Nuremberg Trials Judges: The Bench, Verdicts, and Dissent

The Nuremberg Trials judges were eight jurists drawn from the four victorious Allied powers — one primary judge and one alternate each from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France — who sat from November 1945 to October 1946 and delivered twelve death sentences, seven prison terms, and three acquittals against senior figures of the Nazi regime. Their authority came from the London Charter of August 8, 1945, and their judgment established that individuals, not only states, bear personal criminal responsibility for waging aggressive war and for atrocities committed under color of official duty.

How the Bench Was Structured

Article 2 of the London Charter set the shape of the court: four members, four alternates, one of each appointed by each signatory nation. All four primary judges (or their alternates, if a primary was absent) had to be present for a quorum, and alternates were required to attend every session “so far as they are able” so any of them could step in without a break in the record.¹ The trial ran more than 400 open sessions across roughly ten months, so that redundancy mattered.

The Four Primary Judges

Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (Great Britain)

Lawrence, a Lord Justice of Appeal in the English court system, was Britain’s primary judge and was elected President of the Tribunal by his colleagues before the trial began. A New York Times obituary later noted that when the trial ended, Lawrence “won tributes from all parts of the world for his impartiality and fairness.”² As President, he managed the schedule, ruled on evidence, and kept order during cross-examinations.

Francis Biddle (United States)

Biddle had served as Attorney General of the United States under President Roosevelt from 1941 through most of the war, resigning after Truman took office.³ Truman then appointed him to the tribunal. After the verdicts, Biddle sent Truman a report recommending a permanent international criminal code; Truman replied that he hoped “the United Nations, in line with your proposal, will reaffirm the principles of the Nurnberg Charter in the context of a general codification of offenses against the peace and security of mankind.”⁴

Major General Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet Union)

Nikitchenko sat on the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union before his appointment.⁵ He was unusual among the judges because he had also helped negotiate the Charter itself. Records from the London Conference show him arguing over how the presidency should rotate, how organizations could be declared criminal, and how the statute should set its procedure.⁶ That double role, drafter and then judge, gave the defense one of its sharpest complaints.

Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (France)

Donnedieu de Vabres was the only academic on the bench. He had taught criminal law and comparative criminal law as a full professor at the Faculté de Droit de Paris from 1924 onward, and the official judgment identified him as “M. le Professeur Donnedieu de Vabres.”⁷ His work centered on the international dimensions of criminal justice, which suited a court confronting jurisdictional questions no earlier tribunal had answered.

The Four Alternates

The alternates sat through every session and joined the private deliberations, but they did not vote. As the PBS account put it, “the alternates did not have an official vote in any decision,” though the judges agreed among themselves that alternates “should play an active role in deliberations.”⁸ Under the Charter, an alternate could vote only if the primary from the same country was unable to serve.¹

Sir Norman Birkett was Britain’s alternate. He had originally been considered for the primary British seat, but the Foreign Office preferred a Law Lord, and Birkett agreed to serve as alternate instead. John J. Parker, a judge on the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals since 1925, was the American alternate. Robert Falco was the French alternate; Vichy had dismissed him from the French judiciary in 1940 because he was Jewish, and after the liberation he was reinstated and sent to London to help negotiate the Charter before taking his seat at Nuremberg. Alexander Volchkov, a lieutenant colonel, was the Soviet alternate.⁷

When the judges were sequestered in early September 1946 to write their final judgment, all eight took part in the drafting sessions over roughly a month before the verdicts were read on October 1.⁸

How They Voted

Article 4 laid out the voting rules. Procedural questions were decided by majority, and Lawrence, as President, cast the tiebreaker when the vote split evenly. Convictions and sentences were different. The Charter required “affirmative votes of at least three members of the Tribunal” for any conviction or sentence, and the President had no tiebreaker on guilt or punishment.¹ A two-two split meant acquittal. No single Allied power could carry a conviction on its own.

The Verdicts

Twenty-four defendants were originally indicted. Robert Ley killed himself before trial, Gustav Krupp was ruled unfit, and Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, leaving twenty-one men in the dock.⁹ On October 1, 1946, the judges handed down:

Death by hanging for twelve: Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Martin Bormann (in absentia).
Life imprisonment for three: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Erich Raeder.
Fixed prison terms for four: Karl Dönitz (10 years), Baldur von Schirach (20 years), Albert Speer (20 years), and Konstantin von Neurath (15 years).
Acquittal for three: Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche.

Nikitchenko’s Dissent

The three acquittals drew the only formal dissent on the bench. Nikitchenko filed a written opinion arguing that Schacht, von Papen, and Fritzsche should all have been convicted. He also dissented from the life sentence given to Rudolf Hess, arguing for death, and objected to the majority’s refusal to declare the Reich Cabinet, the German General Staff, and the High Command criminal organizations.¹⁰ The acquitted men went free because at least two of the three non-Soviet judges voted against conviction, and the three-vote threshold did the rest.

Challenges to Their Authority

Defense counsel attacked the tribunal before the first witness testified. Their central argument invoked the principle that there can be no punishment without a pre-existing law: no international statute, they said, had criminalized the launching of an aggressive war before the acts charged, so the Charter created criminal law after the fact. The defense also attacked the composition of the bench itself, arguing that the Allied powers were simultaneously “creator of the Charter, of the penal law, prosecutor, and judge,” and that fairness required neutral judges or at least representation from all parties.¹¹ The judges rejected the motion and proceeded. The victor’s-justice critique has followed the Nuremberg record ever since.

What They Left Behind

In 1950, the United Nations International Law Commission codified seven “Nuremberg Principles” drawn from the Charter and the judgment. Two proved especially durable: that individuals are personally responsible for crimes under international law regardless of their official position, and that following superior orders does not automatically excuse criminal conduct “provided a moral choice was in fact possible.”¹² The rejection of “just following orders” as a blanket defense worked its way into military law worldwide; under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, service members owe obedience only to lawful orders and are not punishable for refusing ones that are clearly illegal. The Nuremberg Memorium in the courtroom where the trial was held describes the IMT as the direct model for today’s International Criminal Court in The Hague.¹³ Every international war crimes court since has worked from the framework those eight judges built.

1
Avalon Project. Charter of the International Military Tribunal
2
The New York Times. Lord Oaksey, Presiding Judge At Nuremberg Trials, Is Dead
3
United States Department of Justice. Solicitor General: Francis Biddle
4
Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. Letter to Francis Biddle in Response to His Report on the Nurnberg Tribunal
5
Wikipedia. Iona Nikitchenko
6
Avalon Project. International Conference on Military Trials: London, 1945
7
International Military Tribunal. International Military Tribunal Judgment of 1 October 1946
8
PBS. The Nuremberg Judges
9
Memorium Nuremberg Trials. The Defendants
10
Avalon Project. Judgement: Sentences
11
Avalon Project. Defense Motion Challenging Jurisdiction of Tribunal
12
United Nations International Law Commission. Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950
13
Memorium Nuremberg Trials. Birth of International Criminal Law