World War II 'horror bunker' run by infamous Unit 731 discovered in China

Japanese Unit 731 staff carrying a body from one of the unit's facilities.
Japanese Unit 731 staff carrying a body from one of the unit's facilities. (Image credit: From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Archaeologists in China have uncovered a secret underground bunker used by Japanese scientists to conduct horrific experiments on human subjects during World War II.

The "horror bunker," discovered near the city of Anda in Heilongjiang province, northeast China, was used by the Japanese army's infamous Unit 731 during Japan's occupation of China from 1931 to 1945.

Built by the Japanese in 1941 and running until Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, the lab was Unit 731's largest research site, but its exact location was lost until now. Unit 731 began in 1931 as a Japanese-run public health unit, but it quickly expanded its research to include grotesque biological and chemical warfare experiments using Chinese, Korean, Russian and American captives as test subjects.

Related: Mass grave from Nazi atrocity discovered in Poland's 'Death Valley'

Researchers at the Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, who unearthed the bunker, told the South China Morning Post that its discovery "highlights the ongoing legacy of Unit 731's atrocities and their impact on global efforts to prevent biological warfare."

Up to 12,000 men, women and children were killed by Unit 731's sadistic experiments — which included the testing of grenades, bacterial bombs, flamethrowers and chemical weapons. Individuals were also exposed to dehydration, killed inside spinning centrifuges, injected with animal blood, zapped with X-rays, vivisected without anesthesia and kept inside low-pressure chambers until their eyeballs burst. 

Plague-infected fleas bred in Unit 731's labs were also dropped by low-flying planes over Chinese cities, causing disease outbreaks that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The archaeologists have partially unearthed the U-shaped structure, which is roughly 108 feet (33 meters) long and 67 feet (21 m) wide, with interconnected rooms and tunnels branching from it. As the archaeologists have yet to step inside, the exact purpose of each room hasn't been established, but the researchers have categorized what they believe to be laboratories, observation and dissection rooms, holding cells, barracks, garages, bath houses, dining areas and wells.

Following Japan's surrender in September 1945, the U.S. covered up evidence of the gruesome experiments and secretly granted many of Unit 731's leaders immunity from prosecution for war crimes in exchange for their research. Much of this information was later taken to Fort Detrick in Maryland — the center of the U.S. Cold War biological weapons program between 1943 and 1969.

The archaeologists say they will continue to excavate the site, gathering more details about the individual rooms in the structure and how they combined to form the horrifying bunker.

Ben Turner
Staff Writer

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

  • Giovani
    admin said:
    A bunker discovered near the city of Anda in northeast China is believed to be the largest test site of Imperial Japan's infamous Unit 731, which conducted horrifying human experiments during the 1940s.

    World War II 'horror bunker' run by infamous Unit 731 discovered in China : Read more
    The main dark players involved with these atrocities such as Japan or Nazi Germany, were not punished for their crimes, only stopped by the allies.
    America is up to it's neck in guilt for protecting gross criminals, by bringing them to our shores for intellectual assistance in advancing technologies following their atrocities unimagined. No innocence for this nation
    resides here.
    As for these countries guilty of such crimes against humanity, their punishment will come in the form of complete dissolution. It's been saved for generations when the ultimate demise overtakes these entities.
    No one escapes the coming culmination and not one country will remain intact. I believe it will all catch up with us, as is happening currently.
    Reply
  • Hartmann352
    Giovani -

    I agree with much of your statement, however when examining our nation's faults one must view the actions taken with an examination of the times when many of crimes you recount took place.

    Take Dr Wernher von Braun, for instance.

    Before World War II, Wernher von Braun had been working at an operations base in Peenemünde, the German Army Rocket Center in the Baltic, researching the launch specs and ballistics of warheads. Those who worked with him in Peenemünde claim he had always dreamed of one day using his research to send a manned aircraft into space and eventually to the moon.

    Von Braun reportedly applied for membership in the Nazi Party in 1939. According to his statement, he claimed that had he refused to join the party, he would no longer have been able to continue working at Peenemünde and may have been arrested and many were.

    Later in his statement, he included that he never liked Hitler, referring to him as a “pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin mustache.” Yet as World War II raged, von Braun continued his work without pause, and even used concentration camp prisoners from Dora to build his rockets at the Mittelwerk laboratory.

    Von Braun became one of the leading rocket scientists in Germany. For most of his early life, he worked for Germany’s rocket development program, helping to design the V-2 rocket, the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile, which was used to drop 1,000 pound warheads on London.

    Then, in 1945, Germany surrendered.

    Wernher Von Braun escaped to the Bavarian Alps as German forces surrendered to the Allies. It then became clear to the Allies just how advanced Germany’s military arsenal was — and just how valuable their weapons intelligence could be.

    At the same time, the Soviets began aggressively recruiting former Nazi and German scientists into their ranks, usually with threats to their family, occasionally at gunpoint, but always with a threat. Their hope was to further their space program and gain an advantage in the impending Cold War against the United States.

    But the United States began secretly recruiting Nazi scientists of their own. Just two months after the Germans surrendered, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by General George Marshall who was the creator of The Marshall Plan as Secretary of State, for the United States created Operation Paperclip, a secret Nazi recruitment program.

    The name stemmed from the secret method Army officers would use to indicate which German rocket scientists they wanted to recruit. When they came across a viable candidate, they would attach a certain colored paperclip to the folder before passing it back to their superiors.

