In the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies indicted and prosecuted leaders of Nazi Germany after World War II ended. The trials lasted from November 1945 to October 1946 and took place in Nuremberg, Germany.

In total, 199 defendants were tried at Nuremberg; 161 were found guilty, and 37 were sentenced to death. Each trial had a combination of judges from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France.

First, the Allies charged 24 top Nazi leaders for their crimes. The judges found most of them guilty of war crimes, starting wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy. Evidence about the Holocaust played a major role in the trial. The judges called the Holocaust one of the worst crimes in history.

After the first trial, the Allies held 12 additional trials. These included separate trials for Nazi physicians, members of the Einsatzgruppen, and German judges.

The Nuremberg Trials weren’t just about punishment. They were also about showing the world what happened during the war and making sure people understood how serious these crimes were.

These trials were important because they created new rules to prevent such crimes in the future. They also showed that even powerful leaders would face justice if they broke international laws.

The main trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Supreme Court Building in Berlin.

Nazi leaders

Judge Nikitchenko from the Soviet Union presided over the first session. The prosecution brought criminal charges against 24 Nazi leaders. The indictments were for:

1. Working with other people to commit a crime against peace (legally called “taking part in a conspiracy”)
2. War crimes
3. Crimes against humanity
4. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace

The 24 accused were:

“I” indicted      “G” indicted and found guilty      “O” Not Charged

Name	Count				Sentence	Notes
	1	2	3	4
Martin Bormann	I	O	G	G	Death	Successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary. Sentenced to death while not being at the courtroom. His body was found in 1972.[5]
Karl Dönitz	I	G	G	O	10 years	Leader of the Kriegsmarine (the Navy) from 1943. Started the U-boat campaign. Became President of Germany after Hitler’s death.[6] In evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules, Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war. Dönitz was found guilty of breaching the 1936 Second London Naval Treaty, but his sentence was not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.[7]
Hans Frank	I	O	G	G	Death	Reich Law Leader 1933–1945 and Governor-General of the General Government in occupied Poland 1939–1945. Expressed sorrow.[8]
Wilhelm Frick	I	G	G	G	Death	Hitler’s Minister of the Interior (1933–1943) and Reich Protector of Bohemia–Moravia (1943–1945). One of the writers of the Nuremberg Laws.[9]
Hans Fritzsche	I	I	I	O	Acquitted	Popular radio commentator and head of the news division of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels.[10]
Walther Funk	I	G	G	G	Life Imprisonment	Hitler’s Minister of Economics. Succeeded Schacht as head of the Reichsbank. Released from prison due to ill health on May 16, 1957.[11]
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring	G	G	G	G	Death	Commander of the Luftwaffe (1935–1945), Chief of the 4-Year Plan (1936–1945), leader of several departments of the SS, and Prime Minister of Prussia. Committed suicide the night before his execution.[12]
Rudolf Hess	G	G	I	I	Life Imprisonment	Hitler’s deputy, flew to Scotland in 1941 to try to make peace with Great Britain. After trial he was sent to Spandau Prison and died there in 1987.[13]
Generaloberst Alfred Jodl	G	G	G	G	Death	Wehrmacht. Keitel’s deputy and Chief of the OKW‘s Operations Division (1938–1945). Later exonerated by a German court in 1953.[14]
Ernst Kaltenbrunner	I	O	G	G	Death	Highest surviving SS leader. Chief of RSHA 1943–45, the central Nazi intelligence office. Commanded many of the Einsatzgruppen and several concentration camps.[15]
Wilhelm Keitel	G	G	G	G	Death	Head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) 1938–1945.[16]
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach	I	I	I		—-	Major Nazi industrialist. CEO of Krupp AG 1912–45. Medically unfit for trial. The prosecutors attempted to substitute his son Alfried (who ran Krupp for his father during most of the war) in the indictment, but the judges ruled it was too close to trial. Alfried was tried in a separate Nuremberg trial for his use of slave labor, thus escaping the worst notoriety and possibly death.
Robert Ley	I	I	I	I	—-	Head of DAF, The German Labour Front. Killed himself on October 25, 1945, before the trial began.
Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath	G	G	G	G	15 years	Minister of Foreign Affairs 1932–1938, succeeded by von Ribbentrop. Protector of Bohemia and Moravia 1939–43. Resigned in 1943 after a dispute with Hitler. Released from prison because of ill health on November 6, 1954.[17]
Franz von Papen	I	I	O	O	Acquitted	Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and Vice-Chancellor under Hitler in 1933–1934. Ambassador to Austria 1934–38 and ambassador to Turkey 1939–1944. Although acquitted at Nuremberg, von Papen was classed as a war criminal in 1947 by a German de-Nazification court, and sentenced to eight years’ hard labour. He was acquitted following appeal after serving two years.[18]
Erich Raeder	G	G	G	O	Life Imprisonment	Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine from 1928 until his retirement in 1943, succeeded by Dönitz. Released because of ill health on September 26, 1955.[19]
Joachim von Ribbentrop	G	G	G	G	Death	Ambassador-Plenipotentiary 1935–1936. Ambassador to the United Kingdom 1936–1938. Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938–1945.[20]
Alfred Rosenberg	G	G	G	G	Death	Racial theory ideologist. Later, Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories 1941–1945.[21]
Fritz Sauckel	I	I	G	G	Death	Gauleiter of Thuringia 1927–1945. Plenipotentiary of the Nazi slave labor program 1942–1945.[22]
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht	I	I	O	O	Acquitted	Prominent banker and economist. President of the Reichsbank 1923–1930 and 1933–1938 and Economics Minister 1934–1937. Admitted breaking the Treaty of Versailles.[23]
Baldur von Schirach (standing)	I	O	O	G	20 years	Head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) from 1933 to 1940, Gauleiter of Vienna 1940–1943. Expressed sorrow.[24]
Arthur Seyß-Inquart	I	G	G	G	Death	Helped the Anschluß (joining Germany and Austria). Was briefly the Austrian Chancellor 1938. Deputy to Frank in Poland 1939–1940. Later, Reich Commissioner of the occupied Netherlands 1940–1945. Expressed sorrow.[25]
Albert Speer	I	I	G	G	20 Years	Hitler’s favourite architect, personal friend, and Minister of Armaments from 1942. As Minister of Armaments, he used slave labour from the occupied territories in weapons production. Expressed sorrow.[26]
Julius Streicher	I	O	O	G	Death	Gauleiter of Franconia 1922–1945. Incited hatred and murder against the Jews through his weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer.[27]

