The Nüremberg trial, background and why interpreting was key to its unfolding
On the 8th of August 1945, a mere three months after the victory of the Allied forces over Nazi Germany, the four major victorious powers (Great-Britain, the United States of America, the Soviet Union and France) signed the “London Agreement”. This agreement led to the establisment of a International Military Court, which aimed at trying and sentencing German war criminals (1).
The choice of venue was highly symbolical as Nuremberg had been, until recently, the pride of Nazism, the very city where the Nazi party held its congresses and, importantly, where Hitler had promulgated in 1935 the “laws of Nuremberg” that served as a backbone to the Reich’s racist ideology (2). The town was now reduced to ruins and ashes. A series of trials took place in Nüremberg but the first and most important one lasted from 20 November 1945 to the 1st October 1946, it spanned over 402 sessions and 22 of the most influential men of Nazism were juged on 4 different charges:
1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3. War crimes
4. Crimes against humanity (3).
By then it had become public knowledge that the accused, considered “major war criminals” because of the positions they held were responsible for death and destruction throughout Europe as well as enslaving and exterminating more than 10 million men, women and children outside the battlefield. As such, public opinion was incredibly biased against them and many believed that these men should have been executed without a trial, including W. Churchill himself who would have had t...
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10.http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v/n3/009380ar.html
11. http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/translation/
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=564W493M7eU
13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvY_1bMAZWY
14. http://aiic.net/page/983/the-nuremberg-trial/lang/1
15.http://www.uscourts.gov/Multimedia/Videos.aspx?video_url=http://www.uscourts.gov/video/source/News/nuremberg_low.f4v&video_image=/uscourts/video/News/jn_20100923_preview.jpg&video_id=20100923
16. Gaiba, F. 1998. The origins of simulaneous interpretation: the Nüremberg trial. University of Ottawa Press.
17. http://aiic.net/page/6625/early-history-of-simultaneous-interpretation-equipment/lang/1
18. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v/n3/009380ar.html
18. http://aiic.net/page/1665/lunch-with-a-legend/lang/1
19. http://uk-ireland.aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm/page238.htm
Gellately, Robert. “The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciation in the Gestepo Case Files.” Journal of Modern History (The University of Chicago Press) 60, no. 04 (December 1988): 654-694.
The Nuremberg Trials was unethically run and violated the rights of the Nazi leaders who were convicted of committing crimes against humanity. Primarily because the Allies sought to use the trials as a way to remind the Germans, who won the war ‘again’. Thus making it similar to the Treaty of Versailles in (19- ), through implying this notion of “Victors’ Justice”. Nevertheless, the Allies did to an extent ‘try’ to make the tribunal as ethical as possible,
The arguments of Christopher Browning and Daniel John Goldhagen contrast greatly based on the underlining meaning of the Holocaust to ordinary Germans. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings and deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer, most of the men chose to kill anyway. Browning's traces how these murderers gradually became less "squeamish" about the killing process and delves into explanations of how and why people could behave in such a manner.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
The Milgram experiment was designed and performed by Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961. Milgram created this experiment predominately to determine what would have motivated Germans to so readily conform to the demands put forth by the Nazi party. Milgram wished to answer his question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (McLeod). At the time of these experiments, debates about the Nuremberg trials, particularly the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major perpetrators in the Holocaust, were still ongoing. At these trials, many Nazi party officials and military officers were put on trial for committing “crimes against humanity.” Although some defendants pleaded guilty, others claimed that they were innocent and only following orders that were given to them by a higher authority, Adolf Hitler. In the end, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life in prison, four to approximately fifteen year prison terms, and three were acquitted (“The Nuremberg Trials”)....
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.
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.
“The Nuremberg Race Laws.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 2005. Web. 18 May 2014
One of the most well-known trials is the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg trials were a sequence of 13 trials that took place in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1949. According to history.com, “Nuremberg had been the site of annual Nazi propaganda; holding the postwar trials there marked the symbolic end of Hitler’s government.” The people that were going to be charged were Nazi Party Officials, high-ranking military officers, German industrialists, doctors, and lawyers. They were charged with crimes against peace and humanity. The leader of the Nazi’s, Adolf Hitler took his own life before he could be tried. During the trials, the m...
The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.
Prosecutors have been slacking on the prosecution of Nazi affiliates for long enough, and it’s time for justice to be served. German laws concerning war crimes have recently taken a change for the better. According to Spiegel, a well respected international source for news world wide, stated that a prior conviction of a Nazi concentration camp guard for the murders of thousands of Jews sparked hope in the search for justice. “Demjanjuk was found guilty by a Munich court and sentenced to five years in jail for being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews while he was a guard at Sobibor in occupied Poland.” According to Kurt Schrimm, a German prosecutor, “the Demjanjuk conviction represented a new interpretation of the law.” Because of Demjanjuk’s conviction, prosecutors no longer need to establish culpability in specific murders to secure a conviction. Being an accomplice to the murders that took place in the Holocaust is now enough to find Oskar Gröning guilty for the countless charges he is being charged with. Therefore, under the German legal system, Gröning is guilty for the act of supporting the Nazi regime’s efforts to extinct the Jews and conquer the European
"The Nuremberg Laws: Background & Overview." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. .
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
“The four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (IMT)—Robert H. Jackson (United States), Francois de Menthon (France), Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union), and Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)—hand down indictments against 24 leading Nazi officials,” (“The Nuremberg Trials”). Alongside the judges stood A prosecutorial staff of over 600 Americans plus additional hundreds from the other three powers assembled and began interviewing potential witnesses and identifying documents from among the 100,000 captured for the prosecution case,” (Doug Linder). This was a time in history that really brought together the great nations and made them what they are
This case concerns the Nazis where Hitler government is ruling Germany. In 1944 a German soldier visited his wife and conveyed privately of his disapproval of Hitler. Shortly after his departure, his wife who had “turned to other men” reported his remarks to the local leader of the Nazi party to get rid of him. At that time, such remarks would had resulted death sentence. Instead of being executed, he was imprisoned for a while and later was sent to the front again. After the collapse of Nazi regime, the wife was brought to trial and her defense is that her husband’s statements constituted a crime under the Nazi laws then in force.