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181-711: During occupation of Poland in World War II, Krychów was the location of a Nazi forced labour camp established in 1940 for the Polish Jews , with several sub-camps. The camp in Krychów was set up by the Germans in place of a small correctional facility for short-term offenders founded in 1935 in interwar Poland , which was a branch of the Chełm prison. The prewar inmates were released by Polish administration already at

362-532: A Greater Germany beyond the frontiers of 1914 ". Contrary to Jackson's argument that the conspiracy began with the founding of the Nazi Party in 1920, the verdict dated the planning of aggression to the 1937 Hossbach Memorandum . The conspiracy charge caused significant dissent on the bench; Donnedieu de Vabres wanted to scrap it. Through a compromise proposed by the British judges, the charge of conspiracy

543-567: A Polish-French-British declaration on April 18, 1940, holding Germany responsible for the crimes, without an explicit promise of their prosecution. Such a promise was included in a declaration by the occupied countries in November 1941, gathered at a conference organized on Poland's initiative. Another conference, held in January 1942, saw the participation of observers from the USSR, US, China, and

724-836: A collection valued at over 50 million Reichsmarks. Despite the military defeat of the Polish Army in September 1939, the Polish government itself never surrendered, instead evacuating West, where it formed the Polish government in Exile . The government in exile was represented in the occupied Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland, headed by the Government Delegate for Poland . The main role of

905-401: A concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture . To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part of wider persecutions of the Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to

1086-468: A crime against humanity—and the Soviet Union wanted to avoid giving an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens. The charter upended the traditional view of international law by holding individuals, rather than states , responsible for breaches. The other three Allies' proposal to limit the definition of the crimes to acts committed by the defeated Axis

1267-553: A day and with little compensation. The labourers, Jews, Poles and others, were employed in SS-owned enterprises (such as the German Armament Works, Deutsche Ausrustungswerke, DAW), but also in many private German firms – such as Messerschmitt , Junkers , Siemens , and IG Farben . Forced labourers were subject to harsh discriminatory measures. Announced on 8 March 1940 was the Polish decrees which were used as

1448-411: A deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers. Despite being accused of the same crimes, Sauckel was sentenced to death, while Speer was given a prison sentence because the judges considered that he could reform. Nikichenko released a dissent approved by Moscow that rejected all the acquittals, called for a death sentence for Hess, and convicted all the organizations. Initially, it

1629-458: A few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable". The extermination of the Polish elites was the first stage of the Nazis' plan to destroy

1810-532: A legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany. The decrees required Poles to wear identifying purple P's on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew, and banned them from using public transportation as well as many German "cultural life" centres and "places of amusement" (this included churches and restaurants). Sexual relations between Germans and Poles were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement) under penalty of death. To keep them segregated from

1991-478: A period of 30 years, approximately 12.5 million Germans would be resettled in the Slavic areas, including Poland; with some versions of the plan requiring the resettlement of at least 100 million Germans over a century. The Slavic inhabitants of those lands would be eliminated as the result of genocidal policies; and the survivors would be resettled further east, in less hospitable areas of Eurasia , beyond

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2172-558: A plurality of the population in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union. By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people. The ethnic composition of these areas was as follows: 38% Poles (~5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians, and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees, mostly Jews (198,000), who fled from areas occupied by Germany. All territory invaded by

2353-431: A result of the occupation , half of whom were ethnic Poles and the other half of whom were Polish Jews . Over 90% of the deaths were non-military losses, because most civilians were deliberately targeted in various actions which were launched by the Germans and Soviets. Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including 3,000,000 Jews in what

2534-415: A result, tens of thousands of people found "guilty" of being educated (members of the intelligentsia, from clergymen to government officials, doctors, teachers and journalists) or wealthy (landowners, business owners, and so on) were either executed on spot, sometimes in mass executions , or imprisoned, some destined for the concentration camps. Some of the mass executions were reprisal actions for actions of

2715-444: A result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war . Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński , who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during

2896-615: A show trial prosecutor chosen for his skill as an orator. The Soviet judges and prosecutors were not permitted to make any major decisions without consulting a commission in Moscow led by Soviet politician Andrei Vyshinsky ; the resulting delays hampered the Soviet effort to set the agenda. The influence of the Soviet delegation was also constrained by limited English proficiency, lack of interpreters, and unfamiliarity with diplomacy and international institutions. Requests by Chaim Weizmann ,

3077-832: A special Germanization program. Polish women deported to Germany as forced labourers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken. If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization". At least 4,454 children were given new German names, forbidden to use the Polish language, and reeducated in Nazi institutions. Few were ever reunited with their original families. Those deemed as unsuitable for Germanization for being "not Aryan enough" were sent to orphanages or even to concentration camps like Auschwitz, where many were murdered, often by intracardiac injections of phenol . For Polish forced laborers, in some cases if an examination of

3258-558: A thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two thirds were from the United States. Besides legal professionals, there were many social-science researchers, psychologists, translators, and interpreters, and graphic designers , the last to make the many charts used during the trial. Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being a deputy without voting rights. Jackson

3439-422: A vote. The International Military Tribunal agreed with the prosecution that aggression was the gravest charge against the accused, stating in its judgment that because "war is essentially an evil thing", "to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of

3620-537: A way to try crimes against German citizens, such as the German Jews . A Soviet proposal for a charge of "crimes against civilians" was renamed "crimes against humanity" at Jackson's suggestion after previous uses of the term in the post-World War I Commission of Responsibilities and in failed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide . The British proposal to define crimes against humanity

3801-515: A wide variety of crimes committed by the German occupiers as part of their destructive and unprovoked invasion. Rudenko tried to emphasize common ground with the other Allies while rejecting any similarity between Nazi and Soviet rule. The next week, the Soviet prosecution produced Friedrich Paulus —a German field marshal captured after the Battle of Stalingrad —as a witness and questioned him about

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3982-460: Is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others. The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics. An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into

4163-479: The Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps . By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million. The Nazi plans also called for Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be exterminated ; the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned for the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which

4344-585: The Balkans . Other generals were tried in the High Command Trial for plotting wars of aggression, issuing criminal orders , deporting civilians, using slave labor, and looting in the Soviet Union. These trials emphasized the crimes committed during the Holocaust. The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with

