Nuremberg Trials: Books

During World War II the Nazis who came to power in Germany imprisoned and killed some 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of gypsies, homosexuals, and other people they deemed "inferior." Hitler and his forces employed brutal, cruel methods to accomplish the systematic extermination of the Jews. When American troops finally liberated the prisoners who remained in Hitler's death camps, they were horrified by the conditions they found. Hitler and other Nazi officials had killed themselves when defeat was imminent. Who should be held accountable for the horrors? Justice came at the Nuremberg trials in Nuremberg, Germany when an international tribunal of judges from the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia sentenced top Nazi officials for crimes against humanity.

On 21 November 1945, 21 Nazi leaders stood in the dock in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg at the beginning of the first of 12 trials. Eleven days later, all 21 were found guilty. This is an account of what happened.

Recreation of trials with character portraits of the most notorious Nazi criminals.

A gripping verbatim drama created by Guardian journalist Richard Norton-Taylor using only the actual words spoken in court during the 1946 Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. One by one the surviving members of the Nazi High Command troupe into the dock: Hitler's Deputy, Hermann Goering; Chief of Staff, Wilhelm Keitel; Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz; Alfred Rosenberg, the chief Nazi theorist; and Hitler's architect and Armaments Minister, Albert Speer. One by one they protest their innocence. One by one they are sentenced for crimes against humanity. Also included are extracts from the abundant background documentation assembled by Richard Norton-Taylor and the director of the Tricycle Theatre, London, where Nuremberg was first staged in 1996.

An astute observer of the Nuremberg trial, Eugene Davidson has struggled with the issues it raised: Was it a necessary response to the heinous crimes of the Third Reich? How were Germany and the Germans capable of such extraordinary evil? Was the trial just, given the claims that the defendants were simply serving their country, doing as they had been told to do? And if not just, was it nonetheless necessary as a warning to prevent future crimes against humanity?

History of the Nuremberg war crimes trials by Telford Taylor, who became the American chief counsel.