Preview

Holocaust War Crimes

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
655 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Holocaust War Crimes
Kendra
24 May 2013
Holocaust Essay
War Crimes Trials War crimes trials are trials of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law. The records of the war crimes trials after World War 2 provide some of the most comprehensive formulations of the concept of war crimes. After the devastating amount of crime committed during World War 2, the law was the only way to seek justice on the accused war criminals. In order to seek justice for these war crimes, many trials were held. The first declaration officially noting the mass murder of Jews, resolving to prosecute those responsible, was noted on December 17, 1942 by the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union (War Crimes Trials). The people responsible for the war crimes were to be sent back to the countries where such crimes haf been committed and judged accordingly to the laws of that nation (War Crimes Trials). Justice was the only reasonable solution to this situation. Many nations which Germany occupied during World War 2 or who collaborated with the Germans in the persecution of certain populations, espically Jews, have also held national trials in the years following World War 2 (War Crimes Trials). The goal of the post war trials was to punish all of the people charged with offenses recognized as crimes in Article 2 of the Control Council of Law no 10 (War Crimes Trials). Due to the heinousness of such crimes, it was vital of authorites to go to such extremes. These post war trials really helped bring peace to many of the victims of the crimes. There was a wide range of people prosecuted for war crimes. The vast majority of post World War 2 war crimes trials involved lower-level officials and functionaries (War Crimes Trials). Among the people put on trial were union leaders, policemen, and news paper editors, all charged with crimes in the aftermath of World War 2 (Who was put on trial?) People were fooled

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The reason is, as Weschler states, “Such interethnic violence usually gets stoked by specific individuals’ intent on immediate political or material advantage, who then calls forth the legacies of earlier and previously unaddressed grievances. (Weschler 784)” The author emphasizes that violence is often fueled by few individuals’ greed of political power and material gains. Hence, when we judge the immoral crimes of war criminals, it would be too rash for us to simplify or generalize that each individual of the criminal group bears the guilt and the responsibility of the war crimes. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the actions of individuals are often influenced by the pressure and the expectations of…

    • 1901 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    For over a decade the central debate about enemy combatants has been what kind of trials…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    * Reason for trials: seen as important to make the Germans realise the scale of destruction that had occurred, the atrocities committed by the Germans were part of official government policy, the idea that if it was shown that this behaviour would not go unpunished then such evil would not be repeated and the hope that International Justice would be a good sign for the future of the United…

    • 3933 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Second World War, there were many heinous crimes committed. These unforgivable acts are still felt today among the survivors. The war started in 1939, however these crimes originated from as early as 1933. This is the starting point of terrible sequences of events that is known today as the Holocaust. Beginning with what is arguably one of the most notorious concentration camps of the Holocaust, Dachau.…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The first trial was called The Major War Criminals´. Their were 24 individuals and six Nazi organizations being prosecuted (¨Nuremberg Trials¨ 2). One man was deemed medically unstable to be present in court and three others killed themselves before trial (¨Nuremberg Trials¨ 2).…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    To begin, the Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials prosecuting and questioning Nazi war criminals. When Hitler came to power, he created laws persecuting Jews and other enemies of Nazi. These laws provoked the death of 6 million European Jews. In response, the allied leaders of Great Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union “issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European Jewry and resolving to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilian populations,” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Nuremburg Trials

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The Holocaust was an unparalleled crime composed of millions of murders imprisonment, racism, and destruction. It destroyed millions of lives and wiped out over six million Jews during the course of World War II under Hitler’s power. The aftermath of these horrific events proved to be a difficult one since no form of punishment could ever suffice to the torture and pain the Nazi’s inflicted on the Jewish Community. This challenge was attempted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) held at Nuremberg, Germany where they held Nazi’s in court for crimes of war and genocide. These became known as the Nuremburg Trials.…