4525-914: The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland , Juliusz Bursche . In the territories annexed to Nazi Germany, in particular with regards to the westernmost incorporated territories—the so-called Wartheland — the Nazis aimed for a complete "Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation. The Polish language was forbidden to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse ( Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on). All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated. Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance

4706-853: The Foreign Office . Also on trial were industrialists —in the Flick trial , the IG Farben trial , and the Krupp trial —for using forced labor, looting property from Nazi victims, and funding SS atrocities. Members of the SS were tried in the Pohl trial , which focused on members of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that oversaw SS economic activity, including the Nazi concentration camps ;

4887-596: The General Governorate of Poland; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach ; Arthur Seyss-Inquart , Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands ; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner , the leader of Himmler's Reich Main Security Office . Observers of the trial found the defendants mediocre and contemptible. Although the list of defendants was finalized on 29 August, as late as October, Jackson demanded

5068-527: The International Military Tribunal ( IMT ) tried 22 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite. The IMT verdict followed

5249-631: The Katyn massacre , which had in fact been committed by the NKVD . Although Western prosecutors never publicly rejected the Katyn charge for fear of casting doubt on the entire proceedings, they were skeptical. The defense presented evidence of Soviet responsibility, and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict. Inspired by the films shown by the American prosecution, the Soviet Union commissioned three films for

5430-690: The Palace of Justice in Nuremberg . Located in the American occupation zone , Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site of Nazi rallies . The Palace of Justice was relatively intact but needed to be renovated for the trial due to bomb damage ; it had an attached prison where the defendants could be held. On 8 August, the Nuremberg Charter was signed in London. In early 1946, there were

5611-610: The Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), though significantly less numerous than the Home Army. In February 1942, when AK was formed, it numbered about 100,000 members. In the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944, when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers. Estimates of AK membership in the first half of 1944 and summer that year vary, with about 400,000 being common. With

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5792-476: The Polish language as their mother tongue, and most of the Polish native speakers were Roman Catholics . With regards to the remainder, 15% were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans. Germans intended to exploit the fact that the Second Polish Republic was an ethnically diverse territory, and their policy aimed to " divide and conquer " the ethnically diverse population of

5973-732: The Polish–Ukrainian War and the Ukrainian–Soviet War . There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance. British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in

6154-702: The RuSHA trial of Nazi racial policies ; and the Einsatzgruppen trial , in which members of the mobile killing squads were tried for the murder of more than one million people behind the Eastern Front. Luftwaffe general Erhard Milch was tried for using slave labor and deporting civilians. In the Hostages case , several generals were tried for executing thousands of hostages and prisoners of war, looting, using forced labor, and deporting civilians in

6335-643: The SS and the SD , and the General Staff and High Command of the German military (Wehrmacht). The aim was to have these organizations declared criminal, so that their members could be tried expeditiously for membership in a criminal organization. Senior American officials believed that convicting organizations was a good way of showing that not just the top German leaders were responsible for crimes, without condemning

6516-603: The Sikorski-Mayski Agreement ; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits. The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of

6697-738: The Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial (the Soviet Union) to summary executions (the United Kingdom). In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg , occupied Germany , with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946,

6878-567: The Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people. In

7059-656: The Ural Mountains , such as Siberia . At the plan's fulfillment, no Slavs or Jews would remain in Central and Eastern Europe. Generalplan Ost , essentially a grand plan to commit ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), covered actions which would be undertaken after

7240-679: The Volyn massacre . In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Heinrich Himmler , head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), wrote: "We need to divide the East's different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans began forcibly conscripting laborers. Jews were drafted to repair war damage as early as October, with women and children 12 or older required to work; shifts could take half

7421-541: The Western Front (France) and the Eastern Front (the Soviet Union). The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations. The British and American delegations decided to work jointly in drafting the charges of conspiracy to wage aggressive war. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment. The charge of conspiracy , absent from

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7602-421: The liberation of Nazi concentration camps , shocked both the defendants and the judges, who adjourned the trial. Indiscriminate selection and disorganized presentation of documentary evidence without tying it to specific defendants hampered the American prosecutors' work on the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. The Americans summoned Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf , who testified about

7783-618: The massacre of Lwów professors . The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions. Nazi policy towards the Catholic Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps. Already in 1939, 80% of

7964-407: The perceived singularity of the systematic murder of millions of Jews . The first step towards the trials of Nazi war criminals were initiatives taken by the governments-in-exile of countries occupied by Germany, especially Poland , which as early as December 1939 established agencies aimed at recording crimes committed by Germany in Poland for their later prosecution. These efforts resulted in

8145-654: The summary execution of Nazi leaders, citing the failure of trials after World War I and qualms about retroactive criminality . The form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On 2 May, at the San Francisco Conference , United States president Harry S. Truman announced the formation of an international military tribunal. On 8 May, Germany surrendered unconditionally , bringing an end to

8326-548: The systematic murder of Jews in eastern Europe , at times they blurred the fate of Jews with that of other Soviet nationalities. Although these aspects had already been covered by the American prosecution, Soviet prosecutors introduced new evidence from Extraordinary State Commission reports and interrogations of senior enemy officers. Lev Smirnov presented evidence on the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia, adding that

8507-436: The willing Polish citizens into four groups of people with ethnic Germanic heritage. Group One included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland. Group Two included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics. Group Three included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it

8688-560: The "securing" of German national interests. Nazi plunder included private and public art collections, artefacts, precious metals, books, and personal possessions. Hitler and Göring in particular were interested in acquiring looted art treasures from occupied Europe, the former planning to use the stolen art to fill the galleries of the planned Führermuseum (Leader's Museum), and the latter for his personal collection. Göring, having stripped almost all of occupied Poland of its artworks within six months of Germany's invasion, ultimately grew

8869-503: The 1930s Moscow trials , in order to demonstrate the Nazi leaders' guilt and build a case for war reparations to rebuild the Soviet economy , which had been devastated by the war. The United States insisted on a trial that would be seen as legitimate as a means of reforming Germany and demonstrating the superiority of the Western system. The United States Department of War was drawing up plans for an international tribunal in late 1944 and early 1945. The British government still preferred

