Defendants rise in the courtroom in Nuremberg
| August, 1944 | Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau submits his plan for post-war treatment of Nazi leaders to President Roosevelt. He proposes shooting many leaders upon capture, using German POWs to rebuild Europe, and tearing down industry and remaking Germany as an agricultural society. |
| September 15, 1944 | Colonel Murray Bernays, of the War Department's Special Project Branch, proposes part of the framework that will be used in Nuremburg. Bernays proposes treating the Nazi regime as a criminal plot. William Chanler, a friend of Secretary of War Stinson, suggests another part of the framework: making the waging of a war of aggression a crime. |
| February, 1945 | Meeting at Yalta, FDR, Churchill and Stalin agree that a prosecution of Axis leaders should follow the expected conclusion of World War II. |
| April, 1945 | President Trumant asks Samuel Rosenman to approach Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson and inquire about his willingness to serve as chief U. S. prosecutor in a war crimes trial. |
| April 30, 1945 | Adolph Hitler commits suicide in his bunker below the Berlin sewer system. |
| May 2, 1945 | President Truman appoints Robert Jackson as chief U. S. counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. |
| May 6, 1945 | Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering surrenders to the Allies. Goering is at first toasted with champagne, but later is transferred to Bad Mondorf in Luxembourg. |
| May 7, 1945 | Colonel General Alfred Jodl signs the terms of unconditional surrender for Germany in Rheims World War II in Europe ends. |
| May 23, 1945 | British tanks enter Flensburg, Germany. In Flensburg, the British take several of the Nazis that will be tried in the Major War Figures Trial, including Donitz, Jodl, Keitel, Rosenberg, and Speer. Heinrich Himmler, the most powerful and terrifying of the Nazi leaders after Hitler, commits suicide. |
| June 26, 1945 | Robert Jackson departs Washington to meet with his Allied counterparts in London to discuss legal proceedings against Nazi officials. Numerous disagreements are discussed, including whether to use the adversarial system favored by the americans and British, or the inquisitive system favored by the French and Soviets. The Allies agree to prohibit the use of the defense of superior orders, although they agree to allow its consideration in mitigation of sentence. |
| July 7, 1945 | Robert Jackson visits Nuremberg--a city 91% destroyed by Allied bombs. He inspects the Palace of Justice and decides to recommend it as a site for the upcoming trials. The Soviets prefer that the trials take place in Berlin, within their zone of occupation. |
| July 21, 1945 | Jackson returns to Nuremberg with British and French representatives. They inspect possible housing accomodations. |
| August 8, 1945 | The London Agreement is signed by the Allies, enabling the prosecution of war criminals. |
| August 12, 1945 |
Major war criminals that had been housed in Luxembourg are flown to Nuremberg, where they are incarcerated in a prison adjacent to the Palace of Justice. |
| September 5, 1945 | Robert Jackson meets with President Truman. Truman proposes naming former attorney general Francis Biddle as the American judge at Nuremberg. Jackson, who does not think highly of Biddle, suggests alternatives, but Biddle gets the appointment. |
| October 14, 1945 | British representative Sir Geoffrey Lawrence is elected President of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). |
| October 19, 1945 | Indictments are issued against the major war figures. |
| October 25, 1945 | Robert Ley, former chief of the German Labor Front and one of the prisoners awaiting trial, commits suicide. |
| November 20, 1945 | The trial of the major war criminals by the International Military Tribunal begins at 10 a.m. in Nuremberg, Germany. |
| November 21, 1945 | The defendants enter their pleas of "Not Guilty." Goering tries to make a statement, but is prevented by the Court from doing so. Justice Robert Jackson delivers his opening statement for the prosecution. |
| November 29, 1945 | The prosecution introduces a film shot by Allied photographers in liberated areas. The graphic footage of Nazi horrors causes weeping in the courtroom. Some defendants appeared shocked by what they see; others seem bored. |
| December 13, 1945 | The prosecution introduces grissly evidence from Buechenwald concentration camp. Items include tattoed human skin (favored by the commandant's wife for use in tablelamps and other household furnishings) and the head of an executed Pole used as a paperweight by Commandant Karl Koch. |
| December 18, 1945 | The prosecution begin introducing evidence to prove the criminality of seven German organizations: the Nazi party leadership, the German High Command, the SS, the SA, the SD, the Reich Cabinet, and the Gestapo. |
