On This Day: Nuremberg Trials begin to hear war crimes of senior Nazis

NOVEMBER 20, 1945: The landmark Nuremberg Trials began the prosecution of senior Nazi war criminals on this day in 1945 – six months after Germany’s defeat in World War II.

Twenty-three leaders of the vanquished regime were accused of waging a war of aggression, violating the customs of warfare and committing crimes against humanity.

They included Nazi No 2 and Luftwaffe commander Herman Göring, SS death squad chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command.

Notably absent were dictator Adolf Hitler, SS chief Heinrich Himmler and propaganda supremo Joseph Goebbels, who had all committed suicide months earlier.

They were among 12 men who were eventually sentenced to death by four judges, three of whom were from the Allied victors of Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Controversially, France, which had been the only nation to sign an armistice with Germany after her defeat in 1940, was also given a place in the justices’ panel.

The trial was held in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg because it was considered the birthplace of the Nazis and hosted the party’s annual propaganda rallies.

It began with 21 of the defendants – as one, Robert Ley, had committed suicide in jail and another, Martin Bormann, was being tried in absentia - pleading not guilty.

In this Pathe film, Göring, who would later sensationally kill himself in his cell using a smuggled cyanide capsule, is filmed attempting to make a speech.

But he was stopped short by Britain’s Lord Chief Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, the tribunal president, who reminded him that statements were not allowed at that point.

Among the Nazi architects denying their crimes was Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former deputy who claimed he’d lost his memory after crashing his plane in Britain on an apparent peace trip in 1941.

After this, the chief prosecutor, American Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, revealed the shocking crimes they have been charged with – including the Holocaust.

'Opening the first trial in history against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility,' he told the court as his began his 20-word indictment.

'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.'

Göring, who was the most senior Nazi to be prosecuted, was also filmed continually smirking, laughing and joking with the other defendants throughout the proceedings.

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He smugly believed he could paint himself as a peace-loving man with no knowledge of the murder of six million Jews or other atrocities.

Yet prosecutors showed him to have been a mastermind of Nazi policies and duly convicted him of all four charges and proving 'his guilt is unique in its enormity'.

Having been denied the chance to die by firing squad, he defied a round-the-clock suicide watch and took his own life the night before he was due to be hanged.

The trial, which ended on October 1, 1946, saw the majority of the defendants condemned to death.

But seven of the defendants, including Hess, were jailed, while three men, including financial expert Hjalmar Schacht, were found not guilty.

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A second set prosecutions was carried out, included the famous Doctors' Trial of  23 German physicians who conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

And the last of the tribunals finished in April 1949.

The initial Nuremberg hearing, which was described as the 'greatest trial in history' by deputy UK judge Norman Birkett, marked a landmark in international law.

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Yet many condemned it as an exercise in 'victors’ justice' with U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone denigrating it as 'a high-grade lynching party'.

Notably, in deciding what were internationally recognised offences, the tribunal was forced to accept the Soviet insistence that only Axis aggression was being tried.

Otherwise, Moscow authorities would have been in the dock as well for carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later.

British and American leaders also faced no charges over their devastating bombing campaigns in which almost half a million Germans lost their lives.