9050-454: The American prosecution submitted many documents at the beginning of the trial, the judges insisted that all of the evidence be read into the record, which slowed the trial. The structure of the charges also caused delays as the same evidence ended up being read out multiple times, when it was relevant to both conspiracy and the other charges. The International Military Tribunal began trial on 20 November 1945, after postponement requests from

9231-445: The British and Americans presented evidence against individual defendants. Besides the organizations mentioned in the indictment, American, and British prosecutors also mentioned the complicity of the German Foreign Office , army , and navy . From 17 January to 7 February 1946, France presented its charges and supporting evidence. In contrast to the other prosecution teams, the French prosecution delved into Germany's development in

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9412-426: The British to take concrete steps in the area of prosecuting German crimes. The London-based United Nations War Crimes Commission —without Soviet participation—first met in October 1943 and became bogged down in the scope of its mandate, with Belgian jurist Marcel de Baer and Czech legal scholar Bohuslav Ečer arguing for a broader definition of war crimes that would include "the crime of war". On 1 November 1943,

9593-423: The Catholic clergy of the Warthegau region had been deported to concentration camps. Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond , submitted an official account of the persecutions of the Polish Church to the Vatican. In his final observations for Pope Pius XII , Hlond wrote: "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into

9774-405: The General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among

9955-582: The German annexation of Alsace–Lorraine , under the label of Germanization , which he argued was a crime against humanity. Unlike the British and American prosecution strategies, which focused on using German documents to make their cases, the French prosecutors took the perspective of the victims, submitting postwar police reports. Eleven witnesses, including victims of Nazi persecution, were called; resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier testified about crimes she had witnessed. The French charges of war crimes were accepted by

10136-737: The German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG ), former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht , and economic planners Albert Speer and Walther Funk , along with Speer's subordinate and head of the forced labor program , Fritz Sauckel . While the British were skeptical of prosecuting economic leaders, the French had a strong interest in highlighting German economic imperialism. The military leaders were Hermann Göring —the most infamous surviving Nazi — Wilhelm Keitel , Alfred Jodl , Erich Raeder , and Karl Dönitz . Also on trial were propagandists Julius Streicher and Hans Fritzsche ; Rudolf Hess , Hitler's deputy who had flown to Britain in 1941; Hans Frank , governor-general of

10317-458: The German invaders had destroyed thousands of villages and murdered their inhabitants throughout eastern Europe. The Soviet prosecution emphasized the racist aspect of policies such as the deportation of millions of civilians to Germany for forced labor , the murder of children, systematic looting of occupied territories, and theft or destruction of cultural heritage . The Soviet prosecution also attempted to fabricate German responsibility for

10498-631: The German invasion and occupation of Polish territory, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens, including teenagers, became labourers in Germany, few by choice. Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 per cent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers. They tended to have to work longer hours for lower wages than their German counterparts. A network of Nazi concentration camps were established on German-controlled territories, many of them in occupied Poland, including one of

10679-440: The German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics, rather than being made available for population transfers. Nonetheless, in late 1942 and 1943, large-scale expulsions also took place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość – Lublin region. Tens of thousands of the expelled, with no place to go, were simply imprisoned in

10860-417: The German population, they were often housed in segregated barracks behind barbed wire. Nonetheless, many Polish women were sexually enslaved in German camp and military brothels . Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced labourers in German industries. Following

11041-521: The German press. Sentences were debated at length by the judges. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann). On 16 October, ten were hanged , with Göring killing himself the day before. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dönitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent to Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on

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11222-422: The Germans. They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of the German minority in Poland, the Volksdeutsche . The Nazi regime 's policy of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites was known as Operation Tannenberg . This included not only those resisting actively, but also those simply capable of doing so by the virtue of their social status . As

11403-404: The IMT. In all, 249 journalists were accredited to cover the IMT and 61,854 visitor tickets were issued. In France, the sentence for Rudolf Hess and acquittal of organizations were met with outrage from the media and especially from organizations for deportees and resistance fighters, as they were perceived as too lenient. In the United Kingdom, although a variety of responses were reported, it

11584-438: The London Conference. The French government tried to appoint staff who were not tainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments, including Champetier de Ribes, were of those who had been in the French resistance . Expecting a show trial, the Soviet Union initially appointed as chief prosecutor Iona Nikitchenko , who had presided over the Moscow trials, but he was made a judge and replaced by Roman Rudenko ,

11765-515: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory. By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland , the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens. The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among

11946-424: The Nazi regime attempted to destroy Polish culture. As part of that policy, the Nazis confiscated Polish national heritage assets and much private property. Acting on the legal decrees of 19 October and 16 December ( Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme Kunstgegeständen im Generalgouvernement ), several German agencies began the process of looting Polish museums and other collections, ostensibly considered necessary for

12127-480: The Nazi system, but Göring took the opposite approach, expecting to be executed but vindicated in the eyes of the German people. The charter did not recognize a tu quoque defense —asking for exoneration on the grounds that the Allies had committed the same crimes with which the defendants were charged. Although defense lawyers repeatedly equated the Nuremberg Laws to legislation found in other countries, Nazi concentration camps to Allied detention facilities, and

12308-406: The Netherlands , Belgium , Luxembourg , France , Yugoslavia , Greece , and the Soviet Union . German aggression was accompanied by immense brutality in occupied areas; war losses in the Soviet Union alone included 27 million dead , mostly civilians, which was one seventh of the prewar population. The legal reckoning was premised on the extraordinary nature of Nazi criminality, particularly

12489-540: The Polish nation and its culture. The disappearance of the Poles' leadership was seen as necessary to the establishment of the Germans as the Poles' sole leaders. Proscription lists ( Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen ), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders who were deemed unfriendly to Germany. Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen ) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting

12670-414: The Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population,

12851-481: The Polish resistance, with German officials adhering to the collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators. One of the most infamous German operations was the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion ( AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification ), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests. In

13032-697: The Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union (after a rigged election ), and split between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR , with the exception of the Wilno area taken from Poland, which was transferred to sovereign Lithuania for several months and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union in the form of the Lithuanian SSR on 3 August 1940. Following the German invasion of

13213-590: The Reich Cabinet, and the General Staff and High Command were not ruled to be criminal organizations. Although the Wehrmacht leadership was not considered an organization within the meaning of the charter, misrepresentation of the verdict as an exoneration was one of the foundations of the clean Wehrmacht myth . The trial had nevertheless resulted in the coverage of its systematic criminality in

