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Holocaust: Concentration Camps, Survivors, and Historical Documents: Nuremberg Trials

A research topic guide covering the Holocaust. This guide includes information on Anne Frank, concentration camps, and antisemitism.

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany from 1945 to 1949. In total, 24 political and military leaders where indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

What Happened at the Nuremberg Trials?

In 1945 and 1946, Nazi war criminals were forced to account for their depraved actions in the city of Nuremberg, Germany.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsA6AdCRI-k

Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz

Barry Avrich's gripping documentary, PROSECUTING EVIL: THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD OF BEN FERENCZ, tells the fascinating story of one of the Holocaust's most heroic figures. Ben Ferencz, age 98, is the last surviving Nuremberg trial prosecutor and he is on a life-long crusade in the fight for law not war.

Source: Kanopy

The Nuremberg Trials

No trial, according to Professor Linder, provides a better basis for understanding the nature and causes of evil than the war crime trials in Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949. In this lecture, your focus is on the first of 12 trials, regarded by scholars as "The Trial of the Major War Criminals."

Source: Kanopy

Albert Speer

Albert Speer, a young German architect, attended a meeting in Berlin addressed by Adolf Hitler, and was captivated by the magic of his oratory. He joined the Nazi Party three months later in early 1933. Speer's brilliance and opportunism led to a rapid advance in his career, which saw him become Hitler's favoured architect and close friend. Later, appointed Minister of Armaments and Munitions, Speer was one of the most influential men in the Third Reich.

Source: Kanopy

Perspectives

The Witness House

Autumn 1945 saw the start of the Nuremberg trials, in which high ranking representatives of the Nazi government were called to account for their war crimes. In a curious yet fascinating twist, witnesses for the prosecution and the defense were housed together in a villa on the outskirts of town. In this so-called Witness House, perpetrators and victims confronted each other in a microcosm that reflected the events of the high court. Presiding over the affair was the beautiful Countess Ingeborg Kálnoky (a woman so blond and enticing that she was described as a Jean Harlowe look-alike) who took great pride in her ability to keep the household civil and the communal dinners pleasant.  A comedy of manners arose among the guests as the urge to continue battle was checked by a sudden and uncomfortable return to civilized life.    The trial atmosphere extends to the small group in the villa.  Agitated victims confront and avoid perpetrators and sympathizers, and high-ranking officers in the German armed forces struggle to keep their composure. This highly explosive mixture is seasoned with vivid, often humorous, anecdotes of those who had basked in the glory of the inner circles of power. Christiane Kohl focuses on the guilty, the sympathizers, the undecided, and those who always manage to make themselves fit in.  The Witness House reveals the social structures that allowed a cruel and unjust regime to flourish and serves as a symbol of the blurred boundaries between accuser and accused that would come to form the basis of postwar Germany.

The Nuremberg Interviews

The Nuremberg Interviewsreveals the chilling innermost thoughts of the former Nazi officials under indictment at the famous postwar trial. The architects of one of history’s greatest atrocities speak out about their lives, their careers in the Nazi Party, and their views on the Holocaust. Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a U.S. Army psychiatrist. Dr. Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defense and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years. Now, Robert Gellately–one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany–has transcribed, edited, and annotated the interviews, and makes them available to the public for the first time in this volume. Here are interviews with the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with the lesser-known officials who were, nonetheless, essential to the workings of the Third Reich. Goldensohn was a particularly astute interviewer, his training as a psychiatrist leading him to probe the motives, the rationales, and the skewing of morality that allowed these men to enact an unfathomable evil. Candid and often shockingly truthful, these interviews are deeply disturbing in their illumination of an ideology gone mad. Each interview is annotated with biographical information that places the man and his actions in their historical context. These interviews are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.

Front Row Seat at the Nuremberg Trials, November 1945

In this Museum oral history clip, Paul Spencer remembers his time as an officer of the court in Nuremberg, Germany at the Nazi war crimes trials. Spencer's duty was keeping peace in the court, but he also spent time talking to the defendants.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28OKZnuSaJM

The German Neighbor: Adolf Eichmann's Life in Argentina and Nuremberg Trial

Integrating impressive archive material, THE GERMAN NEIGHBOR follows the steps of Adolf Eichmann's unusual life in Argentina and his remarkable defense at the trial in Jerusalem.

Source: Kanopy

Elusive Justice: The Search for the Nazi War Criminals

At the end of WWII the Allies declared the Nazi party a criminal organization, and pledged to prosecute and punish the architects and triggermen of genocide. It was an ambitious pledge: several hundred thousand Gestapo, SS, and Wehrmacht forces had engaged in war crimes and atrocities against civilians. But only a few thousand Nazi criminals and collaborators were convicted at the Nuremberg trials. This paled with the legions who evaded prosecution by concealing their war records, assuming false identities, fleeing Europe, or serving Allied governments as spies or scientists.

Source: Kanopy