Chief prosecutor Telford Taylor opens the prosecution case in the Krupp Trial

The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (or, more formally, the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT)) were a series of twelve U.S. military trials for war crimes against surviving members of the military, political, and economical leadership of Nazi Germany, held in Nuremberg after World War II from 1946 to 1949 following the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the IMT, the International Military Tribunal.

Although it had been initially planned to hold more than just one international trial at the IMT, the growing differences between the victorious allies (the U.S., Great Britain, France, and Russia) made this impossible. However, the Control Council Law No. 10, which the Allied Control Council had issued on December 20, 1945, empowered any of the occupying authorities to try suspected war criminals in their respective occupation zones. Based on this law, the U.S. authorities proceeded after the end of the initial Nuremberg Trial against the major war criminals to hold another twelve trials in Nuremberg. The judges in all these trials were American, and so were the prosecutors; the Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Brigadier General Telford Taylor. In the other occupation zones similar trials took place.

The twelve U.S. trials before the NMT took place from December 9, 1946 to April 13, 1949. The trials were:

1. The Doctors' Trial
2. The Milch Trial
3. The Judges' Trial
4. The Pohl Trial
5. The Flick Trial
6. The IG Farben Trial
7. The Hostages Trial
8. The RuSHA Trial
9. The Einsatzgruppen Trial
10. The Krupp Trial
11. The Ministries Trial
12. The High Command Trial

In total, of the 180 defendants 140 were found guilty of at least one of the charges. 25 persons received death sentences, two of which were subsequently converted into lifetime imprisonments (Georg Lörner and Karl Sommer from the Pohl Trial); 19 were sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, 96 were handed down prison sentences of varying lengths, and 36 were acquitted. Many of the longer prison sentences were reduced substantially soon after the trials. The defendant Johannes Blaskowitz committed suicide during the High Command Trial, and Maximilian von Weichs was removed from the Hostages Trial due to illness.

References

• The NMT proceedings (http://www.mazal.org/NMT-HOME.htm) at the Mazal Library.
• An overview (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/subsequenttrials.html).
• A more detailed overview (http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/cntrl10_trials.htm).
• A summary (http://www.benferencz.org/encyclo.htm) written by Benjamin B. Ferencz.