Trials after the Holocaust
The Holocaust had lasting effects on the relationship between the individual and society. Society put individual Nazis on trial for the actions they took in the Holocaust during World War II. The main trial was the Nuremberg trial and there were other subsequent trials as well. These trials were essential in showing the concern that justice and fairness should prevail for the victims. Therefore, the trials that took place after the Holocaust, especially at Nuremberg, involve and impact society as well as the lives of many people.
During the aftermath of World War I, two international conferences at Geneva and Hague gave the rules of conduct for warfare. Personnel differences were made concerning the treatment of civilians and military. Prisoners of war had rules especially made for them. These rules and personnel decisions were later used and applied in the trials.
Many countries started to draw up lists of wanted Nazi war criminals following World War II. In August 1945, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) was established to deal and try the war criminals.1 One of the only alternatives considered besides the Tribunal and its trial was swift execution. A war crime trial is trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law.
In early October 1945, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations.2 The indictment appointed against these men and organizations contained four courts: conspiracy to wage aggressive war, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The trial at Nuremberg opened on November 20, 1945.3 For judgemen...
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8. Landau, 258.
9. Yahil, 8.
10. Landau 257.
11. Lawrence L. Langer, Admitting the Holocaust, (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995), 171.
12. Marrus.
Bibliography
- "The Indictments." Courtroom Television Network.
<http: //www.courttv.com/casefiles/nuremberg/indictments. html> (25 October 1998).
- Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994.
- Langer, Lawrence L. Admitting the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Marrus, Michael R. "The Nuremberg Trial: Fifty Years After." The American Scholar,
Autumn 1997, 563-570.
- "Nurnberg Trials." Britannica Online. <http: //www.eb. com:180/cgi-bin/g?
DocF=Micro1432161.html> (25 October 1998).
- Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990.
The Holocaust or the Ha-Shoah in Hebrew meaning ‘the day of the Holocaust and heroism’ refers to the period of time from approximately January 30,1933, when Adolf Hitler became the legal official of Germany, to May 8,1945. After the war was over in Europe, the Jews in Europe were being forced to endure the horrifying persecution that ultimately led to the slaughter of over 6 million Jews with about 1.5 million of them being children as well as the demolition of 5,000 Jewish communities.
"War Guilt Clause." Treaty of Versailles and Nazism. N.p., 9 Nov. 2011. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
The Holocaust not only affected the areas where it took place, it affected the entire world. Even though Jewish people were the main victims in the Holocaust, it also left lasting effects on other groups of people. Both the Nazi and Jewish decedents still feel the aftermath of one of the most horrific counts of genocide that the world has ever encountered. The cries of the victims in concentration camps still ring around the globe today, and they are not easily ignored. Although the Holocaust took place during World War Two, the effects that it had on the world are still prominent today.
Because of the length of the war and the devastation of this genocide, Germany will forever be remembered for the Holocaust and the effect it had on multiple people groups. This event sparked from the idea of absolute supremacy and would continue until the damage was complete. People’s views of the German population and the Jewish people alike will be changed, and the Holocaust forever remembered as one of the largest racist genocides in
The Rosenberg trial, which ended in a double execution in 1953, was one of the century's most controversial trials. It was sometimes referred to as, "the best publicized spy hunt of all times" as it came to the public eye in the time of atom-spy hysteria. Husband and wife, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. Most of the controversy surrounding this case came from mass speculation that there were influences being reinforced by behind-the-scenes pressure, mainly from the government, which was detected through much inconsistencies in testimonies and other misconduct in the court. Many shared the belief that Ethel Rosenberg expressed best as she wrote in one of her last letters before being executed, "-knowing my husband and I must be vindicated by history.
...s of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which made the horrifying actions of the Nazis known all over. The Ally forces pressured Germany to create a homeland for those who suffered through the Holocaust. Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust’s bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims tried to regain their property and wealth that was taking away during the Holocaust. In 1953, the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of apologizing for the crimes which were committed by the German people.
