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A war crimes trial is the trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law committed during armed conflict.
The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474, was the first "international" war crimes trials and also of command responsibility. [1] [2] Hagenbach was put on trial for atrocities committed during the occupation of Breisach, found guilty, and beheaded. [3] Since he was convicted for crimes, "he as a knight was deemed to have a duty to prevent", although Hagenbach defended himself by arguing that he was only following orders from the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, to whom the Holy Roman Empire had given Breisach.
In 1865, Henry Wirz, a Confederate officer, was held accountable and hanged for appalling conditions at Andersonville Prison where many Union soldiers died during the American Civil War.
During the Second Boer War, the British Army court-martialed Breaker Morant, Peter Handcock, Alfred Taylor, and several other officers for multiple murders of POWs and many civilian noncombatants in the Northern Transvaal (see Court-martial of Breaker Morant).
After World War I, a small number of German personnel were tried by a German court in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials for crimes allegedly committed during that war.
Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles, the peace treaty between Germany and the Allied Powers after the First World War, "publicly arraign[ed] William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties." [4] The former Kaiser had escaped to the Netherlands, however, and despite demands for his extradition having been made, the Dutch refused to surrender him, [5] and he was not brought to trial. Germany, as a signatory to the treaty, thus was placed on notice as to what might occur in the event of a subsequent war.[ citation needed ]
After World War II, the phrase referred usually to the trials of German and Japanese leaders in courts established by the victorious Allied nations.
The former trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, under the authority of two legal instruments. One, the London Charter was signed by representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union in London on August 8, 1945; the other, Law No. 10, was promulgated by the Allied Control Council in Berlin on December 20, 1945.
The London Charter provided for the establishment of the International Military Tribunal, composed of one judge and one alternate judge from each of the signatory nations, to try war criminals. Under the London Charter, the crimes charged against defendants fell into three categories: crimes against peace (crimes involving the planning, initiating, and waging a war of aggression); war crimes (violations of the laws and customs of war as embodied in the Hague Conventions and generally recognized by military forces of civilized nations); and crimes against humanity, such as the extermination of racial, ethnic, and religious groups and other such atrocities against civilians.
On October 8, 1945, Anton Dostler was the first German general to be tried for war crimes by a U.S. military tribunal at the Palace Of Justice in Rome. He was accused of ordering the killing of 15 captured U.S. soldiers of Operation Ginny II in Italy in March 1944. He admitted ordering the execution, but stated that he could not be held responsible, as he had just been following orders from his superiors. The execution of 15 U.S. prisoners of war in Italy ordered by Dostler was an implementation of Hitler's Commando Order of 1942 which required the immediate execution of all Allied commandos, whether in proper uniforms or not, without trial if apprehended by German forces. The tribunal rejected the defense of Superior Orders and found Dostler guilty of war crimes. He was sentenced to death and executed by a firing squad on December 1, 1945, in Aversa.
The Dostler case became precedent for the Nuremberg trials of German generals, officials, and Nazi leaders, beginning in November 1945, that the use of Superior orders as a defense did not relieve officers from responsibility of carrying out illegal orders or the liability of being punished in court. This principle was codified in Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles and similar principles were found in sections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The trials for the Japanese war criminals were established in Tokyo, Japan, to implement the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, the Instrument of Surrender, and the Moscow Conference. The Potsdam Declaration (July 1945) had stated, "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners", though it did not specifically foreshadow trials. [7] The terms of reference for the Tribunal were set out in the IMTFE Charter, issued on January 19, 1946. [8] There was major disagreement, both among the Allies and within their administrations, about whom to try and how to try them. Despite the lack of consensus, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, decided to initiate arrests. On September 11, a week after the surrender, he ordered the arrest of 39 suspects — most of them members of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's war cabinet. Tojo tried to commit suicide, but was resuscitated with the help of U.S. doctors. He was later found guilty among others, and hanged.
On October 18, 1945, the chief prosecutors lodged an indictment with the tribunal charging 24 individuals with a variety of crimes and atrocities, including the deliberate instigation of aggressive wars, extermination of racial and religious groups, murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the murder, mistreatment, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of countries occupied by Germany during the war.
Among the accused were the Nationalist Socialist leaders Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, the diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, the munitions maker Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and 18 other military leaders and civilian officials. Seven organizations that formed part of the basic structure of the Nazi government were also charged as criminal. These organizations included the SS ( Schutzstaffel , 'Defense Corps'), the Gestapo ( Geheime Staatspolizei , 'Secret State Police'), and the SA ( Sturmabteilung , 'Storm Troops'), as well as the General Staff and High Command of the German armed forces.
The trial began on November 20, 1945. Much of the evidence submitted by the prosecution consisted of original military, diplomatic, and other government documents that fell into the hands of the Allied forces after the collapse of the German government.
