The charges

1Crimes against peace (mainly waging wars of aggression and waging war in violation of international treaties)

2Conspiracy of participation or the accomplishment of charge one

3 War crimes (with an emphasis on the mistreatment of prisoners of war)

4 Crimes against humanity (including “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds…”)

The defendants

• Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s chosen successor until a falling out in April 1945. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to death, but committed suicide before his scheduled execution.

• Rudolf Hess, former deputy führer. Guilty on charges one and two. Sentenced to life in prison. Died by suicide in 1987 at age 93.

• Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister of the Nazi party. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Wilhelm Keitel, Adolf Hitler’s closest military advisor. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Ernst Kaltenbrunner, top SS officer who controlled the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the methods of human extermination. Guilty on charges three and four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Alfred Rosenberg, a principal architect of Nazi ideology. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Hans Frank, governor of the portion of Poland annexed to Germany in 1939. Guilty on charges three and four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Wilhelm Frick, top Nazi bureaucrat and drafter of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Guilty on charges two, three, and four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Julius Streicher, founder of the German Socialist party, which had merged with the Nazi party in 1921. Guilty on charge four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Walther Funk, president of the Reich Bank. Guilty on charges two, three, and four. Sentenced to life in prison, but released in 1957 due to poor health.

• Hjalmar Schacht, apolitical financial architect of the Third Reich. Acquitted.

• Karl Dönitz, Adolf Hitler’s chosen successor as of April 1945. Guilty on charges two and three. Sentenced to 10 years in prison.

• Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the navy until January 1943. Guilty on Charges one, two, and three. Received a life imprisonment sentence but released in 1955.

• Baldur von Schirach, leader of the powerful Hitler Youth movement. Guilty on charge four. Sentenced to 20 years in prison.

• Fritz Sauckel, overseer of Germany’s workforce. Guilty on charges three and four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Alfred Jodl, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest military advisors. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Franz von Papen, Adolf Hitler’s predecessor and vice-chancellor. Acquitted.

• Arthur Seyss-Inquart, commissioner of occupied Netherlands. Guilty on charges two, three, and four. Sentenced to death and hanged.

• Albert Speer, confidant of Adolf Hitler and minister of armaments and munitions. Guilty on charges three and four. Sentenced to 20 years in prison.

• Konstantin von Neurath, former foreign minister and governor of occupied Bohemia and Moravia. Guilty on all four charges. Sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in 1954.

• Hans Fritzsche, former commander in chief of the army. Acquitted, but was sentenced to prison by a later German de-Nazification court and jailed until 1950.

Two other Nazis were connected to the initial Nuremberg War Trials. Dr. Robert Ley, founder of the sham trade union Nazi German Labour Front, was one of the original defendants. Shortly before the start of the trials, he hanged himself in his prison cell. Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler’s private secretary and one of the most influential of all Nazis, was indicted and sentenced to death in absentia. In 1973, he was declared legally dead by a West German court after his remains were believed to have been discovered in Berlin the previous year.

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