    By September of 1946, Operation Paperclip had been officially approved by President Truman and saw 1,000 German rocket scientists moving to the U.S. under “temporary, limited military custody” to work on the nation’s young space program at the Redstone Arsenal.

    One of the most valuable and talented recruits for Operation Paperclip was Wernher von Braun himself.

    Von Braun's most of his important breakthroughs would occur during the years that he worked for the post-WWII Cold War United States.

    Upon arriving in the US, Wernher Von Braun began working for the Army, testing ballistic missiles based on the designs of his original brainchild, the V-2. His work with the missiles led him to research launching missiles for his real dream: space travel.

    Under the supervision of the Army, von Braun helped create test launch sites for the WAC Corporal, Redstone and Jupiter ballistic missiles, as well as the Jupiter C, Juno II and Saturn I launch vehicles.

    Having more freedom in the United States than he ever did under the Third Reich, von Braun published his ideas for manned-rocket powered space exploration in various periodicals including Life Magazine and Colliers. He even conceptualized a space station that would be locked in orbit around the Earth and continually manned by international space teams, an idea which is still orbiting the globe today.

    His ideas contributed to many works of science fiction at the time, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey. They also, of course, contributed heavily to the real-life undertakings of NASA's space program.

    Wernher von Braun became the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. While there, he created a program to develop the massive Saturn rockets that would be able to carry heavy loads out of Earth’s orbit and eventually to the Moon.

    The Saturn rocket tests were the precursor to the Apollo missions and the rockets that made them possible.

    Just a year after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins successfully used his technology to land on the lunar surface, Wernher von Braun was named NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning. For two years he carried out his visions and plans to bring men into space, before retiring in 1972.

    Even after he retired, he continued to speak at universities and symposiums around the country. He also conceptualized the idea for a Space Camp that would teach kids about science and technology.

    He promoted the National Space Institute, became the first president and chairman of the National Space Society, and was even awarded the National Medal of Science.

    Wernher von Braun died in 1977 from pancreatic cancer as a naturalized citizen of the United States.

    See: https://allthatsinteresting.com/wernher-von-braun
    Causes of the Space RaceBy the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

    Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition, after LBJ questioned whether we should go to be by the "light of a communist Moon."

    On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, for most of us. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–capable of delivering a nuclear warhead onto the continental US–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent and, correspondingly, the construction of similar missiles in America.

    In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth, traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin’s launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

    Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the Moon, "Not because it is easy but because it is hard," before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA’s lunar landing program–dubbed Project Apollo–were in place.

    On July 3, 1969, the secret Soviet Moon rocket known as the N-1 had exploded in an enormous explosion at the remote launch site at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, destroying one of two launch pads. In his private diary that night, Soviet astronaut Nikolai Kamanin wrote a lament: “We are desperate for a success. But all such hopes were dispelled by the powerful explosion of the rocket five seconds after launch…the failure has put us back another one or one-and-a-half years....”

    In the Soviet Union, nothing was spoken of the failure in public. In fact, the iron-fisted secrecy that had shrouded the early Soviet space program came in handy as those initial successes were now eclipsed by a series of disasters. As Yaroslav Golovanov, a sharp-tongued journalist for the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda noted, “Secrecy was necessary so that no one would overtake us. But later, when they did overtake us, we had to maintain secrecy so that no one knew that we had been overtaken.”

    The Soviet lead over the Americans in the early days of the Space Age had seemed almost unassailable and indicated their need for ICBMs. Beginning with Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, in 1957, they racked up an unprecedented series of firsts: the first satellite, the first dog in space, the first human in space, the first spacewalk, the first soft landing on the moon, and the first lunar rover. These accomplishments required smart people and good designs, as well as the ability to organize high-tech teams for singular tasks. If the Soviet Union could do all that, why did it not land a cosmonaut on the Moon and allow the US to gain unmatched supremacy?

    NASA’s firing of a Saturn I rocket in May 1964, with a boilerplate Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM), that alarmed Soviet managers the most. Before that, the U.S. schedule for reaching the moon could be discounted as tentative. But who could disregard an actual Apollo spacecraft in orbit? Two months later, Korolev arranged a meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at the Kremlin and convinced him to commit to a project that could beat Apollo to the surface of the moon. Khrushchev signed off on the plan on August 3, 1964. At that point, Korolev and his engineers were just beginning to solidify the architecture of the moon project, which included a souped-up N-1 capable of delivering 95 tons to Earth orbit, a lunar-orbit-rendezvous strategy (similar to NASA’s), and a one-person lunar lander. By then, Apollo was already well on its way, and the U.S. lead would prove to be formidable.

    The late start, however, was not the only—or even the most important—problem. The Soviet defense industry was beset with a chaotic management system completely at odds with what we might imagine for a socialist economy. While NASA was a centralized, top-down system run by the federal government, the Soviet space program acted more like a socialist version of a competitive market. But rules were followed only half the time, and the program was held hostage by bureaucratic gridlock, the whims of powerful individuals and with centralised planning for the entire economy.

    Managers like Korolev operated their own little fiefdoms. He had worked closely with the design firm of Valentin Glushko, which made high-performance, liquid-propellant rocket engines. Korolev and Glushko had known each other as young men in the early 1930s, and, although their friendship had been rocky (especially during the Stalinist purges, when they were forced to denounce each other), they managed to remain on cordial terms until the late 1950s. The battle over the N-1, though, completely destroyed any decorum, to the point where they refused to be in the same room together.

