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| PREFACE |
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In April 1949, judgment was rendered in the last of the series of 12
Nuernberg war crimes trials which had begun in October 1946 and were held
pursuant to Allied Control Council Law No. 10. Far from being of concern solely
to lawyers, these trials are of especial interest to soldiers, historians,
students of international affairs, and others. The defendants in these
proceedings, charged with war crimes and other offenses against international
penal law, were prominent figures in Hitler's Germany and included such
outstanding diplomats and politicians as the State Secretary of the Foreign
Office, von Weizsaecker, and cabinet ministers von Krosigk and Lammers ;
military leaders such as Field Marshals von Leeb, List, and von Kuechler ; SS
leaders such as Ohlendorf, Pohl, and Hildebrandt; industrialists such as Flick,
Alfried Krupp, and the directors of I. G. Farben ; and leading professional men
such as the famous physician, Gerhard Rose, and the jurist and Acting Minister
of Justice, Schlegelberger.
In view of the weight of the accusations
and the far-flung activities of the defendants, and the extraordinary amount of
official contemporaneous German documents introduced in evidence, the records
of these trials constitute a major source of historical material covering many
events of the fateful years 1933 (and even earlier) to 1945, in Germany and
elsewhere in Europe.
The Nuernberg trials under Law No. 10 were carried
out under the direct authority of the Allied Control Council, as manifested in
that law, which authorized the establishment of the Tribunals. The judicial
machinery for the trials, including the Military Tribunals and the Office,
Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, was pre-scribed by Military Government
Ordinance No. 7 and was part of the occupation administration for the American
zone, the Office of Military Government (OMGUS) . Law No. 10, Ordinance No. 7,
and other basic jurisdictional or administrative documents are printed in full
hereinafter.
The proceedings in these trials were conducted throughout
in the German and English languages, and were recorded in full by stenographic
notes, and by electrical sound recording of all oral proceedings. The 12 cases
required over 1,200 days of court proceedings and the transcript of these
proceedings exceeds 330,000 pages, exclusive of hundreds of document books,
briefs, etc. Publication of all of this material, accordingly, was quite
unfeasible. This series, however, contains the indictments, judgments, and
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