Nuremberg Trials: A History from Beginning to End

In 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, triumphant after the July 1932 elections, became the largest political party in Germany. The Nazis quickly banned all other parties and, under Adolf Hitler's leadership, implemented policies that stoked anti-Semitic sentiment among the German people. By 1933, the first concentration camp at Dachau was already in operation, punishing Jews, intellectuals, the mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals, and Romani, whom Nazi ideology deemed inferior and unfit to live in the Third Reich.

In September 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws — the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor — establishing the legal foundation for the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews and non-Aryans. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis established more than 42,000 camps and ghettos to carry out this policy.

When the Allied Powers united to defeat the Nazis, they resolved to bring German leaders to justice in an international court. Nuremberg, the city where the Nazi Party had held its famous rallies and where the Nuremberg Laws had been enacted, was chosen as the site. Now the tables were turned, and Nuremberg would be where justice was served.

What we call the Nuremberg trials was actually a series of 13 trials held between 1945 and 1949. The most famous, the Trial of Major War Criminals, ran from November 1945 to October 1946. Nazi leaders such as Joachim von Ribbentrop were hanged; others, including Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess, received prison terms. Hermann Goering was also sentenced to hang but cheated the noose by taking a smuggled cyanide pill.

Though some, including several American Supreme Court justices, felt the trials fell short of true justice, they are widely regarded today as a milestone in legal history and the forerunner of a permanent international court for crimes against humanity.

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Lydbog: 12. august 2026