International Military Tribunal

The International Military Tribunal was the court established by the Allied powers to try major German leaders for crimes committed during the Second World War. It sat in Nuremberg from 1945 to 1946.

Nuremberg Charter: The 1945 agreement that established the International Military Tribunal and defined its jurisdiction and procedures. It supplied the tribunal’s legal authority and defined its four categories of crime.
London Agreement: The 1945 agreement in which the Allied powers established the International Military Tribunal and adopted its charter. This agreement formally created the court and set out its legal framework.
Robert H. Jackson: An American Supreme Court justice who served as chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial. His opening statement and prosecution strategy shaped the tribunal’s presentation of the case.
Nuremberg Principles: Principles of international law formulated from the tribunal’s judgment, including individual responsibility for international crimes. The United Nations later distilled the judgment’s legal principles into this set.
Nuremberg trials evidence: Documents, testimony, photographs, and films presented as evidence in postwar prosecutions of Nazi crimes. The tribunal relied heavily on captured German records and other evidence to establish the crimes.
Crimes against peace: The planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression under the Nuremberg Charter. The tribunal used this charge to prosecute leaders for launching wars.
Moscow Declaration: A 1943 Allied declaration stating that German war criminals would be punished after the war. It expressed the wartime commitment that the Nuremberg tribunal later carried out.
Hermann Göring: A leading Nazi official and the highest-ranking defendant tried by the International Military Tribunal. His testimony and courtroom strategy made him the trial’s most prominent defendant.
Genocide Convention: The 1948 United Nations treaty requiring states to prevent and punish genocide. Nuremberg helped sustain postwar efforts to define and prosecute mass atrocities, though genocide was not a separate tribunal charge.
Nazi Party: The German political party led by Adolf Hitler that ruled Germany from 1933 until 1945. The tribunal declared some Nazi organizations criminal while acquitting others, including the party’s general membership.

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