| January 4, 1946 | Colonel Telford Taylor makes the prosecution case against the German High Command. His impressive performance will help secure his appointment as lead prosecutor in the subsequent Nuremberg trials. |
| January 8, 1946 | The prosecution begin its case against individual defendants. |
| January 28, 1946 |
During the French phase of the prosecution, French journalist Marie Claude Vaillant-Courturier provides heart-wrenching eyewitness testimony of atrocities at Auschwitz. |
| February 11-12, 1946 | Chief Soviet Prosecutor Roman Rudenko examines Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who provides testimony relating to German activities in the eastern Europe that incriminates Goering, Jodl, and Keitel. |
| February 16, 1946 | The decision is made to end the practice of allowing all the defendants to eat together on days the court is in session. From this date on, the defendants eat in groups of four--except for Goering who is left to eat alone in an attempt to reduce his influence over the rest of the defendants. |
| February 18, 1946 | Russian prosecutors offer into evidence a 45-minute film, including footage from captured German films, showing shocking evidence of atrocities. |
| March 5, 1946 | In Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill delivers his famous "Iron Curtain" speech, urging the West to unite against the Soviets. |
| March 6, 1946 | The Soviets finish their presentation and the prosecution rests. The news of Churchill's speech gives the defendants renewed hope. |
| March 8, 1946 | The defense begins its case. |
| March 13, 1946 | Goering begins his testimony. |
| March 18-22, 1946 | Goering is cross-examined. |
| March 29, 1946 | Robert Jackson appoints Telford Taylor to succeed him as chief prosecutor in the subsequent Nuremberg trials. |
| April 1-2, 1946 | Ribbentrop testifies. |
| April 11, 1946 | Kaletenbrunner testifies. |
| April 1-, 1946 | Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with defendant Rudolf Hess), commandant at Auschwitz concentration camp, provides graphic testimony of mass executions at his camp. |
| April 18, 1946 | Hans Frank testifies. |
| April 26, 1946 | Julius Streicher testifies |
| April 30, 1946 | Hjalmar Schact testifies. |
| May 3, 1946 | Walther Funk testifies. |
| May 8, 1946 | Grand Admiral Karl Donitz testifies. |
| May 20, 1946 | Grand Admiral Erich Raeder testifies. |
| May 23, 1946 | Baldur von Schirach testifies. |
| May 28, 1946 | Fritz Sauckel testifies. |
| June 3, 1946 | General Alfred Jodl testifies. |
| June 10, 1946 | Arthur Seyss-Inquart testifies. |
| June 14, 1946 | Franz von Papen testifies. |
| June 21, 1946 | Albert Speer testifies. |
| July 4, 1946 | Defense summations begin in the Major War Criminals Trial. |
| July 26, 1946 | The prosecution begins its summation in the Major War Criminals Trial. |
| July 30, 1946 | The defense of the seven indicted Nazi organizations begins. |
| August 20, 1946 |
Goering returns to the witness stand. |
| August 30, 1946 | Testimony is completed in the Major War Criminals Trial. |
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August 31, 1946 |
Defendants make their final statements. |
| September 2, 1946 | The justices meet to discuss verdicts in the Major War Criminals Trial. |
| October 1, 1946 | The verdicts against the major war criminals are handed down by the International Military Tribunal. Eleven of the twenty-one defendants are sentenced to death. |
| October 13, 1946 | The Allied Control Council--with the power to reduce or commute sentences--rejects all appeal in the Major War Criminals Trial. |
| October 15, 1946 | Goering commits suicide by swallowing a smuggled cyanide pill. |
| October 16, 1946 | Ten of the war criminals are hanged in Nuremberg. |
| October 25, 1946 | The United States Military Government for Germany establishes Military Tribunal I, which will try twenty-three Nazi physicians in the first of eleven subsequent trials in Nuremberg. |
| April 10, 1947 | Military Tribunal II-A sentences twenty convicted defendants in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. Fourteen of the defendants, members of German mobile killing units, are sentenced to death. |
| August 21, 1947 | Military Tribunal I sentences sixteen Nazi doctors found guilty in the Doctors Trial. Seven doctors are sentenced to death. |
| December 4, 1947 | Military Tribunal III sentences ten convicted officials in the Reich Ministry of Justice and judges of the People's and Special Courts, as the Justice Trial concludes. |
| April 13, 1949 | Military Tribunal IV-A sentences nineteen defendants found guilty in the Ministries Trial, a trial involving three Reich Ministers and eighteen other members of the Nazi party hierarchry accused of war crims and crimes against humanity. Although appeals continue in this case until January of 1951, sentencing in the Ministries Trial brings an end to the four-year-long series of Nuremberg trials. |
Chronology II: Keys Dates Concerning the Rise and Fall of the Nazi Regime