Crimes defined
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) charter, on which the trials were based, identified four acts that would be recognised as crimes subject to individual responsibility. These were:
- crimes against peace: including planning, initiating and waging aggressive war or war in violation of international treaties and agreements
- conspiracy to accomplish these crimes: covering pre-war plans
- war crimes: ill treatment of civilian populations and prisoners of war and the wanton destruction of cities not justified by military necessity
- crimes against humanity: extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations.
General Dwight Eisenhower inspecting prisoners' corpses at a liberated concentration camp, 1945
All the defendants in the first Nuremburg trial were indicted on at least two of these counts and several on all four; the Japanese defendants were charged with crimes that were worded slightly differently but amounted to much the same thing (see Sentencing). This was the first time that charges of 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity' were defined and used in a prosecution.
The IMT charter includes two precedents that have informed later legislation. Article 7 states that 'the official position of defendants, whether as heads of state or responsible officials in government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility'. Article 8 states that 'the fact that the defendant acted pursuant to an order of his government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility'.