The Nuremberg Trials are seen as a milestone in the development of the jurisdiction after the Second World War. Therefore, it completely changed the face of international politics and sculptured the mental image of humanity. Based on their descent from the evilness of crimes of which the Holocaust is a glaring example, the criminal trials were designed to punish the most senior Nazi officials. They set the stage for an era of a new international law. Sparked in the bombed Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945, the proceedings were not simply judicial actions but also a powerfully positive message against the barbarity of war and a joint effort toward post-war recovery and reconciliation. The main role of the Nuremberg Trials, however, was not limited to the direct punishments and sentences given out. It provided the fundamentals of the foundations of international criminal law and started the era when individuals were held accountable for human rights abuses. The significance of such a legal framework becoming a realization is evident through this landmark case. It sets a standard for future trials and confirms the ideal of justice and respect for human dignity on a global level.
The holding of the Nuremberg Trials was the watershed moment that history remembers as the birth of modern international justice, but for it to evolve was a supreme task. Many of those political factors that had been harnessed to prosecute war criminals in the aftermath of World War I (WWI) were again in place in the treatment of the same issue in the aftermath of the Second World War after WWI Allies had to address the task of giving sentence to the Central Powers’ guilty ones based on the Treaty of Versailles and the Leipzig Trials(Michael Robert Marrus and Mazal Holocaust Collection, p3). Despite these measures, these difficulties stand out as limited scope for investigations, the creation of international special tribunals, the difficulty in extraditing the accused, and lenient verdicts for those who were tried. Hence, before the culmination of the Second World War, the approach to this war had to be based on a more ambitious and comprehensive manner.
The decision to try the Nazi leaders on stage with a sentence instead of General killed them with the idea of embracing legality, transparency, and the rule of law. This strategy had not only the purpose of punishing the criminals but, above all, the motive to record their actions in the pages of history so that posterity would have the historical truth, which could serve as a deterrent to future attempts to commit similar crimes. Moreover, the Nuremberg Trials were used to lay the foundations that the introduction of the concepts of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity would pave the way for international law. The assertion of principles and fairness to civilize and rehabilitate humanity was the primary objective represented by the choice of judicial process rather than summary justice by the Allies during the Second World War(Michael Robert Marrus and Mazal Holocaust Collection, p17). The trials were the blueprints of the new era of international law, which began a series of steps that made it a requirement to bring the people who are against international norms, guilty in terms of human rights, accountable for their actions regardless of their position.
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Undoubtedly, the establishment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for the Nuremberg Trials had its best significance for the history of international law since it united the critical Allied Forces represented by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France in bringing the main guilty ones from the European Axis to criminal responsibility. The cooperation between countries ultimately paved the way for setting up a legal framework covering the catastrophic extent and unique features of the crimes committed during World War II(Michael Robert Marrus and Mazal Holocaust Collection, 30). The appointment of judges from all allied countries emphasized the international nature of the trials, and the Nuremberg Charter legislation spelt out a wide range of crimes, peace, war, and humanity and provided details on these, unlike the crime that has never been defined before
The court’s decisions about the procedural intricacies of IMT were also groundbreaking, which, in some instances, needed to be adequately charted. The Nuremberg court categorically abandoned the outdated legal experiments of the past. It introduced new methods, such as simultaneous translation and film and documentary evidence, to strengthen
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