    The feud was more than just personal. Glushko, in 1960 and 1961, had begun to move all his resources to developing rocket engines that used storable propellants, which were more suitable for ICBMs that had to be on permanent standby. This made pragmatic sense, since the Soviet Union was gearing up for a massive buildup of its ICBM force in the 1960s. Korolev, however, argued that cryogenic (supercold) fuel such as liquid hydrogen would generate much more lifting capacity for a moon rocket. In the summer of 1962, a commission evaluated Glushko’s designs for the N-1 and those of Nikolai Kuznetsov, a newcomer to the rocket engine business who was willing to use cryogenics as Korolev wanted. The commission ruled in favor of Kuznetsov.

    In a market economy, the loser of a design competition is expected to move on with other newer projects.

    In the Soviet space program, that didn’t happen. Glushko had influential friends in the Communist Party and allies in the space program. He partnered with a fellow usurper, Vladimir Chelomei, who oversaw a giant conglomerate of firms that designed ICBMs and cruise missiles. In 1967, when Korolev’s N-1 program was moving full-steam ahead, Glushko and Chelomei managed to secure approval from the Politburo to mount a parallel project, known as the UR-700, to compete with Korolev’s moon rocket. It was as if a NASA contractor refused to accept that it lost out to another firm, and just kept going with its own version. Although the UR-700 was later canceled, such cases—and there were many in the Soviet space and missile programs—dissipated badly needed but limited resources.

    Organizational chaos also plagued the lunar plan itself. From the earliest days, Korolev and others considered a cosmonaut flight to orbit the moon as a separate mission from a lunar landing, even though logically they could have been integrated into a single program. The separation continued into the late 1960s, even as it made less and less sense. Eventually, Korolev and Chelomei agreed to cooperate on a program known as L-1, whose only goal was to send a crew of two cosmonauts around the moon and bring them back to Earth. That project, publicly known as Zond, failed to pay dividends after its launch rocket, Chelomei’s new Proton, failed three times to reach Earth orbit in 1967 and 1968. Zond-4 made it to deep space, but came down way off course in the Atlantic on its return, too close to the US for comfort and had to be destroyed by remote control.

    All along, the Soviet moon program had suffered from another problem—lack of rubles. Massive investments required to develop new ICBMs and nuclear weapons so that the Soviet military could achieve strategic parity with the United States siphoned massive funds away from the space program. The organizations that designed strategic weapons, as well as the supporting electronics and ground infrastructure, were the exact same ones manufacturing hardware for the space program. While Korolev’s design bureau, OKB-1, was building the N-1 moon rocket, it was also producing the first-generation solid propellant ICBM. Resources were incredibly tight, and when the Strategic Rocket Forces, which essentially ran the Soviet space program, made decisions to allocate funding, it naturally favored strategic and military programs over what it considered useless space spectaculars. The latter was used by Leonid Brezhnev to replace Nikita Khrushchev.

    A lack of money and time contributed directly to one of the most fateful decisions of the N-1 program, to forgo ground testing of the first stage before flight. This meant that each launch of the N-1—there were four attempts, all failures, from February 1969 to November 1972—was conducted without ever having tested the first stage on a fixed test stand first, which even then some in the USSR considered absolute insanity, considering the novelty of its design.

    Kuznetsov, the engine’s designer, had decided to adopt a very advanced and highly risky (at the time) process known as staged combustion. This meant that the thrust had to be relatively low—about 150 tons at sea level—compared to the F-1 engines in the Saturn V, which equated to about 690 tons. To generate the needed thrust, Korolev and Kuznetsov decided to put 30 engines at the base of the N-1’s first stage. But that decision created more problems: How do you synchronize the thrust and vectors of so many engines firing at once? What if one or two fail? These potential anomalies required serious attention, and could have been solved by constructing an expensive new ground test facility combined with computerised controls. But both would have cost money and time to build. The rancor over this issue became so intense that Korolev and one of his long-time deputies, Leonid Voskresensky, got into a screaming match, with Korolev threatening to beat him with a stick. Although Korolev later apologized, Voskresensky resigned in 1964 rather than participate in what he correctly saw was a doomed project.

    ll four N-1 launches failed before the first stage even reached burnout. The second attempt, on July 3, 1969—with NASA’s Apollo 11 already sitting on the launch pad—was intended to send a Zond spacecraft into lunar orbit. No cosmonauts were on board, but it was meant to signal that the Soviets were close. Moments after the N-1 lifted off the pad, just after midnight at Baikonur, it fell back and exploded. The explosion was so intense, according to Valery Menshikov, a young rocket forces officer on duty, that “pieces of the rocket were thrown ten kilometers away, and large windows were shattered in structures 40 kilometers away. A 400-kilogram spherical tank landed on the roof of the installation and testing wing, seven kilometers from the launch pad.” In one spectacular moment, the moon race came to an end.

    See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/apollo-why-the-soviets-lost-180972229/
    Through the effort, work, and influence of Wernher von Braun, it was possible for the United States to land on the Moon in 1969. Overall, had it not been for the initiative and accomplishments of von Braun, the United States would have either made it the Moon far later than 1969 or would have never landed on the Moon at all. To clearly understand how the United States landed a man on the Moon in 1969, it is essential to acknowledge the significant accomplishments and work of Wernher von Braun during the 1950s and 1960s. These accomplishments can be categorized into two structures: his decisive advocacy and leadership and his critical administrative and scientific endeavors at NASA. Von Braun was fundamental in the design of the systems and the construction of the rockets which enabled the United States to land on the Moon in 1969.

