Public-domain ebook
by Various
Language: en1,107 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: World War II·History - Modern (1750+)·History - Warfare
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #54899.
The work is a comprehensive documentary record of the twelve Nuremberg military tribunals conducted under Allied Control Council Law No. 10, beginning in October 1946 and concluding with a final judgment in April 1949. It opens with a detailed preface that situates the trials within the broader framework of post‑war justice, listing the high‑ranking Nazi officials, diplomats, ministers, field marshals, SS leaders, industrialists, and physicians, who were prosecuted. The volume then presents the full text of the legal instruments that created the tribunals, followed by the indictment, arraignment, and extensive evidentiary excerpts from the first case, the so‑called Medical Case, in which twenty of the twenty‑three defendants were doctors accused of horrific human experimentation. The introduction also outlines the massive scale of the proceedings, over 1,200 days of hearings and more than 330,000 pages of transcripts, while explaining the selective publication of key documents to give a representative picture of the trials.
Written in a formal, archival style, the text reflects the legal and bureaucratic language of the late 1940s, interspersed with official declarations, executive orders, and excerpts from the trial record. Its tone is factual and exhaustive, aimed at readers who appreciate primary sources rather than narrative dramatization. Historians of World War II, scholars of international law, military professionals, and students of diplomatic history will find the detailed procedural accounts and the extensive list of defendants especially valuable. The volume also appeals to anyone interested in the origins of modern war‑crimes jurisprudence and the meticulous documentation of the Allied effort to hold Nazi leaders accountable.
The opening · free to read
In April 1949, judgment was rendered in the last of the series of 12 Nuernberg war crimes trials which had begun in October 1946 and were held pursuant to Allied Control Council Law No. 10. Far from being of concern solely to lawyers, these trials are of especial interest to soldiers, historians, students of international affairs, and others. The defendants in these proceedings, charged with war crimes and other offenses against international penal law, were prominent figures in Hitler’s Germany and included such outstanding diplomats and politicians as the State Secretary of the Foreign Office, von Weizsaecker, and cabinet ministers von Krosigk and Lammers; military leaders such as Field Marshals von Leeb, List, and von Kuechler; SS leaders such as Ohlendorf, Pohl, and Hildebrandt; industrialists such as Flick, Alfried Krupp, and the directors of I. G. Farben; and leading professional men such as the famous physician Gerhard Rose, and the jurist and Acting Minister of Justice, Schlegelberger.
In view of the weight of the accusations and the far-flung activities of the defendants, and the extraordinary amount of official contemporaneous German documents introduced in evidence, the records of these trials constitute a major source of historical material covering many events of the fateful years 1933 (and even earlier) to 1945, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The Nuernberg trials under Law No. 10 were carried out under the direct authority of the Allied Control Council, as manifested in that law, which authorized the establishment of the Tribunals. The judicial machinery for the trials, including the Military Tribunals and the Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, was prescribed by Military Government Ordinance No. 7 and was part of the occupation administration for the American zone, the Office of Military Government (OMGUS). Law No. 10, Ordinance No. 7, and other basic jurisdictional or administrative documents are printed in full hereinafter.
The proceedings in these trials were conducted throughout in the German and English languages, and were recorded in full by stenographic notes, and by electrical sound recording of all oral proceedings. The 12 cases required over 1,200 days of court proceedings and the transcript of these proceedings exceeds 330,000 pages, exclusive of hundreds of document books, briefs, etc. Publication of all of this material, accordingly, was quite unfeasible. This series, however, contains the indictments, judgments, and other important portions of the record of the 12 cases, and it is believed that these materials give a fair picture of the trials, and as full and illuminating a picture as is possible within the space available. Copies of the entire record of the trials are available in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and elsewhere.
In some cases, due to time limitations, errors of one sort or another have crept into the translations which were available to the Tribunal. In other cases the same document appears in different trials, or even at different parts of the same trial, with variations in translation. For the most part these inconsistencies have been allowed to remain and only such errors as might cause misunderstanding have been corrected.
Volume I and part of Volume II of this series are dedicated to the first of the twelve cases, United States vs. Karl Brandt, et al. (Case No. 1). This trial has become known as the Medical Case, because 20 of the 23 defendants were doctors, and the charges related principally to medical experimentation on human beings. The remainder of Volume II is devoted to the trial of former Field Marshal Erhard Milch, who was also charged with criminal responsibilities for medical experimentation on human beings (of which charge he was acquitted), and with responsibility for the deportation to forced labor of numerous civilians, in violation of the laws of war (of which charge he was convicted).
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