods. The executions took place in the gymnasium of the court building (demolished in 1983). 

Although the rumor has long persisted that the bodies were taken to Dachau and burned there, they were actually incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar. The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the military condemned, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges. They argued that the military officers violated their military ethos and were not worthy of it, which was considered to be more dignified. The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution and Martin Bormann was not present when convicted (he had, unbeknownst to the Allies, most likely been killed trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945). The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

Of the indicted organizations the following were found not to be criminal:

• Reichsregierung
• "The General Staff and High Command" was found not to comprise a group or organization as defined by Article 9 of the London Charter
• Sturmabteilung

To learn more about their executions, please click here:

Comments:

            I am glad that justice was served before the Council of Europe began. I do not want these War Criminals to live, as the COE started to abolish the death penalty in Europe. I agree with Hartley Shawcross that those War criminals have themselves to blame and not just their superior if they truly hated evil. 

I can tell that nobody shed a tear over these Nazi War criminals being executed. I have a strong feeling that the Death Penalty Abolitionists will not even hold vigils or protest against their executions. 

Please see this video on the execution of Nazi War Criminals on 28 May 1946.