November 20, 2020 (Euronews) When the Nuremberg trial opened on November 20, 1945, it was just six months since Nazi Germany had surrendered and much of the city remained a bombed-out ruin. Jointly headed by an American, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, and a Briton, Sir Hartley Shawcross, the trial saw 22 high ranking Nazi officers face trial for war crimes, including two of Hitler’s foremost generals and his second in command, Hermann Göring. “That four great nations, flushed with history and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason,” Jackson said in his opening statement. The 22 defendants at Nuremberg represented the highest echelons of Nazi power, including three of the top generals that led the war, Alfred Jodl, Karl Dönitz, and Wilhelm Keitel. The highest-ranking member of the SS was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, while foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Albert Speer, known as Hitler’s architect were among facing trial. The sentences ranged from 10 years in prison (Dönitz) to death (Keitel, Jodl, von Ribbentrop, and Göring, although he committed suicide before he was due to be hanged). Hess was jailed for life, and died in 1987, while Speer served 20 years, was released and died in 1981. There were notable exceptions to justice at Nuremberg. Hitler, of course, had committed suicide in April 1945 as the Soviets closed in on his bunker in Berlin, as did Joseph Goebbels, who committed suicide along with his wife after poisoning his six children.
In this Nov. 21, 1945 file photo, Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring stands in the prisoner's dock at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial in Germany.
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