    See: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1829&context=student_scholarship
    But there is more to von Braun's story than the SS, Dora, Mittelbau, his horrific use of concentration camp labor.

    Unabashed by the shocking acts of anti-civil rights brutality and murder carried out with impunity during his first year in office, George Wallace made a brief presidential run in 1964. A national political force and a viable potential presidential candidate for 1968, Wallace was now poised to take credit for Huntsville's part in getting a man on the moon. NASA turned to the flight center's director, Wernher von Braun, to shield it from being drawn into the governor's segregationist agenda.

    Von Braun corralled the governor, the legislators and the press into a holding area and treated them to a rare and explosive show—a static firing of the Saturn V rocket’s first stage. This was just like an Apollo rocket launch with all the suspense, the countdown and all the noise, just without the launch itself. Afterwards, while everyone stayed in the visitors’ area “for safety reasons,” von Braun and Webb walked out and lectured their captive audience about race. Alabama needed to offer all the same opportunities as other states, von Braun remarked. “The era belongs to those who can shed the shackles of the past,” he said, which the New York Times took as a reference to slavery. Wallace never came back to Huntsville for the remainder of NASA’s mission to the Moon.

    See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-von-braun-record-on-civil-rights/
    While Dr Wernher von Braun, and many other Nazi scientists working for the US missile programs, wore a coat of many colors, part being SS black, his direction of NASA's moon attempt and his corralling and subjugation of Gov. George Wallace seem to indicate that somewhere in the heart of this one time Nazi Party member lay a growing appreciation for offering the fruits of American democracy to all citizens.
    Hartmann352
    Reply
  • Ms.AbortRetryFail
    Hartmann,

    While not the intended recipient of your comment, I created an account just to say that I appreciated what you shared. How you collected all the information together and put it down in an easily digestible format (with your sources) must have taken a bit of time, and I'm grateful for it. Thank you, for the enlightening read!
    Reply
  • Hartmann352
    Ms.AbortRetryFail said:
    Hartmann,

    While not the intended recipient of your comment, I created an account just to say that I appreciated what you shared. How you collected all the information together and put it down in an easily digestible format (with your sources) must have taken a bit of time, and I'm grateful for it. Thank you, for the enlightening read!
    Ms.AbortRetryFail -

    I appreciate your response to my input very much. You have made my day. I enjoy assembling a narrative buttressed with the corresponding data.

    Sincerely,
    Hartmann352
    Reply
  • Hartmann352
    Giovani said:
    The main dark players involved with these atrocities such as Japan or Nazi Germany, were not punished for their crimes, only stopped by the allies.
    America is up to it's neck in guilt for protecting gross criminals, by bringing them to our shores for intellectual assistance in advancing technologies following their atrocities unimagined. No innocence for this nation
    resides here.
    As for these countries guilty of such crimes against humanity, their punishment will come in the form of complete dissolution. It's been saved for generations when the ultimate demise overtakes these entities.
    No one escapes the coming culmination and not one country will remain intact. I believe it will all catch up with us, as is happening currently.
    Giovani -

    While I’m not sure what you mean by “it will all catch up to us."

    However, when it comes to Nazi Germany, many individuals involved in crimes against humanity and war crimes were punished. In addition, the SS, (the Nazi Schutzstaffeln) was determined to be a criminal organization. The latter included the Allgemeine SS (the General SS), the Waffen SS (the armed SS whose membership amounted to almost one million by the date of the Nazi surrender) and the SS-Totenkopfverbande (the Death’s Head guards at the concentration and death camps).

    The Nürnberg trials, series of trials held in Nürnberg, Germany, in 1945–46, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war), and (4) “a common plan or conspiracy to commit” the criminal acts listed in the first three counts.


    https://cdn.britannica.com/49/180249-138-22915E2F/Overview-Nurnberg-trials.jpg?w=800&h=450&c=crop
    Learn about the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) trials, held by the International Military Tribunal after World War II to try former leaders of Nazi Germany for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.(more)

    See all videos for this article
    The authority of the International Military Tribunal to conduct these trials stemmed from the London Agreement of August 8, 1945. On that date, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the provisional government of France signed an agreement that included a charter for an international military tribunal to conduct trials of major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic location. Later 19 other nations accepted the provisions of this agreement. The tribunal was given the authority to find any individual guilty of the commission of war crimes (counts 1–3 listed above) and to declare any group or organization to be criminal in character. If an organization was found to be criminal, the prosecution could bring individuals to trial for having been members, and the criminal nature of the group or organization could no longer be questioned. A defendant was entitled to receive a copy of the indictment, to offer any relevant explanation to the charges brought against him, and to be represented by counsel and confront and cross-examine the witnesses.

    https://cdn.britannica.com/57/67857-050-3A2EEE25/Adolf-Eichmann-court-counts-Jerusalem-war-crimes-1961.jpg
    The tribunal consisted of a member plus an alternate selected by each of the four signatory countries. The first session, under the presidency of Gen. I.T. Nikitchenko, the Soviet member, took place on October 18, 1945, in Berlin. At this time, 24 former Nazi leaders were charged with the perpetration of war crimes, and various groups (such as the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police) were charged with being criminal in character. Beginning on November 20, 1945, all sessions of the tribunal were held in Nürnberg under the presidency of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (later Baron Trevethin and Oaksey), the British member.


    https://cdn.britannica.com/72/135172-050-1B3FCE64/Ernst-Kaltenbrunner-trials-Nurnberg-1946.jpg?w=300Ernst Kaltenbrunner at the Nürnberg trials, 1946.
    After 216 court sessions, on October 1, 1946, the verdict on 22 of the original 24 defendants was handed down. (Robert Ley committed suicide while in prison, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach’s mental and physical condition prevented his being tried.) Three of the defendants were acquitted: Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche. Four were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years: Karl Dönitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. Three were sentenced to life imprisonment: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Erich Raeder. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Ten of them—Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart—were hanged on October 16, 1946. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Göring committed suicide before he could be executed.