13394-564: The Reich...". The smaller Evangelical churches of Poland also suffered. The entirety of the Protestant clergy of the Cieszyn region of Silesia were arrested and deported to concentration camps at Mauthausen, Buchenwald , Dachau and Oranienburg. Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz , theology professor Edmund Bursche , and Bishop of

13575-451: The Soviet Union in 1941, most of the Polish territories annexed by the Soviets were attached to the enlarged General Government. The end of the war saw the USSR occupy all of Poland and most of eastern Germany. The Soviets gained recognition of their pre-1941 annexations of Polish territory; as compensation, substantial portions of eastern Germany were ceded to Poland, whose borders were significantly shifted westwards . For months prior to

13756-536: The Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States issued the Moscow Declaration , warning the Nazi leadership of the signatories' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth...in order that justice may be done". The declaration stated that those high-ranking Nazis who had committed crimes in several countries would be dealt with jointly, while others would be tried where they had committed their crimes. Soviet jurist Aron Trainin developed

13937-549: The Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory. Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler , with Stalin 's agreement (8 and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany . The size of these annexed territories was approximately 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) with approximately 10.5 million inhabitants. The remaining block of territory, of about

14118-486: The Soviet Union. On 31 August, closing arguments were presented. Over the course of the trial, crimes against humanity and especially against Jews (who were mentioned as victims of Nazi atrocities far more than any other group) came to upstage the aggressive war charge. In contrast to the opening prosecution statements, all eight closing statements highlighted the Holocaust; and the French and British prosecutors made this

14299-427: The Soviet prosecution, who wanted more time to prepare its case, were rejected. All defendants pleaded not guilty. Jackson made it clear that the trial's purpose extended beyond convicting the defendants. Prosecutors wanted to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, establish individual responsibility and the crime of aggression in international law, provide a history lesson to the defeated Germans, delegitimize

14480-523: The United Kingdom. It adopted a declaration promising to punish both direct perpetrators and their superiors, which later became the basis of the Nuremberg system. The Inter-Allied Commission on the Punishment of War Crimes was also established at that time. The United States and United Kingdom refused to endorse this proposal, citing the failure of war crimes prosecutions after World War I . Pressures, primarily from Poland and Czechoslovakia, led

14661-745: The United States Army's refusal to publish the trial record in German for fear it would undermine the fight against communism. The German churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were vocal proponents of amnesty. The pardon of convicted war criminals also had cross-party support in West Germany , which was established in 1949. The Americans satisfied these wishes to bind West Germany to the Western Bloc , beginning early releases of Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicts in 1949. In 1951, High Commissioner John J. McCloy overturned most of

14842-448: The United States against lower-level perpetrators, which focused more on the Holocaust. Controversial at the time for their retroactive criminalization of aggression, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law is considered "the true beginning of international criminal law ". Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many European countries , including Poland , Denmark , Norway ,

15023-484: The West German consensus on release began to erode, due to greater openness in political culture and new revelations of Nazi criminality, including the first trials of Nazi perpetrators in West German courts. The International Military Tribunal, and its charter, "marked the true beginning of international criminal law ". The trial has met a mixed reception ranging from glorification to condemnation. The reaction

15204-458: The addition of new names, but this was rejected. Of the 24 men indicted, Martin Bormann was tried in absentia , as the Allies were unaware of his death; Krupp was too ill to stand trial; and Robert Ley had committed suicide before the start of the trial. Former Nazis were allowed to serve as counsel and by mid-November all defendants had lawyers. The defendants' lawyers jointly appealed to

15385-495: The beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. British ambassador Sir H. Kennard sent four statements in August 1939 to Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland; he came to

15566-437: The campaign itself. On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec , near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack , on 28 September. Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre . The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following

15747-408: The charter, held together the wide array of charges and defendants and was used to charge the top Nazi leaders, as well as bureaucrats who had never killed anyone or perhaps even directly ordered killing. It was also an end run on the charter's limits on charging crimes committed before the beginning of World War II. Conspiracy charges were central to the cases against propagandists and industrialists:

15928-718: The civilian branch of the Underground State was to preserve the continuity of the Polish state as a whole, including its institutions. These institutions included the police, the courts , and schools . By the final years of the war, the civilian structure of the Underground State included an underground parliament, administration, judiciary ( courts and police ), secondary and higher-level education, and supported various cultural activities such as publishing of newspapers and books, underground theatres, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and safeguarded various works of art. It also dealt with providing social services , including to

16109-406: The clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned". The Soviet Union had ceased to recognize the Polish state at the start of the invasion. As

16290-520: The concept of crimes against peace (waging aggressive war ) which would later be central to the proceedings at Nuremberg. Trainin's ideas were reprinted in the West and widely adopted. Of all the Allies , the Soviet Union lobbied most intensely for trying the defeated German leaders for aggression in addition to war crimes. The Soviet Union wanted to hold a trial with a predetermined outcome similar to

16471-609: The conclusion all the claims by Hitler and the Nazis were exaggerations or false claims. From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The goal of the occupation was to turn the former territory of Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating

16652-432: The conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing customary international law ; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. Despite misgivings from other Allies, American negotiator and Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson threatened the United States' withdrawal if aggression was not prosecuted because it had been

16833-436: The conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute, totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the first victims rather than agents, collaborators, and fellow travellers ". In contrast, the evidence presented on the Holocaust convinced some observers that Germans must have been aware of this crime while it was ongoing. On 21 November, Jackson gave

17014-479: The course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians ). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Aside from being sent to Nazi concentration camps, most ethnic Poles died through shelling and bombing campaigns, mass executions, forced starvation, revenge murder, ill health, and slave labour. Along with Auschwitz II-Birkenau ,

17195-634: The court's jurisdiction because the prosecution had not proven a connection to aggressive war. Four organizations were ruled to be criminal: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD, although some lower ranks and subgroups were excluded. The verdict only allowed for individual criminal responsibility if willing membership and knowledge of the criminal purpose could be proved, complicating denazification efforts. The SA,

17376-683: The court, claiming it did not have jurisdiction against the accused; but this motion was rejected. The defense lawyers saw themselves as acting on behalf of their clients, but also the German nation. Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: the Reich Cabinet , the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party , the Gestapo , the SA ,

