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It was the first international criminal case in history: on the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trial of major war criminals, Federal President Steinmeier recognized the historical significance as a “revolution.”
75 years after the start of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recognized its importance for the development of universal international criminal law. “The main trial of war criminals in Nuremberg was a revolution. He not only wrote legal history, he wrote world history,” Steinmeier said, according to the previously published manuscript of the speech, at a ceremony in the historic room 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
The trial of leading war criminals against high-ranking representatives of the Nazi regime, including Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess and Nazi aviation minister Hermann Göring, began in this courtroom on November 20, 1945. The process it began at a time when Germany, in Steinmeier’s words, was “morally and materially destroyed.” “Under this mountain of guilt and destruction, the law was long in ruins.”
The Nuremberg trials were the first international criminal trials in history. The judges came from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The prosecution was also made up of a representative of each of the victorious powers.
Innovated idea”
Steinmeier recalled that until the opening of the Nuremberg trials, international law was a “matter of states”, “not of individuals.” “In Nuremberg, heads of state appeared in court for the first time and would be charged with the most serious crimes that world history had seen so far: unleashing a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Steinmeier described the idea of the Nuremberg trials of major war criminals and their twelve successor trials as “groundbreaking”: “Government officials and high-ranking state officials should no longer hide behind international law immunity to their orders. criminal;
“Obstetrician” of the International Criminal Court
In this way the law was opposed to power. “It was intended to put limits on its flagrant abuse, it was the basis of universal international criminal law and international criminal jurisdiction, for an international order based on law and order,” said the federal president. “It was also the basis for a principle of world law, according to which war crimes and the most serious human rights crimes must not go unpunished anywhere in the world.”
The trial of major war criminals in Nuremberg “marked a new and different story: the emergence of an international criminal justice system,” Steinmeier emphasized. “It was late, only after the Cold War; the road was arduous and marked by setbacks, and yet: it was a great advance, without the trial of the main war criminals in Nuremberg, the International Criminal Court in The Hague would not exist today”.
The Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals ended after 218 days of trial on October 1, 1946. The international court handed down twelve death sentences, one in absentia, three life sentences and four long prison terms. Three defendants were acquitted.