    See: https://www.britannica.com/event/Nurnberg-trials



    https://cdn.britannica.com/90/211290-050-DE36037B/Field-Marshal-Wilhelm-List-sentencing-Nurnberg-trials-Germany-1946.jpg?w=300Field Marshal Wilhelm List, flanked by U.S. Army guards, standing to receive his sentence during the Nürnberg trials, 1946.(more)

    In rendering these decisions, the tribunal rejected the major defenses offered by the defendants. First, it rejected the contentionthat only a state, and not individuals, could be found guilty of war crimes; the tribunal held that crimes of international law are committed by men and that only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced. Second, it rejected the argument that the trial and adjudication were ex post facto. The tribunal responded that such acts had been regarded as criminal prior to World War II.

    The doctors’ trial:

    The Nuremberg Doctors Trial considered the fate of twenty German physicians and three non-physicians who either participated in the Nazi program to euthanize persons deemed "unworthy of life" (the mentally ill, mentally retarded, or physically disabled) or who conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners without their consent. The Doctors Trial lasted 140 days. Eighty-five witnesses testified and almost 1,500 documents were introduced. Sixteen of the defendants charged were found guilty. Seven were executed.

    Defendant Doctors
    Indictments
    Count I--The Common Design or ConspiracyCount II--War CrimesCount III--Crimes Against HumanityCount IV--Membership in a Criminal Organization
    Transcript ExcerptsOpening Statement for the ProsecutionTestimony of Prosecution WitnessesCase Transcript (Harvard Law Schoool)Full Transcript (Military Trial Records)
    Verdicts and Sentences
    Images from the Doctors Trial
    Link to U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibition

    During the Doctors Trial, American medical expert Dr. Leo Alexander points to scars on the leg of Jadwiga Dzido. The scars were the result of medical experiments on Dzido when she was imprisoned at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp.
    (Dec. 22, 1946 photo. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives)IndictmentsCOUNT ONE--THE COMMON DESIGN OR CONSPIRACY
    1. Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein, acting pursuant to a common design, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly did conspire and agree together and with each other and with divers other persons, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined in Control Council Law No. 10, Article II.
    2. Throughout the period covered by this indictment all of the defendants herein, acting in concert with each other and with others, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
    3. All of the defendants herein, acting in concert with others for whose acts the defendants are responsible, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly participated as leaders, organizers, investigators, and accomplices in the formulation and execution of the said common design, conspiracy, plans, and enterprises to commit, and which involved the commission of, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
    4. It was a part of the said common design, conspiracy, plans, and enterprises to perform medical experiments upon concentration camp inmates and other living human subjects, without their consent, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed the murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts, more fully described in counts two and three of this indictment.
    5. The said common design, conspiracy, plans, and enterprises embraced the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as set forth in counts two and three of this indictment, in that the defendants unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly encouraged, aided, abetted, and participated in the subjection of thousands of persons, including civilians, and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich, to murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts.

    COUNT TWO--WAR CRIMES
    6. Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving medical experiments without the subjects' consent, upon civilians and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich and who were in the custody of the German Reich in exercise of belligerent control, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Such experiments included, but were not limited to, the following:

    A) High-Altitude Experiments
    B) Freezing Experiments
    C) Malaria Experiments
    D) Lost (Mustard) Gas Experiments
    E) Sulfanilamide Experiments
    F) Bone, Muscle, and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation Experiments
    G) Sea-Water Experiments
    H) Epidemic Jaundice Experiments
    I) Sterilization Experiments
    J) Spotted Fever (Fleckfieber) Experiments
    K) Experiments with Poison
    L) Incendiary Bomb Experiments

    7. Between June 1943 and September 1944 the defendants Rudolf Brandt and Sievers unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the murder of civilians and members of the armed forces of nations then at war with the German Reich and who were in the custody of the German Reich in exercise of belligerent control. One hundred twelve Jews were selected for the purpose of completing a skeleton collection for the Reich University of Strasbourg. Their photographs and anthropological measurements were taken. Then they were killed. Thereafter, comparison tests, anatomical research, studies regarding race, pathological features of the body, form and size of the brain, and other tests, were made. The bodies were sent to Strasbourg and defleshed.

    8. Between May 1942 and January 1944 (Indictment originally read "January 1943" but was amended by a motion filed with the Secretary General. See Arraignment, page 18) the defendants Blome and Rudolf Brandt unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the murder and mistreatment of tens of thousands of Polish nationals who were civilians and members of the armed forces of a nation then at war with the German Reich and who were in the custody of the German Reich in exercise of belligerent control. These people were alleged to be infected with incurable tuberculosis. On the ground of insuring the health and welfare of Germans in Poland, many tubercular Poles were ruthlessly exterminated while others were isolated in death camps with inadequate medical facilities.