17557-450: The defendants had surrendered to the United States or United Kingdom. The defendants, who were largely unrepentant, included former cabinet ministers: Franz von Papen (who had brought Hitler to power ); Joachim von Ribbentrop ( foreign minister ), Konstantin von Neurath ( foreign minister ). Wilhelm Frick ( interior minister ), and Alfred Rosenberg (minister for the occupied eastern territories). Also prosecuted were leaders of

17738-514: The defense's 83 , not including 19 defendants who testified on their own behalf. The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents and entered 4,600 into evidence, along with 30 kilometres (19 mi) of film and 25,000 photographs. The charter allowed the admissibility of any evidence deemed to have probative value, including depositions . Because of the loose evidentiary rules, photographs, charts, maps, and films played an important role in making incredible crimes believable. After

17919-567: The deportation of Jews to the expulsion of Germans , the judges rejected their arguments. Alfred Seidl  [ de ] repeatedly tried to disclose the secret protocols of the German–Soviet pact; although he was eventually successful, it was legally irrelevant and the judges rejected his attempt to bring up the Treaty of Versailles . Six defendants were charged with the German invasion of Norway , and their lawyers argued that this invasion

18100-625: The destitute Jewish population (through the council to Aid Jews, or Żegota ). Through the Directorate of Civil Resistance (1941–1943) the civil arm was also involved in lesser acts of resistance, such as minor sabotage , although in 1943 this department was merged with the Directorate of Covert Resistance , forming the Directorate of Underground Resistance , subordinate to the Armia Krajowa (AK) (Polish Home Army). In response to

18281-437: The entire German people. Over the summer, all of the national delegations struggled to gather evidence for the upcoming trial. The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors. This strategy increased the credibility of their case, since survivor testimony was considered less reliable and more vulnerable to accusations of bias, but reduced public interest in

18462-403: The ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000). Areas occupied by the USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of the Wilno area, which was transferred to Lithuania, although it

18643-448: The existence of Poland's sovereignty , people , and the culture and aimed to destroy them. Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences , where the occupiers discussed their plans to deal with the Polish resistance movement . Around six million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as

18824-645: The first gassing experiment in September 1941. According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper , approximately 140,000–150,000 Poles went through Auschwitz, with about half of them perishing there due to executions, medical experiments, or due to starvation and disease. About 100,000 Poles were imprisoned in Majdanek camp, with similar fatality rate. About 30,000 Poles died at Mauthausen , 20,000 at Sachsenhausen and Gross-Rosen each, 17,000 at Neuengamme and Ravensbrueck each, 10,000 at Dachau , and tens of thousands perished in other camps and prisons. Following

19005-561: The former territory of Poland. Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles were expelled from the annexed lands in order to make room for German colonizers. Only those Poles who had been selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, were permitted to remain, and if they resisted it, they were to be sent to concentration camps, because "German blood must not be utilized in

19186-441: The former were charged with providing the ideological justification for war and other crimes, while the latter were accused of enabling Germany's war effort. The charge, a brainchild of War Department lawyer Murray C. Bernays , and perhaps inspired by his previous work prosecuting securities fraud , was spearheaded by the United States and less popular with the other delegations, particularly France. The problem of translating

19367-757: The ghettos with Poles living on the "Aryan Side" and the Jews living on the "Jewish Side", despite the risk of death many Poles risked their lives by forging "Aryan Papers" for Jews to make them appear as non-Jewish Poles so they could live on the Aryan side and avoid Nazi persecution. Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops in which, if they did, they were subject to execution. Jewish children were also distributed among safe houses and church networks. Jewish children were often placed in church orphanages and convents. Some three million gentile Polish citizens perished during

19548-492: The highest proportion of any European country in World War II. Poland had a large Jewish population, and according to Davies, more Jews were both killed and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation, the rescue figure usually being put at between 100,000 and 150,000. Thousands of Poles have been honoured as Righteous Among the Nations – constituting the largest national contingent. When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered

19729-698: The imminent arrival of the Soviet army, the AK launched the Warsaw Uprising against the German army on 1 August 1944. The uprising, receiving little assistance from the nearby Soviet forces, eventually failed, significantly reducing the Home Army's power and position. About 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Uprising. The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in

19910-421: The impression of apologizing without assuming personal guilt or naming any victims other than the German people. On 2 September, the court recessed; and the judges retreated into seclusion to decide the verdict and sentences, which had been under discussion since June. The verdict was drafted by British deputy judge Norman Birkett . All eight judges participated in the deliberations, but the deputies could not cast

20091-530: The imprisoned Romani people . Krychów is located at the heart of Pojezierze Łęczyńsko-Włodawskie characterized by profusion of marshlands and meadows. There is less arable land here than in other areas of the central-Polish lowland. It is a legally protected area , a part of the Sobibór Landscape Park criss-crossed with hiking and biking trails for tourists. Occupation of Poland The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and

20272-522: The indictment and evidence into the three official languages of the tribunal—English, French, and Russian—as well as German was severe due to the scale of the task and difficulty of recruiting interpreters, especially in the Soviet Union. Vyshinsky demanded extensive corrections to the charges of crimes against peace, especially regarding the role of the German–Soviet pact in starting World War II. Jackson also separated out an overall conspiracy charge from

20453-633: The individual guilt of each defendant. None of the defendants tried to assert that the Nazis' crimes had not occurred. Some defendants denied involvement in certain crimes or implausibly claimed ignorance of them, especially the Final Solution. A few defense lawyers inverted the arguments of the prosecution to assert that the Germans' authoritarian mindset and obedience to the state exonerated them from any personal guilt. Most rejected that Germany had deviated from Western civilization, arguing that few Germans could have supported Hitler because Germany

20634-581: The interest of a foreign nation". By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from annexed lands were forced to abandon most of their property and forcibly resettled in the General Government district. There were numerous fatalities among the very young and very old, many of whom either perished en route or perished in makeshift transit camps such as those in the towns of Potulice , Smukal , and Toruń . The expulsions continued in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards, but following

20815-535: The interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps. Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected. According to the 1931 Polish census , out of a prewar population of 35 million, 66% spoke

