During World War II, Nazi commanding officers, and soldiers under their command, carried out crimes against humanity in order to please their commanding officers or out of fear of what may become of the, if they did not comply with their orders. What could have been going through the minds of Nazi officers and soldiers while they were carrying out the orders they had received to almost wipe out an entire race of people?The Nazi criminals were brought to justice in what was called the Nuremberg Trials. The prosecutors that brought the Nazis to trials consisted of the four powers of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia (Britannica 1). The Nuremberg trials were basically a series of trials held in 1945 through 1946 in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal (Britannica 1). The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace, (2) crimes against humanity, (3) war crimes, and (4) "a common plan or conspiracy to commit" the criminal acts listed in the first three counts (Britannica 1). Were the Nazi soldiers to be held responsible for the actions they carried out on their prisoners, or did they have the option of denying their superior officers and doing what they thought to be right and just? Were the trials conducted at Nuremberg legal? "The indictment of the organizations raised a fundamental legal question: the legitimacy of creating a legal system of guilt by association" (Court TV 2). The Nazis argued that there should not be punishment for laws that did not exist before the crimes were committed (Glueck 73). The tribunal took into consideration the defense presented by the defendants and came to the decision that the crimes committed by the Nazis could be presented in court, even though the crimes presented violated laws that were made ex post facto (77). The crimes committed were so severe that the tribunal could...