    9. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so-called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including nationals of German-occupied countries. This program involved the systematic and secret execution of the aged, insane, incurably ill, of deformed children, and other persons, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums. Such persons were regarded as "useless eaters" and a burden to the German war machine. The relatives of these victims were informed that they died from natural causes, such as heart failure. German doctors involved in the "euthanasia" program were also sent to Eastern occupied countries to assist in the mass extermination of Jews.

    10. The said war crimes constitute violations of international conventions, particularly of Articles 4, 5, 6, 7, and 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, and Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the Prisoner-of-War Convention (Geneva, 1929), the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and Article II of Control Council Law No. 10.

    COUNT THREE--CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
    11. Between September 1939 and April 1945 all of the defendants herein unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, upon German civilians and nationals of other countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. The particulars concerning such experiments are set forth in paragraph 6 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.

    12. Between June 1943 and September 1944 the defendants Rudolf Brandt and Sievers unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the murder of German civilians and nationals of other countries. The particulars concerning such murders are set forth in paragraph 7 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.

    13. Between May 1942 and January 1944 the defendants Blome and Rudolf Brandt unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the murder and mistreatment of tens of thousands of Polish nationals. The particulars concerning such murder and inhuman treatment are set forth in paragraph 8 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.

    14. Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants Karl Brandt, Blome, Brack, and Hoven unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly committed crimes against humanity, as defined by Article II of Control Council Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich, in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including German civilians, as well as civilians of other nations. The particulars concerning such murders are set forth in paragraph 9 of count two of this indictment and are incorporated herein by reference.

    15. The said crimes against humanity constitute violations of international conventions, including Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and of Article II of Control Council Law No. 10.

    COUNT FOUR--MEMBERSHIP IN CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION
    16. The defendants Karl Brandt, Genzken, Gebhardt, Rudolf Brandt, Mrugowsky, Poppendick, Sievers, Brack, Hoven, and Fischer are guilty of membership in an organization declared to be criminal by the International Military Tribunal in Case No. 1, in that each of the said defendants was a member of the SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the "SS") after 1 September 1939. Such membership is in violation of paragraph I (d), Article II of Control Council Law No. 10.

    Verdicts and SentencesWilhelm BeiglboeckBeiglboeck was a Consulting Physician to the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of fifteen years
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.

    Viktor BrackBrack was a Senior Colonel in the SS and the Chief Administrative Officer in the Chancellery of the Fuehrer. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by Hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.

    Karl BrandtHe was the personal physician to Hitler. He was active in the SS and the Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. Brandt was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.

    Rudolf BrandtBrandt was a Personal Administrative Officer to Himmler. He was found guilty on counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria

    Herman Brecker-FreysengBrecker-Freyseng was the Captian of Medical Services of the Air Force and Chief of the Department for Aviation Medicine of the Chief of Medical Services of the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of twenty years
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.

    Fritz FischerFischer was a Major in the Waffen SS and an Assistant Physician to Gebhardt at the hospital at Hohenlychen. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.

    Karl GebhardtGebhardt was the personal physician to Himmler and the president of the German Red Cross. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.

    Karl GenzkenGenzken was Chief of the Medical Department, a part of the Waffen SS. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years in prison.

    Siegfried HandloserMedical Inspector of the Army and Chief of Medical Services of the Armed Forces. Handloser was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years in prison.

    Waldemar HovenHoven was Chief Doctor of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.

    Joachim MrugowskyMrugowsky was the Chief Hygienist of the Reich Physicians SS and Police and of the Institute of the Waffen SS. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.

    Herta OberheuserOberheuser was a physician at Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp and an Assistant Physician to Gebhardt at the hospital at Hohenlychen. Oberheuser was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of twenty years
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to ten years in prison.

    Helmut PoppendickPoppendick was a Senior Colonel in the SS. He was found guilty on Count IV.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for a term of ten years
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to time served.

    Gerhard RoseRose was the Brigadier General of Medical Services of the Air Force. He was also Vice president of the Chief of the Department for Tropical Medicine. He was Hygienic Adviser for Tropical Medicine to the Chief of Medical Services of the Luftwaffe. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.

    Oskar SchroederSchroeder was the Lieutenant General of Medical Services. He was found guilty on Counts II and III.
    Sentence: Imprisonment for the full term and period of natural life
    This sentence was reduced on appeal to fifteen years in prison.

    Wolfram SieversSievers was a colonel in the SS and Director of the Institute for Military Scientific Research. He was also the Deputy Chairman of the Managing Board of Directors of the Reich Research Council. He was found guilty on Counts II, III, and IV.
    Sentence: Death by hanging
    Hanged June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria

    The crimes of the Einsatzgruppen are the best documented of the Holocaust and their trial was prosecuted by US attorney Ben Ferencz.

    In addition to survivor, bystander, and perpetrator eyewitness testimony, there is physical evidence in the form of graves, bodies and the regular Einsatzgruppen reports of their murders sent to the RSHA HQ in Berlin by Enigma encoded radio signals from the field.. There are also photographs and we have a nearly complete series of Einsatzgruppen reports (of 195 reports only one is missing). At the time of the Einsatzgruppen trials, the number of Jews that the Einsatzgruppen murdered was placed at a minimum of 1,000,000. Modern research has shown that it is closer to 1,150,000.