20996-412: The invasion of Poland in 1939, most of the approximately 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up and put into newly established ghettos by Nazi Germany. The ghetto system was unsustainable, as by the end of 1941 the Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for food deliveries and no chance to earn their own keep. At 20 January 1942 Wannsee Conference , held near Berlin, new plans were outlined for

21177-458: The judgments totaling 3,828 pages. Of 177 defendants, 142 were convicted and 25 sentenced to death; the severity of sentencing was related to the defendant's proximity to mass murder. Legal historian Kevin Jon Heller argues that the trials' greatest achievement was "their inestimable contribution to the form and substance of international criminal law", which had been left underdeveloped by

21358-458: The largest and most infamous, Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Those camps were officially designed as labor camps, and many displayed the motto Arbeit macht frei ("Work brings freedom"). Only high-ranking officials knew that one of the purposes of some of the camps, known as extermination camps (or death camps), was mass murder of the undesirable minorities; officially the prisoners were used in enterprises such as production of synthetic rubber , as

21539-415: The largest delegation, it would take on the bulk of the prosecutorial effort. At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judges Francis Biddle and John Parker . The British chief prosecutor was Hartley Shawcross , Attorney General for England and Wales , assisted by his predecessor David Maxwell Fyfe . Although the chief British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence ( Lord Justice of Appeal ),

21720-524: The locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one, but the Soviets soon proved as hostile and destructive towards the Polish people and their culture as the Nazis. They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. During

21901-500: The main charge, as opposed to that of aggression. All prosecutors except the Americans mentioned the concept of genocide , which had been recently invented by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin . British prosecutor Shawcross quoted from witness testimony about a murdered Jewish family from Dubno , Ukraine. During the closing statements, most defendants disappointed the judges by their lies and denial. Speer managed to give

22082-435: The main six extermination camps in occupied Poland were used predominantly to exterminate Jews. Stutthof concentration camp was used for mass extermination of Poles. A number of civilian labour camps ( Gemeinschaftslager ) for Poles ( Polenlager ) were established inside Polish territory. Many Poles died in German camps. The first non-German prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles who were the majority of inmates there until 1942 when

22263-518: The murder of 80,000 people by those under his command, and SS general Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , who admitted that German anti-partisan warfare was little more than a cover for the mass murder of Jews. The British prosecution covered the charge of crimes against peace, which was largely redundant to the American conspiracy case. On 4 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech, much of which had been written by Cambridge professor Hersch Lauterpacht . Unlike Jackson, Shawcross attempted to minimize

22444-411: The murder of tens of thousands of Jews from Vilna . The Soviet prosecution case was generally well received and presented compelling evidence about the suffering of the Soviet people and the Soviet contributions to victory. From March to July 1946, the defense presented its counterarguments. Before the prosecution finished, it was clear that their general case was proven, but it remained to determine

22625-558: The nineteenth century, arguing that it had diverged from the West due to pan-Germanism and imperialism. They argued that Nazi ideology, which derived from these earlier ideas, was the mens rea —criminal intent—of the crimes on trial. The French prosecutors, more than their British or American counterparts, emphasized the complicity of many Germans; they barely mentioned the charge of aggressive war and instead focused on forced labor, economic plunder, and massacres. Prosecutor Edgar Faure grouped together various German policies, such as

22806-498: The non-German population, or relegating it to the status of slave laborers. The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was the complete destruction of the Polish people and nation. The fate of the Polish people, as well as the fate of many other Slavs , was outlined in the genocidal Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) and the closely related Generalsiedlungsplan (General Plan for Settlement). Over

22987-601: The novelty of the aggression charges, elaborating its precursors in the conventions of Hague and Geneva , the League of Nations Covenant , the Locarno Treaty , and the Kellogg–Briand Pact . The British took four days to make their case, with Maxwell Fyfe detailing treaties broken by Germany. In mid-December the Americans switched to presenting the case against the indicted organizations, while in January both

23168-678: The occupation, Poles formed one of the largest underground movements in Europe. Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began almost at once. The Armia Krajowa, loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Underground State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942. There was also the Armia Ludowa (AL) (Polish People's Army), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by

23349-572: The occupied Polish territory, to prevent any unified resistance from forming. One of the attempts to divide the Polish nation was a creation of a new ethnicity called " Goralenvolk ". Some minorities, like Kashubians , were forcefully enrolled into the Deutsche Volksliste, as a measure to compensate for the losses in the Wehrmacht (unlike Poles, Deutsche Volksliste members were eligible for military conscription). In addition, Germans encouraged Ukrainians and Poles to kill each other during

23530-414: The occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as the Nazis' in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940 around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941. They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people" like

23711-413: The opening speech for the prosecution. He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason". Focusing on aggressive war, which he described as the root of the other crimes, Jackson promoted an intentionalist view of the Nazi state and its overall criminal conspiracy. The speech was favorably received by the prosecution,

23892-623: The other three charges, aiming that the American prosecution would cover the overall Nazi conspiracy while the other delegations would flesh out the details of Nazi crimes. The division of labor, and the haste with which the indictment was prepared, resulted in duplication, imprecise language, and lack of attribution of specific charges to individual defendants. Some of the most prominent Nazis— Adolf Hitler , Heinrich Himmler , and Joseph Goebbels —had committed suicide and therefore could not be tried. The prosecutors wanted to try representative leaders of German politics, economy, and military. Most of

24073-435: The parents suggested that the child might not be " racially valuable ", the mother was forced to have an abortion . Infants who did not pass muster would be removed to a state orphanage ( Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte ), where many were murdered through calculated malnourishment, neglect, and unhygienic conditions. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of Poland by German forces,

24254-408: The population of the territories that came under the control of Germany, in contrast the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained a diverse array of peoples, the population being split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities, many of whom welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles still comprised

24435-485: The population. Poles were deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany. By the end of the initial invasion of Poland (the "Polish Defensive War"), the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 km ), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Prof. Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to

24616-473: The preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Paulus incriminated his former associates, pointing to Keitel, Jodl, and Göring as the defendants most responsible for the war. More so than other delegations, Soviet prosecutors showed the gruesome details of German atrocities, especially the death by starvation of 3 million Soviet prisoners of war and several hundred thousand residents of Leningrad . Although Soviet prosecutors dealt most extensively with

