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PREFACE In April 1949, judgement 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 constitutes a major source of historical
material covering many events of 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 prescribed 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 documents books,
briefs, etc. Publication of all this material, accordingly, was quite
unfeasible. This series, however, contains the indictments, judgements,
and [Note: There is no Page
II in Volume III of the IMT]
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