| The Nuremberg Palace of Justice, 1946. Judgment is pronounced for twenty-four officials of the Nazi régime for their perpetration of crimes against humanity, during one of the most macabre eras of the twentieth century.
Karl Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg, are several names now synonymous with the holocaust of the Second World War (1939-1945.)
The Nuremberg Trials, held from the 20th of November 1945, to the 1st of October 1946, in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, tried 24 senior Nazi leaders.
Under the supervision of the chief prosecutors – Robert H. Jackson, Hartley Shawcross, Lieutenant-General R. A. Rudenkofor, François de Menthon and Auguste Champetier de Ribes – the leaders were indicted for a range of offences, including the planning, initiating and waging of wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; having participated in a conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The 1st of October marks the 60th anniversary of the Trials, whose judgments would later profoundly influence the preparation of international criminal codes, as well as the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948,) the Genocide Convention (1948,) and the formation of the International Criminal Court (2002).
Judge Parker, in pronouncing sentence upon the Nazi leaders, offered the following remark regarding the nature of the criminal acts committed: “ ... war crimes were committed when and wherever the Fuehrer and his close associates thought them to be advantageous. They were for the most part the result of cold and criminal calculation ... not only in defiance of the well-established rules of international law, but in complete disregard of the elementary dictates of humanity.”
Further information available from the Harvard Law School Library Nuremberg Trials Project | 