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Nazis killed most of them in gas chambers while pumping poisonous gas for the purpose of mass murder. Many of the tortured people were starved and shot or worked to death. This slaughtering and murdering of millions of Jews and others, this genocide, was called the Holocaust. As a result of the Holocaust, approximately 11 million people died in total, which included 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews which contained the Gypsies, homosexuals, artists and dissidents. Even though, the U.S and its allies, which included the Britain, the Soviet Union, and the Free French, were aware of the camps, they didn’t understand the extent of the horrors until towards the end of the war. The Nazis kept it a secret from them. When the Allies took over Germany, they found out about these terrible acts that the Nazi leaders committed. Moreover, the U.S and its allies weren’t quite sure how to handle the situation. As a result, the Allies created the Nuremberg Trials which punished the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany who committed crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are considered the highest level of criminal offense which includes murder, extermination, enslavement and other inhumane acts against a group of…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The decision to go to war has nothing to do with the individuals fighting the war. The warfighters are merely following the orders of the politicians and heads of state who have decided to enter into a war. Walzer claims, “We draw a line between the war itself, for which soldiers are not responsible, and the conduct of the war, for which they are responsible, at least within their own sphere of activity” (39). Soldiers are only responsible for what they directly take part in, so as long as both sides, whether fighting a just or unjust war, follow Jus in Bello principals all soldiers should have the same moral equality. However, Jeff McMahan presents a refutation to this belief in his piece, “Rethinking the ‘Just War’ Part 1”, in which he poses the idea that soldiers are directly responsibility for justice/ injustice of a war. McMahan adheres to a school of thought known as the revisionist approach which believes, “ … that it is the individual…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holocaust Conspiracy

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Conspiracy theorists maintain that the Holocaust did not actually occur. Some people say that the massive genocide was a hoax and a method of propaganda to gain support for the State of Israel. Though there is overwhelming evidence concerning the events that occurred, conspiracists say that there is a big hole in the chain of events to make it reliable information. In spite of these different theories, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence and first- hand experiences and stories from people who were involved in it.…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Nuremberg Trials is the general name for two sets of trials of Nazis involved in crimes committed during the Holocaust of World War II. The first, and most famous, began on November 20, 1945. It was entitled the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, which tried the most important leaders of Nazi Germany. The second set of trials, for lesser war criminals, was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10, at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals.…

    • 558 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A standout amongst the most horrendous terms in history was utilized by Nazi Germany to assign people whose lives were irrelevant, or the individuals who ought to be murdered inside and out: Lebensunwertes Leben, or "life unworthy of life". The expression was connected to the rationally hindered and later to the "racially substandard," or "sexually degenerate," and also to "foes of the state" both interior and outside. From ahead of schedule in the war, some portion of Nazi strategy was to murder regular citizens as a group, particularly focusing on Jews. Later in the war, this approach developed into Hitler's "last arrangement", the entire annihilation of the Jews. It started with Einsatzgruppen demise squads in the East, which slaughtered around 1,000,000 individuals in various slaughters, and proceeded in inhumane imprisonments where detainees were effectively denied legitimate nourishment and human services. It finished in the development of elimination camps - government offices whose whole intention was the precise murder and transfer of gigantic quantities of individuals.…

    • 240 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holocaust Discrimination

    • 1937 Words
    • 8 Pages

    By discrimination we mean ‘the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.’ In this case, the Jews were discriminated because of their religion. In Germany from 1933 to 1945 the Jewish people were discriminated against for a number of reasons which lead to poor treatment at the hands on the Nazis, these included social, violent, economic and political discrimination.…

    • 1937 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Allied Leaders were determined to bring Nazi leaders to justice for their crimes. These feelings only grew in the final months of World war II. From 1945 to 1949, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials in Nuremberg, Germany. This is the place where the Nazis held huge rallies. On December 9th, 1948, the UN passed the Genocide Convention. This was designed to overcome the claims of Nuremberg defendants that they had violated no laws.…

    • 106 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Another reason that the court itself was not fair was that the four Allied Powers and their judge representatives came into the trials with strong anti-German approaches and they did not judge the Germans objectively and Fairley. Both the Soviet Union, France, The United States and Britain blamed Germany for its horrible acts during World War II and they put that blame on the individual defendants instead of Germany as a whole. The Soviet Union blamed the defendants for murdering many people and for turning their land into desert. In 1943, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin said to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt that 50,000-10,000 German commanders should be murdered (Scheffer). The French blamed the defendants for systematically plundering their country and for murdering and torturing tens of thousands of French people in the Gestapo jails and in concentration camps.…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays