todayinhistory:

November 20th 1945: Nuremberg Trials begin

On this day in 1945, the Nuremberg Trials of twenty-three Nazi war criminals started at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The trials were convened by the victorious Allied forces of World War Two to settle the question of reparations, and, most importantly, to punish the leading figures of the Nazi regime responsible for atrocities during the conflict, including the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. The set of trials which began on November 20th lasted until October 1st 1946 and dealt with the surviving major war criminals including Reichsmarschall and Commander of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, and Minister of Armaments Albert Speer. Twelve were sentenced to death, seven imprisoned (three for life), and three acquitted. Several of the defendants, including Göring, committed suicide before their execution, emulating other leading Nazis like Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, who committed suicide at the end of the war.

“Opening the first trial in history against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated”
- The opening words of the Chief Prosecutor, US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson’s, indictment