The Nuremberg Case Study

After World War II had ended, justice needed to be served to all those people who were in charge of the Nazi regime and ordered the mass genocide of the Jews. In November 1945, that time had come for more than 20 of Germany 's high-ranking Nazi leaders. Nuremberg, Germany was selected as the location for the first international war crimes trials for these men were to be held. This place is significant because Nuremberg was the site for all of the National Socialist Party 's annual rallies (Overy, 2011). It was a way of telling Nazi Germany that they started there and they shall be finished there. The overall goal of the trial was to show and reinforce to other countries what the standards of civilized behavior were and what Germany was extremely inappropriate and inexcusable. Nuremberg also happened to be one of the only German towns where there was a courthouse still standing. One of the main points that was used against these men, was that their crimes were …show more content…
It was decided that “the trying court would be called the International Military Tribunal, and would consist of one primary and one alternate judge from each country. It was also agreed upon that the adversarial system would be used, which was Britain and the US 's system of preference (Linder, 2000). The adversarial system is a legal system used in the common law countries where two advocates represent their parties ' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a judge or jury, who attempt to determine the truth of the case (Adversary System, 2015). The way the Nazi officers were be charged, didn 't allow the defendants to use the defense of tu quoque and blame everything on their superior officers (Linder, 2000). The only thing that was different from the traditional adversary system was that the final decisions and sentences were made by a panel of judges instead of just one judge and jury (History Channel,