    On September 10, 1947, the US Military Government for Germany created Military Tribunal II-A (later renamed Tribunal II). This tribunal was tasked with trying Case #9 of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings: United States v. Otto Ohlendorf, et al.. Case #9 is usually referred to as the Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary Case.

    The 24 defendants in Case #9 were all leading members of Einsatzgruppen that operated on the Eastern Front during World War II. The Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary were special task forces of the SS and Police. The Einsatzgruppen led by the defendants organized and conducted mass shootings of Jews, Communists, and others in territory that Germany seized from the Soviet Union.

    The Indictment and ChargesOn July 29, 1947, the 24 defendants in the Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary Case were indicted for their role in murdering between 723,661 and one million people “as part of a systematic program of genocide.” The indictment listed three charges:

    crimes against humanity
    war crimes
    membership in organizations declared criminal by the International Military TribunalTwenty-four Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary members were charged. Each one was charged with committing all three counts between June 1941 and July 1943.



    Einsatzgruppen trial: US prosecution opens case against Einsatzgruppen membersAfter the trial of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the United States held a series of other war crimes trials at Nuremberg—the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. The ninth trial before the American military tribunal in Nuremberg focused on members of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), who had been assigned to kill Jews and other people behind the eastern front. This footage shows US prosecutor Ben Ferencz outlining the purpose of the trial during the opening of the case.
    National Archives - Film
    View Archival Details

    The DefendantsFour of the defendants who were charged had commanded Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary units sent into the Soviet Union and Soviet-controlled territory as part of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. For example, Otto Ohlendorf commanded Einsatzgruppe D while it committed mass murder in territories that are part of Romania and Moldova, as well as in Ukraine and around the Crimean Sea. The other Einsatzgruppen commanders charged in Case #9 were:

    Heinz Jost: Jost was in charge of Einsatzgruppe A. This unit perpetrated mass murder in the northernmost sector of the Eastern Front, primarily the Baltic countries and the area around Leningrad (today: St. Petersburg).
    Erich Naumann: Naumann commanded Einsatzgruppe B. This unit perpetrated mass murder primarily in Belarus and in Russian territory west of Moscow.
    Otto Rasch: Rasch led Einsatzgruppe C. This unit perpetrated mass murder in Ukraine, including the shooting of more than 33,000 Jews of Kiev at Babyn Yar.The remaining defendants were commanders or deputy commanders of subordinate units. The men charged were: Paul Blobel, Ernst Biberstein, Walter Blume, Werner Braune, Lothar Fendler, Matthias Graf, Walter Haensch, Emil Hausmann, Waldemar Klingelhoefer, Gustav Noske, Adolf Ott, Waldemar von Radetzky, Felix Rühl, Martin Sandberger, Heinz Schubert, Erwin Schultz, Willy Seibert, Franz Six, Eugen Steimle, and Eduard Strauch.

    In the end, only 22 of those charged were tried. Emil Hausmann committed suicide. Otto Rasch was deemed too ill to stand trial.

    The TrialThe defendants were arraigned between September 15 and 22, 1947. The trial ran from September 29, 1947, to February 12, 1948.

    The chief prosecutor was 27-year-old Ben Ferencz. Ferencz called no witnesses and based the case on wartime SS reports that detailed mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen. View This Term in the Glossary In his opening statement, Ferencz underscored that:

    It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children. This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance.…Each of the defendants in the dock held a position of responsibility or command in an extermination unit. Each assumed the right to decide the fate of men, and death was the intended result of his power and contempt. Their own reports will show that the slaughter committed by these defendants was dictated, not by military necessity, but by that supreme perversion of thought, the Nazi theory of the master race.1
    Ferencz presented the case in just two court sessions. The remainder of the trial, which lasted more than three months, was devoted to the defendants’ arguments. Each defendant pleaded “not guilty.” Even those who admitted playing a role in the mass killings denied their culpability. They argued that they had acted legally and in obedience to superior orders.

    The Judgment and the SentencesThe Tribunal rendered its judgment on April 8–9, 1948. It found 20 defendants guilty on all three counts. Two of the defendants were found guilty on only count three. The tribunal noted in its judgment that

    the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated.2
    The sentences were announced on April 10, 1948:
    14 defendants were sentenced to death;
    2 were sentenced to life terms;
    and 5 received sentences that ranged from 10 to 20 years.Matthias Graf was released with time served.

    Ultimately, only four of the 14 death sentences were carried out. Ohlendorf, Naumann, Blobel, and Braune were hanged on June 7, 1951.

    Eduard Strauch, the head of Einsatzkommando 2 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe A), who received a death sentence, was extradited to Belgium. There, he was sentenced to death and died in Belgian custody.

    The other defendants had their sentences commuted or were paroled. All of the remaining convicted defendants in this case were released from prison in 1958.

    US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin Ferencz

    See: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/subsequent-nuremberg-proceedings-case-9-the-einsatzgruppen-case
    The Adolf Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem:

    Adolf Eichmann was one of the most pivotal actors in the implementation of the “Final Solution.” Charged with managing and facilitating the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and killing centers in the German-occupied East, he was among the major organizers of the Holocaust. His 1961 trial in Jerusalem, Israel, sparked international interest and heightened public awareness of the crimes of the Holocaust.

