75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials

Last year was the 75th anniversary of the liberation Auschwitz by Soviet troops. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials.

The Nazis Party rallies were held in a vast parade ground south-west of the city from 1927 to 1938.

September 9th 1936. Victor Klemperer, a Jew and a former Professor of Romance Languages at Dresden University, writes in his diary: “The Nazi regime is more firmly in the saddle than ever. Even now they are triumphant in Nurnberg; The ‘Party Rally of Honour’, and making plans for eternity.”

Passed in September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws marked a significant and sinister turning point in the escalating war on the Jewish population in Germany. The new laws that appeared on the statute were radical in the extreme. The concept of ‘racial defilement’ made it illegal for Jews to have sexual relations or marry so-called “Aryans”. Further laws prohibited Jews from flying the national flag, the swastika even though many of them had fought bravely and patriotically in the Great War. By law, Jews were now no longer considered citizens of the Reich – a shattering blow for sophisticated Jews who had assimilated into upper-class German society and who considered themselves to be first and foremost German rather than Jewish. For Victor Klemperer and those of a similar ilk, being rendered stateless was the ultimate humiliation. The Nazis “are making plans for eternity” he wrote. In the Third Reich, there would be no place for Jews or any other race the Nazis deemed inferior to the Aryan race.

The Nuremberg Race Laws

Given Nuremberg association with these laws, it is not surprising that after the war the trial of twenty-four close followers of Adolf Hitler should have taken place there. Bavaria was after all the heartland of Nazism; at the centre of this southern region in Germany was the city of Nuremberg. Between 1933 and 1938 it was scene for six Nazis Party rallies held in a vast parade ground in the south-eastern part of the city. Now, in defeat, Nuremberg was to be the scene of the Nazis being called to account for their crimes.

The Nuremberg Trials which began 75 years ago last November marked a turning point in international law. The US prosecutor Robert H Jackson opened the trial with this memorable statement: “That four great nations flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily subject their captive enemies to the judgement of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

Although none of the defendants would admit their personal guilt, the ‘films of mountains of corpses’ from death-camps such as Auschwitz could not be denied. By the time the trial came to an end in October 1946, the following statistics had been racked up: 218 trial days were held, 240 witnesses were called, 300,000 affidavits were taken. Twelve death sentences were passed. A further 185 Nazis were put on trial in front of twelve more US military tribunals, the last being held in 1949.

The principal of the Nuremberg Trials, the concept of war crimes established by the Geneva Convention in 1864, had expanded to include “crimes against humanity or the crime of wars of aggression” which had not existed before. This legal precedent led in turn to the UN war crime tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 1993-2017, the UN genocide tribunal for Rwanda 1994-2016 and the establishment in 2002 of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In other words, the legal precedents set by Nuremberg were immense and will be with us for generations to come.

Sir Kier Starmer, current the leader of the Labour Party, said in a recent interview that the Nuremberg Trials inspired him to become a civil rights lawyer. Perhaps Christoph Safferling, Professor for International Law at the University of Erlangen, Nuremberg summed it up best: “No dictator in the world can be sure that an international criminal justice system will not strike at some point.”

Unbeknown to themselves, the Nazi party were indeed making plans for eternity. They just weren’t the plans they had in mind.

Cathy David is Co-ordinator for the College with Holocaust Education Trust. She teaches English and Classics

DLD College supports World Holocaust Day on 27th January

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