War Crimes Trials - History

History

In 1865, Henry Wirz, a Confederate officer, was held accountable and hanged for appalling conditions at Andersonville Prison where many Union soldiers died during the American Civil War. After World War I, a small number of German personnel were tried by a German court in the Leipzig War Crimes Trials for crimes allegedly committed during that war. After World War II the phrase referred usually to the trials of German and Japanese leaders in courts established by the victorious Allied nations.

The most important of these trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, under the authority of two legal instruments. One, the so-called London Agreement, was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR in London on August 8, 1945; the other, Law No. 10, was promulgated by the Allied Control Council in Berlin on December 20, 1945.

The London Agreement provided for the establishment of the International Military Tribunal, composed of one judge and one alternate judge from each of the signatory nations, to try war criminals. Under the London Agreement, the crimes charged against defendants fell into three categories: crimes against peace, that is, crimes involving the planning, initiating and waging of aggressive war; war crimes, that is, violations of the laws and customs of war as embodied in the Hague Conventions and generally recognized by the military forces of civilized nations; and crimes against humanity, such as the extermination of racial, ethnic, and religious groups and other such atrocities against civilians.