24797-563: The president of the World Zionist Organization , as well as the Provisional Government of National Unity in Poland, for an active role in the trial justified by their representation of victims of Nazi crimes were rejected. The Soviet Union invited prosecutors from its allies, including Poland, Czechoslovakia , and Yugoslavia ; Denmark and Norway also sent a delegation. Although the Polish delegation

24978-664: The proceedings. The American prosecution drew on reports of the Office of Strategic Services , an American intelligence agency, and information provided by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the American Jewish Committee , while the French prosecution presented many documents that it had obtained from the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation . The prosecution called 37 witnesses compared to

25159-413: The prosecution in declaring the crime of plotting and waging aggressive war "the supreme international crime" because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". Most of the defendants were also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity , and the systematic murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust was significant to the trial. Twelve further trials were conducted by

25340-471: The prosecution's case. Over the course of the trial, Western judges allowed the defendants additional leeway to denounce the Soviet Union, which was ultimately revealed to be a co-conspirator in the outbreak of World War II. In the context of the brewing Cold War —for example, in 1946 Winston Churchill delivered the Iron Curtain speech —the trial became a means of condemning not only Germany but also

25521-531: The rationale for American entry into World War II . However, Jackson conceded on defining crimes against peace; the other three Allies were opposed because it would undermine the freedom of action of the United Nations Security Council . War crimes already existed in international law as criminal violations of the laws and customs of war , but these did not apply to a government's treatment of its own citizens. Legal experts sought

25702-562: The same size and inhabited by about 11.5 million, was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete ), with its capital at Kraków . A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank , was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 12 October 1939. Most of the administration outside strictly local level

25883-474: The sentences and the last three prisoners, all convicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial, were released in 1958. The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials. The IMT defendants required Soviet permission for release; Speer was not successful in obtaining early release, and Hess remained in prison until his death in 1987. By the late 1950s,

26064-474: The service of a foreign nation. After Germany lost the war, the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Poles and Jews – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term." The German People's List ( Deutsche Volksliste ) classified

26245-540: The spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland. Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry , and inside the city at the Pawiak prison. Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps . Mass arrests and shootings of Polish intellectuals and academics included Sonderaktion Krakau and

26426-491: The summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR (" Operation Barbarossa "). After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe . Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to

26607-417: The systematic killing of the Jews began. The first killing by poison gas at Auschwitz involved 300 Poles and 700 Soviet prisoners of war . Many Poles and other Central and Eastern Europeans were also sent to concentration camps in Germany: over 35,000 to Dachau, 33,000 to the camp for women at Ravensbrück , 30,000 to Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen. The population in the General Government's territory

26788-500: The time of the invasion of Poland in the first days of September 1939 and the correctional centre stood empty. The Germans set up a Jewish camp there for around 1,500 men and women who were forced to build farms for the German "colonists". It was a main branch of several camps in Gmina Hańsk including Krychów, Hańsk-Dwór , Osowa , and Ujazdów , for the innocuous captives expelled from the neighbouring settlements. The camp in Krychów

26969-715: The total genocide of the Jews, known as the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question ". The extermination program was codenamed Operation Reinhard . Three secret extermination camps set up specifically for Operation Reinhard; Treblinka , Belzec and Sobibor . In addition to the Reinhard camps, mass killing facilities such as gas chambers using Zyklon B were added to the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942 and at Auschwitz and Chełmno . Nazi Germany engaged in

27150-511: The traditional German elite, and allow the Allies to distance themselves from appeasement . Jackson maintained that while the United States did "not seek to convict the whole German people of crime", neither did the trial "serve to absolve the whole German people except 21 men in the dock". Nevertheless, defense lawyers (although not most of the defendants) often argued that the prosecution was trying to promote German collective guilt and forcefully countered this strawman . According to Priemel,

27331-428: The trial procedure and attempted to discredit the entire proceedings. In order to appease them, the defendants were allowed a free hand with their witnesses and a great deal of irrelevant testimony was heard. The defendants' witnesses sometimes managed to exculpate them, but other witnesses—including Rudolf Höss , the former commandant of Auschwitz, and Hans Bernd Gisevius , a member of the German resistance —bolstered

27512-568: The trial was procedurally fair. The judges were aware that both the Allies and the Axis had planned or committed acts of aggression, writing the verdict carefully to avoid discrediting either the Allied governments or the tribunal. The judges ruled that there had been a premeditated conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, whose goals were "the disruption of the European order" and "the creation of

27693-600: The trial: The German Fascist Destruction of the Cultural Treasures of the Peoples of the USSR , Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders in the USSR , and The German Fascist Destruction of Soviet Cities , using footage from Soviet filmmakers as well as shots from German newsreels. The second film included footage of the liberation of Majdanek and the liberation of Auschwitz and

27874-578: The trials illegitimate victor's justice and an imposition of collective guilt, which they rejected—instead considering themselves victims of the war. As the Cold War began, the rapidly changing political environment began to affect the effectiveness of the trials. The educational purpose of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals was a failure, in part because of the resistance to war crimes trials in German society, but also because of

28055-468: The tribunal, except for the execution of hostages. Due to the narrow definition of crimes against humanity in the charter, the only part of the Germanization charges accepted by the judges was the deportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe. On 8 February, the Soviet prosecution opened its case with a speech by Rudenko that covered all four prosecution charges, highlighting

28236-505: The tribunal, the audience, historians, and even the defendants. Much of the American case focused on the development of the Nazi conspiracy before the outbreak of war. The American prosecution became derailed during attempts to provide evidence on the first act of aggression, against Austria . On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on the invasion of Czechoslovakia , and instead screened Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps . The film, compiled from footage of

28417-464: The true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the council to Aid Jews ( Zegota ) was established in late 1942, in cooperation with church groups. The organisation saved thousands. Emphasis was placed on protecting children, as it was nearly impossible to intervene directly against the heavily guarded transports. The Germans implemented several different laws to separate Poles and Jews in

28598-683: The two years following the annexation, they arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 150,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Nuremberg trials This is an accepted version of this page The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and atrocities against their citizens in World War II . Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in

28779-490: The war in Europe . At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the form that the trial would take. Until the end of the negotiations, it was not clear that any trial would be held at all. The offenses that would be prosecuted were crimes against peace, crimes against humanity , and war crimes. At