    In the autumn of 1941, Eichmann, then an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and the chief of RSHA section IV B 4, took part in discussions in which the annihilation of the European Jews was planned. Since Eichmann was to be in charge of transporting Jews from all over Europe to the killing centers, RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich asked Eichmann to prepare a presentation for the notorious Wannsee Conference.

    At the conference, RSHA officials advised the appropriate government and Nazi Party agencies on the implementation of the "Final Solution." Eichmann also relayed these plans to his network of officials who would help him to carry out deportation efforts in German-occupied areas and in Germany's Axis partners.

    Prominent among these "Eichmann-Männer" ("Eichmann's men") were his deputy Rolf Günther, Alois Brunner, Theodor Dannecker, and Dieter Wisliceny. In 1942, Eichmann and his henchmen organized the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. In 1943 and 1944 came the turn of the Jews of Greece, northern Italy, and Hungary. Only in Hungary did Eichmann involve himself directly on the ground in the deportation process. From late April 1944, six weeks after Germany occupied Hungary, until early July, Eichmann and his aides deported some 440,000 Hungarian Jews.

    At war's end, Eichmann found himself in US custody, but escaped in 1946. In the end, he succeeded, with the help of Catholic Church officials, in fleeing to Argentina. There he lived under a number of aliases, most famously Ricardo Klement. In 1960, agents of the Israeli Security Service (Mossad) abducted Eichmann and brought him to Israel to stand trial. The proceedings before a special district court in Jerusalem drew international attention, and historians roundly credit coverage of the trial (famously in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem) with re-awakening public interest in the Holocaust.

    In December 1961, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people. He was hanged at midnight between May 31 and June 1, 1962. Jewish authorities cremated his remains and scattered his ashes in the sea beyond Israeli boundary waters.

    See: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/adolf-eichmann
    The Auschwitz trials:

    The Polish authorities tried forty-one senior SS personnel (thirty-six men, five women) who had served at Auschwitz. The top echelon of the camp hierarchy were put on trial, including: Rudolf Hoess, Arthur Liebehenschel, camp commanders; Maria Mandel, who controlled the women’s camp; Johann Kremer, a high-ranking physician in the camp, and others. The most senior of the defendants, headed by Rudolf Hoess, testified on behalf of the prosecution as part of the Nuremberg Trials.

    Most of the defendants had been handed over to the Polish authorities by the Allied forces. This trial, which lasted only one month, included survivor testimony, and the judges perused a wide variety of German documents. Twenty-four of the defendants were sentenced to death, including Rudolf Hoess, Arthur Liebehenschel and Maria Mandel; of the others, three received life imprisonment, seven received fifteen years in prison, and one was acquitted.

    On April 16, 1947, Rudolf Hoess was executed in front of Gas Chamber #1 in Auschwitz I. The rest of the defendants who had received the verdict of capital punishment were executed in Cracow Prison on January 18, 1948. Maria Mandel was the first to be executed.
    Second Auschwitz Trial: December 20, 1963 - August 10, 1965In this series of trials, twenty-two Auschwitz personnel – second and third tier officers and capos – were tried. Unlike the first trial in Cracow, based on international law and the legal definition of crimes against humanity, these trials were conducted according to German criminal law.

    https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/auschwitz_trials2b.jpgCracow, Poland, A witness giving testimony at the Auschwitz Trial

    https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/auschwitz_trials4b.jpgCracow, Poland, Postwar, The trial of Reichsminister Rudolf Franz Hoess, an SS officer and former commander of Auschwitz camp

    Over the course of the trials, some 360 witnesses were summoned, including approximately 210 camp survivors. Fritz Bauer – then Germany’s Attorney General and himself a former prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in 1933 – headed the prosecution. News of the criminals’ actions and whereabouts had been known in West Germany from 1958, but they had not been brought to justice due to legal issues. Moreover, despite de-Nazification measures enforced by the Allies in Germany, many former SS and Nazi Party members maintained high-ranking governmental positions. Eighteen of the accused were found guilty. Six of the eighteen were sentenced to life in prison and the others received sentences ranging from 5-14 years. Many of the accused never served their full sentence.

    The trial proceedings were open to the public, and helped bring further information about the Holocaust to the citizens of West Germany and around the world.

    The difference in severity of the sentences handed down cannot be explained by the higher ranks tried in the first trial and the lower ranks of SS personnel in the second trial as they were all murderers – irrespective of rank. The disparity was a result of the legal systems. The first Auschwitz trial was held according to the laws against war criminals and crimes against humanity, the legal code that was established in the Nuremberg Trials. The second trial was held within the framework of German criminal law, making it more difficult to convict some of the accused.

    As mentioned earlier, de-Nazification in Germany was not implemented in all high government levels including the Justice Department. This situation led to the "dissappearance" of many of the criminals. Second, Fritz Bauer, the prosecutor in the trial, who was also the chief prosecutor for Federal Germany and responsible for finding, interrogating, and bringing these criminals to trial, invested great efforts in uncovering documents and testimonies relating to the system and structure of the camps, and far less in bringing specific persons to trial. As a result of these factors, most of the criminals remained outside of the second Auschwitz courtroom, which was supposed to have been the main trial for all Auschwitz personnel.

    See: https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/auschwitz-trials.html
    While this is not purported to be a complete list of those tried and punished for their activities during the Third Reich, it will serve to give you an idea that many Nazi perpetrators were punished. The evidence presented at these trials gave us an idea of the scope and personnel involved in these horrific years from 1933-1945.
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