The Nuremberg Trials that took place during the years of 1945-1949 was and is one the most significant trials known to humankind. After the greatest genocide in history, those who were responsible for the various war crimes that took place were all put on trial and held accountable for the mass murder of the Jewish population.
In summary, this article states that there is no trial that provides a better basis for understanding the nature and causes of evil. This thesis closely relates to the area of study examined as it pertains to the Nuremberg Trial and the reason that one being ordered to kill does not give any more of an excuse than to do it out of personal choice. Although the Germans and Eichmann claim that they never aspired to be villains, their actions show otherwise. In closing, the significance of the thesis embodied within this article closely pertains to the area of study.
-Daniel Ibrahim
The Nuremberg Trials: The Defendants and the Verdict
In her book Eichmann on Trial Hannah Arendt uses the phrase “Banality of evil” to describe the officials as well as Adolf Eichmann. This book, as well as the Jewish Virtual Library, gives insight on the history and function of those accused; it describes the Nazis as soulless, lifeless cowards, disseminating only their banalities of evil. The author goes into extreme detail about the positions each official had within the Third Reich as well as their worth to Nazi Germany. This article focuses is attention on the defendants; their life before the trials, how they got to their former positions, and what function they carried out in the grand scheme of the Third Reich.
The phrase “Banality of Evil” is used to illustrate these officials as villains, and from here it is evident that the author takes a very anti-Nazi position on this matter. However with an event so catastrophic and evident who would dare take any other position on this issue? In the study of any historical event, it is important to observe and view the event in the extreme cases on either side of the spectrum. For that reason alone one may find this secondary source valuable in their study of the Nuremberg trials.
-Gregory Kim
Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials
The following link contains information on the Holocaust and what it means in history. Being an unprecedented crime, the Holocaust carries an unforgettable legacy. The Holocaust was a crime composed of millions of murders, rape, torture, theft and destruction. This genocide is made known to this day for the faulty reasoning behind it; Hitler’s ideology. His ideology of wiping out a certain religious group of people, the Jewish, is what made this event an unforgettable one in history.
In Short, the article discusses how the Holocaust was not only a crime against a certain group of people, but a crime against humanity. Although this was an unprecedented event, one can come to the conclusion that the Nuremberg Trials served to be a precedent to ensure that genocide towards a certain ethnic or religious group, for that matter, may never reoccur. This articles is relevant as it discloses information of the war crimes that took place during the Holocaust and explains charges placed on the accused.
-Daniel Ibrahim
-Daniel Ibrahim