Those who judged the Nazis at Nuremberg
Four judges, four prosecutors and their assistants, in all about 60 people had the huge task of compiling accusations and trying 21 Nazi criminals who sat at the Nuremberg court in the biggest trial in history.
- FOR THE UNITED STATES :
Judge : Francis Biddle, 59, former US Attorney General from 1941-44.
Alternate : John Parker.
Prosecutor: Robert Jackson, 43, former US Attorney General from 1940-41 and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court 1941-54.
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated," Jackson says in his opening statement on November 21, 1945. He is assisted by 32 people.
- FOR GREAT BRITAIN :
Judge: Geoffrey Lawrence, 64, president of the tribunal.
Alternate: Norman Birkett.
Prosecutor: Sir Hartley Shawcross, 43, occasionally replaced by Maxwell Fyfe. Tasked with presenting the prosecution's case for crimes against peace, he is best remembered for his assertion that "there comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience."
Shawcross has seven assistants.
- FOR FRANCE :
Judge: Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, 65, professor and international law specialist between the two world wars. He opposed the charge of crimes against peace, arguing that it was imprecise, and contested the condemnation of Alfred Jodl, a career military officer who had never sworn allegience to the Nazi party.
Alternate: Robert Falco.
Prosecutor: Francois de Menthon, 45, former member of the French resistance and justice minister in the provisional government of Charles de Gaulle from September 1944 to May 8, 1945. He is assisted by 10 people, including Edgar Faure, who goes on to hold several ministerial posts and serve as president of the French parliament. De Menthon is replaced during the trials by Auguste Champetier de Ribes.
- FOR THE SOVIET UNION :
Judge: Major General Iona Nikitchenko, 50. He participated in the wide-ranging Stalin trials from 1936-39 and was head of Soviet military tribunals in 1941.
Alternate: Lieutenant-colonel Alexander Fedorovich Volchov.
Prosecutor: Lieutenant General Roman Rudenko, 38. He was also the lead prosecutor in the 1945 show trial of Polish underground leaders dubbed the Trial of the 16. Rudenko tried in vain to blame the 1940 Katyn massacre of several thousand Poles by the Soviet police on the Nazi defendents at Nuremberg. He has 10 assistants.