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The Holocaust and War Crime Trials

The holocaust provides an insight into the conceptual and the methodical state-sponsored mass murder and the persecution of several European Jews by the German Nazi regime. The holocaust was experienced between 1933 and 1945. Adolf Hitler was the anti-Semitic Nazi leader who considered the Jewish race as less inferior in comparison to the others in the community. As a result of their inferiority, Hitler considered the Jews as an alien threat to the German racial pureness and to the society. As a result, the European Jews were constantly persecuted with the Holocaust being considered as Hitler’s final solution. This event included the mass killings of about 6 million Jews whereby 5 million others remained targets of political, racial, behavioral and ideological reasons. Children were also highly affected as more than a million kids lost their lives during the Holocaust.

            The Nazi’s focused on ensuring that their murder of the Jews remained secretive to avoid scaring the people hence resulting in the failure of their program. This is reflected in the establishment of racial programs and Gas chambers, portrayed as shower chambers, whereby the Jews were lured to enter contributing in the death of the thousands of Jews. It is a fact that Germans had no knowledge about the continued mass murder at the time. It is also a fact that the world was also unaware of this ongoing as prominent newspaper outlets such as the New York times failed to provide information about the event.

            After the Second World War which resulted to the loss of lives of millions of Jews, the military, domestic and international courts carried out trials of the accused person who took part in the war crime. Despite this, it is evident that most of the perpetrators have never been punished for their criminal dealings while others are yet to be punished. However, it is evident that the postwar trials experienced during the time has been effective in setting fundamental legal precedents. Notably, domestic and international tribunals has allocated its efforts towards upholding the principle the people who engage in wartime atrocities should be charged legally for justice to be achieved.

            One of the most famous trials involving the war crimes after the World War II included a trial of 22 leading German officials before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg. The IMT reached its verdict whereby only some of the defendants were acquitted. Alfred Krupp is one of the people who were not charged for the war crime. Nuremberg was regarded as an effective place whereby justice could be served after the Holocaust. This is based on the fact that the court had a system of live translation which could be easily implemented in ensuring a fair trial. Robert Jackson argued that the defendants had to be provided with a fair trial because of the dignity of the society. The international law, as depicted by the Nuremberg principles, was considered as highly superior to the national law which made it illegal to kill people as a result mental states.

            Doctor’s Trial was the first trial in Nuremberg of surviving the leaders of the state of Nazi. The American power took an effective stand in ensuring that the criminals were brought to trial. The Einsatzgruppen trial involves a case whereby the men were charged for taking part in the directing, control, and actively engaging in a bloody harvest of the Jews during the Barbarossa operation. The judges who utilized their power to carry out uncalled for judicial murder for the Nazi regime were tried under the judges’ trial.