The Nuremberg Trials stood as the American and Allied governments’ delivery on those demands. To that end, the complete absence of any proper format for presentation of evidence (virtually anything was allowed) ensured the end results. Many of the participating judges; and supporters of the tribunals procedures; showed that a number of Nazi defendants were found innocent. However, those minor former officials had no real say in what happened around them. Why they were brought to trial in the first place is a questionable act. Possibly, they were tried and acquitted by design ─ in order to show the “fairness” of these trials. Yet, it remains that the ultimate purpose of these trials was accomplished ─ high profile, public
...nment of Civilians (CWRIC) issued a report saying that military necessity was not the cause of the mass imprisonment. Rather, "...the broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership." (VIII)
Was the Rosenberg trial a fair trial? This has been a very controversial and debated question throughout the 20th century. Many people believe that the Rosenbergs where innocent but had an unfair trial. Others believe that the Rosenbergs had a fair trial and are guilty because of their involvement with espionage and the Soviet Union. Overall the Trial is still a very controversial because of their involvement with communism, their convictions of espionage, and their show of treason against he United States with the Soviets. Before the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, events took place first that made America anti-Communism. According to Douglas Linder, on March 1917 the Russian Revolution began which was the beginning of Communism. Another event was in 1939, when Britain and Germany went to war (James Sweeney). America looked down on Communism after confrontations with Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1917 an Espionage Act is put into terms (Douglas Linder). According to Douglas Linder, in 1923, a Communist Party was formed into the United States. Megan Barnett thought that the Rosenberg's joined a Communist Party due to Hitler's carnage.
In conclusion the Holocaust was a horrible thing. It created a world war that could only be stopped by someone winning. The Jews and other prisoners got caught in the crossfire of this world war. The Jewish people and many other prisoners that were in the camps face starvation, selection, transport, and many other
The Holocaust, the mass killing of the Jewish people in Europe, is the largest genocide in history to this date. Over the course of the Holocaust nearly six million Jewish people were killed by the Nazi Party and Germany led by Adolf Hitler. There are multiple contributing factors to the Holocaust that made it so large in scope. Historians argue which of these factors were most significant. The most significant contributing factor is the source of the Holocaust, the reason it occurred. This source is Adolf Hitler and his hatred for Jewish people. In comparison to the choices of the Allies to not accept Jewish refugees and to not take direct military action to end the Holocaust, the most significant contributing factor of the Holocaust is that Adolf Hitler was able to easily rise to power with the support of the German people and rule Germany.
On August 8, 1945, Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union signed the London Agreement and agreed to persecute major war criminals from the Holocaust. (“The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath”). In the agreement, they also granted the right for a fair trial for all of the criminals persecuted in the trials; this right included the right to counsel and the right to cross examine any witness. Another thing they did was to establish the International Military Tribunal which was the tribunal for European war criminals (Scheffer). The Nuremberg Trials took place in the late 1940’s and were conducted by the International Military Tribunal (“The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath: The Nuremberg Trials.”). The defendants in the Nuremberg Trials were major German war criminals with political, military, propaganda, finance or forced labor backgrounds (Scheffer). The four counts of the indictments were crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the conspiracy to commit any of the other three crimes. The most known trial was the trial of major war criminals. (“The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath: The Nuremberg
On June 22, 1945 representatives from France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States started to plan the prosecution of the main Axis war criminals. These representatives had to establish a fair way of trying the criminals because the world had never seen a situation like the one at hand. The result of the meeting was the International Military Tribunal. The Tribunal’s constitution set forth the principles the defendants were subject to. The panel of Allied representatives decided to hold the trial in Nuremberg. Nuremberg was chosen because the city served as the center of Nazi activities and offered nice facilities (Keeshan 3). Lawyers from the Allied powers submitted an indictment to the Tribunal on October 18, 1945.
On July 7, 1937, the imperial Japanese army marched into Manchuria, China, and began to commit horrendous acts against the Chinese and other Asian countries alike. These war crimes included, rape, mass murder, human experimentation, biological warfare, torture, cannibalism, forced labor, and more. After the war, these crimes were to be judged by what is known as the “Tokyo Trials”. The Tokyo trials were very similar to the Nuremburg trials as they were both done to judge the crimes of the losers of the war. These trails were held to make sure the losers recognized that what they had done, was in fact, wrong. However, the conclusion to the Tokyo Trials had seemingly no effect on Japan as Japan has yet, to issue any “formal” apologies to China
Prior to WWII any concept of international human rights would not have been able to be Kept. State sovereignty was still the norm leaders around the globe followed when it came to international relations. Of course that all changed after the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in the Holocaust were exposed to the global community. After what had happen to the Jewish population in Europe at the hands of Hitler's army was reviled to the world, the international community realized that there was something to the whole idea of human rights that could quite possibly go beyond the recognizable sovereignty of independent states(Collaway, Harrelson-Stephens, 2007 p.4). December 17, 1942 was the date that leaders of the allied forces of WWII that included the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union came together and issued the first declaration that officially noted and acknowledged the mass murder of European Jews and settled to find a solution to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilians. Because of the type of acts that were committed some political leaders advocated for summary executions instead of trials (Collaway, Harrelson-Stephens, 2007). If you really think about it by doing this the allied forces would have been defeating the purpose of what they were trying to accomplish which was to make those responsible for the acts to pay but by giving them a f...