The judgment of the International Military Tribunal was handed down on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Among notable features of the decision was the conclusion, in accordance with the London Agreement, that to plan or instigate an aggressive war is a crime under the principles of international law. The tribunal rejected the contention of the defense that such acts had not previously been defined as crimes under international law and that therefore the condemnation of the defendants would violate the principle of justice prohibiting ex post facto punishments. As with the Dostler case, it also rejected the contention of a number of the defendants that they were not legally responsible for their acts because they performed the acts under the orders of superior authority, stating that "the true test . . . is not the existence of the order but whether moral choice (in executing it) was in fact possible."
With respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the tribunal found overwhelming evidence of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terrorism by the German government in the territories occupied by its forces. Millions of persons were murdered in Nazi concentration camps, many of which were equipped with gas chambers for the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and members of other ethnic or religious groups. Under the slave labor policy of the German government, at least 5 million persons had been forcibly deported from their homes to Germany. Many of them died because of inhumane treatment. The tribunal also found that atrocities had been committed on a large scale and as a matter of official policy.
Of the seven indicted organizations, the tribunal declared criminal the Leadership Corps of the party, the SS, the SD ( Sicherheitsdienst , 'Security Service'), and the Gestapo.
In May 1993, during the Yugoslav Wars following the massive war crimes, and acts of "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia by Bosnian-Serb forces, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, to try war criminals of all nationalities. The crimes indicted included grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; it was the first tribunal in which sexual assault was prosecuted as a war crime. The ICTY was the first international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials. Ultimately, nearly 161 individuals were indicted in the ICTY: 68% of Serb ethnicity. Croatian-Serb, Bosnian-Serb, Serbian, and Bosnian-Croat officials were convicted of crimes against humanity, and Bosnian-Serb leaders of genocide.
In 1994, the UN opened the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda following the April–June genocide in that country of Hutu nationals.
The tribunals, while effective in prosecution of individuals, proved to be a costly venture, and exposed the need for a permanent tribunal, which was eventually known as the International Criminal Court.
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and atrocities against their citizens in World War II.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law, and like other crimes against international law have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
The Nuremberg principles are a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations to codify the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.
Victor's justice is a term which is used in reference to a distorted application of justice to the defeated party by the victorious party after an armed conflict. Victor's justice generally involves the excessive or unjustified punishment of defeated parties and the light punishment of or clemency for offenses which have been committed by victors. Victors' justice can be used in reference to manifestations of a difference in rules which can amount to hypocrisy and revenge or retributive justice leading to injustice. Victors' justice may also refer to a misrepresentation of historical recording of the events and actions of the losing party throughout or preceding the conflict.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on 29 April 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity, leading up to and during the Second World War. The IMTFE was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, which prosecuted the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
Anton Dostler was a German army officer who fought in both World Wars. During World War II, he commanded several units as a General of the Infantry, primarily in Italy. After the Axis defeat, Dostler was executed for war crimes—specifically, ordering the execution of fifteen American prisoners of war in March 1944 during the Italian Campaign.
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation.
The subsequent Nuremberg trials were twelve military tribunals for war crimes committed by the leaders of Nazi Germany (1933–1945). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals occurred after the Nuremberg trials, held by the International Military Tribunal, which concluded in October 1946. The subsequent Nuremberg trials were held by U.S. military courts and dealt with the cases of crimes against humanity committed by the business community of Nazi Germany, specifically the crimes of using slave labor and plundering occupied countries, and the war-crime cases of Wehrmacht officers who committed atrocities against Allied prisoners of war, partisans, and guerrillas.
The 1902 court-martial of Breaker Morant was a war crimes prosecution that brought to trial six officers – Lieutenants Harry "Breaker" Morant, Peter Handcock, George Witton, Henry Picton, Captain Alfred Taylor and Major Robert Lenehan – of the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC), an irregular regiment of mounted rifles during the Second Boer War.
The High Command Trial, also known initially as Case No. 12, and later as Case No. 72, was the last of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone of Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "subsequent Nuremberg trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
The Dachau trials, also known as the Dachau Military Tribunal, handled the prosecution of almost every war criminal captured in the U.S. military zones in Allied-occupied Germany and in Allied-occupied Austria, and the prosecutions of military personnel and civilian persons who committed war crimes against the American military and American citizens. The war-crime trials were held within the compound of the former Dachau concentration camp by military tribunals authorized by the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Third Army.
International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
Otto Heinrich Kranzbühler was a German naval judge who represented defendant Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials.
Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, or the civilian population, should not be considered guilty of committing crimes that were ordered by a superior officer or official.
German military law has a long history.
Peter von Hagenbach, also Pierre de Hagenbach, Pietro di Hagenbach, Pierre d'Archambaud, or Pierre d'Aquenbacq, was a Burgundian knight from Alsace, German military and civil commander, and convicted war criminal. The trial of Hagenbach was the first known trial of a war crime in history.
An atrocity crime is a violation of international criminal law that falls under the historically three legally defined international crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing is widely regarded as a fourth mass atrocity crime by legal scholars and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field, despite not yet being recognized as an independent crime under international law.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East Charter, also known as the Tokyo Charter, was the decree issued by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Allied-occupied Japan, on January 19, 1946 that set down the laws and procedures by which the Tokyo Trials were to be conducted. The charter was issued months following the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, which brought World War II to an end.
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