28960-526: The war was won. The plan envisaged that different percentages of the various conquered nations would undergo Germanization, be expelled and deported to the depths of Russia, and suffer other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder , the net effect of which would ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character. Over a longer period of time, only about 3–4 million Poles, all of whom were considered suitable for Germanization, would be allowed to reside in

29141-490: The whole". The work of the judges was made more difficult due to the broadness of the crimes listed in the Nuremberg Charter. The judges did not attempt to define the crime of aggression and did not mention the retroactivity of the charges in the verdict. Despite the lingering doubts of some of the judges, the official interpretation of the IMT held that all of the charges had a solid basis in customary international law and that

29322-564: The worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons. One set of trials focused on the actions of German professionals: the Doctors' trial focused on human experimentation and euthanasia murders , the Judges' trial on the role of the judiciary in Nazi crimes , and the Ministries trial on the culpability of bureaucrats of German government ministries, especially

29503-426: Was soon attached to the USSR once Lithuania became a Soviet republic . Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their attempt at self-determination failed during both

29684-644: Was a civilized country. The defendants tried to blame their crimes on Hitler, who was mentioned 1,200 times during the trial—more than the top five defendants combined. Other absent and dead men, including Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich , Adolf Eichmann , and Bormann, were also blamed. To counter claims that conservative defendants had enabled the Nazi rise to power , defense lawyers blamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany , trade unions, and other countries that maintained diplomatic relations with Germany. In contrast, most defendants avoided incriminating each other. Most defendants argued their own insignificance within

29865-429: Was appointed the United States' chief prosecutor, whom historian Kim Christian Priemel describes as "a versatile politician and a remarkable orator, if not a great legal thinker". The United States prosecution believed that Nazism was the product of a German deviation from the West (the Sonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes. As

30046-696: Was believed, could be won back to Germany. This group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics. Group Four consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles. After registration in the List, individuals from Groups One and Two automatically became German citizens. Those from Group Three acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Those from Group Four received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in

30227-468: Was considered even more disturbing than the American concentration camp film. Soviet witnesses included several survivors of German crimes, including two civilians who lived through the siege of Leningrad, a peasant whose village was destroyed in anti-partisan warfare, a Red Army doctor who endured several prisoner-of-war camps and two Holocaust survivors— Samuel Rajzman , a survivor of Treblinka extermination camp , and poet Abraham Sutzkever , who described

30408-437: Was described during the Nuremberg trials as a deliberate and systematic genocide. In August 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total. In September 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and

30589-495: Was difficult to sustain interest in a long trial. Where the prosecution was disappointed by some of the verdicts, the defense could take satisfaction. Many Germans at the time of the trials focused on finding food and shelter. Despite this, a majority read press reports about the trial. In a 1946 poll, 78 percent of Germans assessed the trial as fair, but four years later that had fallen to 38 percent, with 30 percent considering it unfair. As time went on, more Germans considered

30770-448: Was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres (36,000 sq mi), but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce

30951-422: Was largely accepted, with the final wording being "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population". The final version of the charter limited the tribunal's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity to those committed as part of a war of aggression. Both the United States—concerned that its " Jim Crow " system of racial segregation not be labeled

31132-423: Was managed by the Nazi German administration of the General Plan East preparing latifundia for the colonists brought in Heim ins Reich (Home into the Empire) from among the foreign Volksdeutsche . Due to proximity of the Sobibór extermination camp many of the Jews who dug the irrigation ditches in these camps were simply marched under the German guard for extermination by gassing at Sobibór, along with

31313-435: Was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labour-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture. This was in spite of racial theory that falsely regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of "German blood", and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used in

31494-489: Was narrowed to a conspiracy to wage aggressive war. Only eight defendants were convicted on that charge; all of whom were also found guilty of crimes against peace. All 22 defendants were charged with crimes against peace, and 12 were convicted. The war crimes and crimes against humanity charges held up the best, with only two defendants charged on those grounds being acquitted. The judges determined that crimes against humanity concerning German Jews before 1939 were not under

31675-412: Was not empowered to intervene in the proceedings, it submitted evidence and an indictment, succeeding at drawing some attention to crimes committed against Polish Jews and non-Jews. The work of drafting the indictment was divided up by the national delegations. The British worked on aggressive war; the other delegations were assigned the task of covering crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on

31856-542: Was planned to hold a second international tribunal for German industrialists, but this was never held because of differences between the Allies. Twelve military trials were convened solely by the United States in the same courtroom that had hosted the International Military Tribunal. Pursuant to Law No. 10 adopted by the Allied Control Council , United States forces arrested almost 100,000 Germans as war criminals. The Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes identified 2,500 major war criminals, of whom 177 were tried. Many of

32037-424: Was rejected by Jackson. Instead, the charter limited the jurisdiction of the court to Germany's actions. Article 7 prevented the defendants from claiming sovereign immunity , and the plea of acting under superior orders was left for the judges to decide. The trial was held under modified common law . The negotiators decided that the tribunal's permanent seat would be in Berlin, while the trial would be held at

32218-446: Was replaced by German officials. Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement , Germanization , economic exploitation , and slow but progressive extermination. A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) with 200,000 inhabitants that had been part of Czechoslovakia before 1938, was ceded by Germany to its ally, Slovakia . Poles comprised an overwhelming majority

32399-452: Was the case of a plant owned by IG Farben, whose laborers came from Auschwitz III camp, or Monowitz . Laborers from concentration camps were literally worked to death. in what was known as extermination through labor . Auschwitz received the first contingent of 728 Poles on 14 June 1940, transferred from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów . Within a year the Polish inmate population was in thousands, and begun to be exterminated, including in

32580-449: Was the nominal president of the tribunal, in practice Biddle exercised more authority. The French prosecutor, François de Menthon , had just overseen trials of the leaders of Vichy France ; he resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Auguste Champetier de Ribes . The French judges were Henri Donnedieu de Vabres , a professor of criminal law, and deputy Robert Falco , a judge of the Cour de Cassation who had represented France at

32761-509: Was undertaken to prevent a British invasion of that country ; a cover-up prevented the defense from capitalizing on this argument. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States Navy had also used unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan in the Pacific ; Dönitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that it could not be a crime. The judges barred most evidence on Allied misdeeds from being heard in court. Many defense lawyers complained about various aspects of

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