The Nuremberg Trials: how the witnesses proved the crimes of the Nazis

The Nuremberg trials were the first court proceedings in which the international community documented the scale of the crimes of the Nazi regime. Traces of medical experiments on the bodies of Stutthof prisoners and photographs of the bodies of prisoners of the same concentration camp served as evidence of the inhumanity of the Nazi regime, Dmitry Surzhik, a specialist in the expert and analytical department of the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia. The documents, testimonies and archival materials presented formed the basis of international law and forever changed the approach to investigating crimes against humanity. For more information, see the Izvestia article.

The Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were the first international court proceedings in which large-scale crimes committed by the leadership of Nazi Germany were legally assessed. The meetings began in November 1945 and lasted for almost a year. The defendants were senior officials of the Third Reich – military commanders, ministers, and heads of party structures.

The purpose of the trial was not only to punish the perpetrators, but also to form an evidence base capable of showing the world the systemic nature of the regime's crimes. The court materials included official documents, diaries, meeting notes, photographs, and newsreels.

The documents and evidence collected during the Nuremberg trials became the basis for modern international law, defining the concepts of genocide, crimes against humanity and aggressive war. The archival funds of the trial continue to be used by researchers, lawyers and educational organizations, ensuring the preservation of the memory of the crimes of Nazism and shaping the historical responsibility of States.

Eyewitness accounts

A special role was played by the testimonies of eyewitnesses – survivors of concentration camps, prisoners of war, residents of the occupied territories and former employees of Nazi structures. Their stories allowed us to confirm the documentary evidence and show the tragedy of the war on a human level.

Witnesses described conditions of detention in the camps, mass executions, daily violence, starvation, shootings and gas chambers. Many of these testimonies have become key in proving the premeditated nature of the crimes.

The court carefully recorded each speech, entering them into the protocols, which later became a fundamental source for historians and lawyers. The gruesome evidence included traces of medical experiments, photographs of the bodies of concentration camp prisoners, and material evidence of crimes, which Dmitry Surzhik, Chief Specialist of the Expert and Analytical Department of the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.

— Traces of medical experiments on the bodies of prisoners of Stuttgart, photographs of the bodies of prisoners of the same concentration camp, from which Professor Spaner brewed soap — this piece of soap was even presented — the testimony of his assistant who developed this recipe... Other gruesome evidence was presented: a leather lampshade and the head of one of the prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, reduced to the size of a paperweight. The latest evidence has been all over the newspapers in the French, in the Brazilian press, in the Argentine press. Victoria Acampo wrote that it was something amazing and beyond all the ideas of evil that existed up to that time. These material proofs served as evidence of the inhumanity of the Nazi regime," Surzhik shared.

Archive materials

The archive database of the Nuremberg Trials included hundreds of thousands of documents. The International Commission has collected letters, orders, directives, minutes of meetings, reports of special services, operation plans and correspondence of senior management.

Materials about the activities of the SS, Gestapo, ministries and military headquarters became public. The central proof was the so–called "blue series", a collection of official documents from German ministries and departments. The captured archives of the occupied territories complemented the picture of crimes against civilians and destructive policies in the East.

The court also presented for the first time a newsreel showing footage from the death camps immediately after liberation. These materials had a serious effect and allowed us to give the evidence an indisputable character.

— The film about the atrocities of the Nazi invaders, prepared by Soviet documentary filmmakers under the direction of Roman Carmen, played an important role. The presentation of this film was preceded by an oath from Soviet documentary filmmakers that they shot authentic footage without retouching or tampering. The film, of course, made a depressing impression. He showed the massive scale of Nazi crimes," Surzhik added.

Crimes of Nazism

During the process, four key categories of crimes were considered: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and participation in planning an aggressive war. It has been proven that the Nazi policy included the mass murder of civilians, the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and other groups, deportations, the use of slave labor, conducting medical experiments, and the systematic destruction of cities and infrastructure in the occupied territories. At the same time, Surzhik noted, the Nazi occupation regime on the territory of European countries was significantly different from the mass terror and genocide that was carried out on the territory of the Soviet Union.

— The same Poland was entangled in a network of concentration camps until 1943, and the genocide concerned only individual peoples living on the territory of Poland. Warsaw existed quite well. Everything changed after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, and then the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In the Soviet Union, terror and war crimes took place literally from the first days, from the first hours of the Nazi aggression. They happened because they were planned in advance.

Surzhik said that if we turn to the documents of Nazi planning, then on March 26, 1941, the Wehrmacht and the SS signed an agreement on the creation and actions of Einsatzgruppen, which were a direct instrument of genocide, as it will be determined later, that is, the destruction of certain groups of the population for political, racial, and ideological reasons.

— On April 28, 1941, the order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Land forces Brauchitsch followed the actions of the Einsatzgruppen of the 2nd Wehrmacht, clarifying the previous order. On April 29, 1941, Goering approved the Oldenburg Plan, which was aimed at plundering the Soviet economy. The general instructions for all commissars in the occupied eastern territories dated May 8, 1941 also served as such. On May 13, Hitler's decree on military jurisdiction in the Operation Barbarossa zone, signed by Keitel, followed. On March 23, Goering approved directives on economic policy, what exactly and in which regions should be done with economic capacity. On May 28, 1941, Himmler's directive on the treatment of the local population of the eastern regions followed. On June 6, 1941, the Wehrmacht High Command issued an order for commissars. Figuratively speaking, we can say that the Wehrmacht competed with the SS in terms of the degree of bloodthirstiness of its instructions, saying that it was necessary to destroy the Soviet population, the Soviet intelligentsia, which could raise the people to fight against the aggressors," said Surzhik.

Separate sessions were devoted to the policy of genocide: the court presented data on the functioning of death camps, methods of extermination, the scale of forced resettlement and forced labor. The evidence presented showed that the brutality and violence were not spontaneous actions of individual units, but were part of the State system.

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