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“I” indicted      “G” indicted and found guilty      “O” Not Charged

Criminal organizations

The Allies also tried seven Nazi organizations at Nuremberg:^[28]

1. The Gestapo (the Nazi secret police)
2. The Schutzstaffel, or SS (a Nazi paramilitary organization)
3. Reichsregierung, (the Reich government or Cabinet)
4. The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party
5. The Sicherheitsdienst, or SD (the intelligence agency for the SS and the Nazi Party)
6. The Sturmabteilung, also called the SA, Storm Troopers, or Brownshirts (the Nazi Party’s militia)
7. Oberkommando and Generalstab der Wehrmacht (the High Command and General Staff of the Armed Forces)The judges ruled that the Leadership Corps, the Gestapo, the SS, and the SD were criminal organizations.^[29]

Sentences

The death sentences were carried out on 16 October 1946 by hanging using the inefficient American “standard” drop method instead of the long drop.^[30][31] The executioner was John C. Woods. The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the convicted military officials, as is standard for military courts-martial. However, Biddle and the Soviet judges did not agree. They said that the military officers acted so badly that they did not deserve to be treated as soldiers.

The prisoners sentenced to imprisonment were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Legacy

Nuremberg principles is a document created as a result of the trial. It defines what a war crime is.

The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors’ Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects.

Nuremberg execution

The Nuremberg executions took place on the early morning of October 16, 1946, shortly after the conclusion of the Nuremberg trials. Ten prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany were executed by hanging: Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Julius Streicher. Hermann Göring was also scheduled to be hanged on that day, but committed suicide using a potassium cyanide capsule the night before. Martin Bormann was also sentenced to death in absentia; at the time, his whereabouts were unknown, but it has since been confirmed that he died while attempting to escape Berlin on May 2, 1945.

For their last meal, the condemned men were served sausage and cold cuts, along with potato salad and black bread, and were given tea to drink. Starting at approximately 1:10 am, they were led one at a time to the execution chamber to be hanged. The death sentences were carried out in the gymnasium of Nuremberg Prison by the United States Army using the standard drop method (instead of the long drop method favored by British executioners). Three temporary gallows had been erected in the gymnasium, with the execution team using two in alternating order and reserving the remaining gallows as a spare.

The executioners were Master Sergeant John C. Woods and his assistant, military policeman Joseph Malta. Woods’s use of standard drops for the executions meant that some of the men did not die quickly of an intended broken neck but instead strangled to death slowly. Some reports indicated some executions took from 14 to 28 minutes. The Army denied claims that the drop length was too short or that the condemned died from strangulation instead of a broken neck. Additionally, the trapdoor was too small, such that several of the condemned suffered bleeding head injuries when they hit the sides of the trapdoor while dropping through. The bodies were rumored to have been taken to Dachau for cremation but were incinerated in a crematorium in Munich and the ashes scattered over the river Isar.

Kingsbury Smith of the International News Service wrote an eyewitness account of the hangings. His account, accompanied by photos, appeared in newspapers.

Footnote

Do not miss Russell Crowe new film about these trials. He plays the part of Hermann Goering who cheated the hangman by taking cyanide pill on hearing his sentence. The film comes out on Saturday 15th November 2025.