Custodian of the archives of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ¹⁾

May 2, 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson as chief prosecutor for the United States in the proposed trials of Nazi war criminals. President Truman gave Justice Jackson free rein to choose his own staff and to design and implement the trials.

During the summer of 1945, Jackson worked at achieving a consensus among the Allies and was finally successful when an agreement between the American, British, French, and Soviet governments was signed on August 8th. This agreement, called the London Charter, became the basis for the trial before the International Military Tribunal. Beginning on November 20, 1945, the first Nuremberg trial lasted for almost ten months.

Phenomenal thumbnail summaries by date with pictures and videos of old film.²⁾

“Whatever book or treatise on medical ethics we may examine, and whatever expert on forensic medicine we may question, will say that it is a fundamental and inescapable obligation of every physician under any known system of law not to perform a dangerous experiment without the subject's consent.” Telford Taylor Chief of Counsel for war crimes for all NMT trials ~ 9 December 1946“

US Holocaust Museum - On April 17, 1947, Dr. Alexander submitted a memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes which outlined six points defining legitimate research.

The verdict of August 19 reiterated almost all of these points in a section entitled “Permissible Medical Experiments” and revised the original six points into ten. Subsequently, the ten points became known as the “Nuremberg Code.”

• 1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
• 2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
• 3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
• 4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
• 5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
• 6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
• 7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
• 8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
• 9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
• 10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probably cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.³⁾

The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials.

The Project currently provides access to most of the following materials for five of the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals, NMT 1 (U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.), NMT 2 (U.S.A. v. Erhard Milch), NMT3 (U.S.A. v. Josef Altstoetter et al.), NMT 4 (U.S.A. v. Pohl et al.), and NMT7 (U.S.A. v. Wilhelm List et al.) ⁴⁾⁵⁾

Trial transcripts & letters eg

Drafts of a letter to the Reich Commissioner for the East concerning a “Solution to the Jewish Problem”

Letters to Klaus Schilling concerning mosquito eggs and other material provided for the malaria experiments

Letters between Wolfram Sievers and August Hirt concerning research research at the Ahnenerbe⁶⁾

Scientific articles for chemical warfare, biological warfare, poison gas on prisoners, Mustard Gas etc ^{7) 8)}

Includes Photographs of Sigmund Rascher's High Altitude Experiments at Dachau HLS Item no 27 | Evidence Code NO-610 | Exhibit Code Prosecution 41 ⁹⁾¹⁰⁾

Experiments to determine the cause of Infectious Jaundice Hepatitis Epidemics

“and the Robert Koch Institute. Experiments had thus far disclosed that contagious jaundice is transferred by a virus and human beings were desired for [ … ] on the 30th day of August 1946 concerning low pressure experiments performed on involuntary human beings in the Dachau. ^{11)12) 13)}

Trial documents include scientific publications ^{14) 15)}

This section outlines the organizations and leading individuals in four overlapping spheres of Nazi Germany: the Reich ministries (the government); the Nazi party; the SS; and the Wehrmacht (the armed forces). Adolf Hitler was the head of all four of these sectors, and they became increasingly interconnected over time.

Reich ministries were often matched by parallel party organizations, with the same person in charge of both. The SS began as a party organization but took over governmental functions (police and security) and created a military branch, the Waffen SS.

The Wehrmacht was relatively self-contained as a Reich organization, but it held jurisdiction over the Waffen SS in military operations. These different institutions frequently competed for jurisdictional power and resources; for example, in addition to the Reich economic ministries, the SS took over economic enterprises in order to control resources and generate income. Much of the information in this section is drawn from the encyclopedias compiled by L. L. Snyder and C. Zentner, and from Anatomy of the SS State, editied by E. Wiskemann.

Full list of defendants and positions held.¹⁶⁾

For more information on the medical officials, see the introduction to NMT Case 1, USA v. Karl Brandt et al. (the Medical Case). Access documents and transcripts related to specific people—defendants, authors, prosecutors, and more—involved in the trials. Start with these three high-ranking officers.

Karl Brandt - Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation ¹⁷⁾

Hermann Goering - General of the Air Force, chief of the war economy, Minister for Aviation (https://web.archive.org/web/20211201201131/http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/search/?q=hermann+goering&m=documents&m=transcripts&m=photographs))

Heinrich Himmler Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the Police ¹⁸⁾

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