PHASE 1: TEACHER RESOURCES

Flexible podcast modules that align with state education standards and can serve multiple disciplines.

Nuremberg prosecutors charged that Nazi Germany was not a real government but a criminal state intent on making aggressive war to steal other peoples lands, enslave and murder them. Three other indictments follow from the first.

Module 1 will provide students with resources to:

• Analyze the factors that led to the outbreak of WWII
• Comprehend the basics of international law in regard to the making of aggressive war
• Debate the merits of the concept of laws against war
• Analyze primary source documents and use them to construct narrative essays

Following the logic of the first indictment, those who planned and waged aggressive war violated international treaties were therefore criminals.

Module 2 will provide students with resources to:

• Understand the narrative history of World War II in Europe
• Evaluate the concept of aggressive war
• Analyze the causal relationships between Nazi ideology and the prosecution of the war

The Nazis violated international rules and customs of war, such as abuse of enemy civilians and mistreatment of POWs.

Module 3 will provide students with resources to:

• Understand the most fundamental laws and customs of war
• Evaluate the purposes of international law
• Debate whether the laws of war are practical or even possible

Because the brutality and savagery of Nazism seemed so egregious and unprecedented, the lawyers at Nuremberg had to create the charge of Crimes Against Humanity to fit the offenses: torture and slaughter of millions.

Module 4 will provide students with resources to:

• Understand the concept of crimes against humanity as well as the meanings of genocide and ethnic cleansing
• Evaluate whether the concept of state sovereignty allows a nation to do whatever it thinks right if those actions, however immoral, are considered to be in the interest of the state
• Debate the question of who is entitled to be considered human; therefore, who is entitled to human rights

Were the Nazis mentally abnormal or ordinary family men whose morals were distorted by Hitler’s influence? We’ll share test results from doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists—along with conclusions from present day experts.

US Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson convinced his Allied counterparts to use actual Nazi films, photos, and their own signed documents as evidence against them. As a result, Nuremberg cemented an indisputable legal and historical record of the horrors that occurred. We’ll explain how Jackson arrived at his strategy and why the legacy of these trials must live on.

Nuremberg hosted the first, international trial and 12 subsequent proceedings through 1949, but hundreds more Nazis were tried throughout Europe. In Tokyo, crimes from the East were prosecuted. We’ll profile other war crimes trials preceding and following Nuremberg to the present day and provide an introduction to international human rights issues.

Go behind the scenes and witness massive efforts needed to mount the trials in a city reduced to rubble. Learn how the US army guarded prisoners; protected the Nuremberg area; housed, fed, and transported over 1,000 international personnel; and created the infrastructure to support all trial proceedings.

Learn how an OSS architect transformed and enlarged Courtroom 600 in just months, installing photo and film booths to capture the trial from every angle, and creating space for four Allied prosecution teams, eight judges, many defense lawyers, and hundreds of international correspondents.

Real-time interpretation was pioneered at Nuremberg, delivered to every person in the courtroom via a headphone system. The first, international military tribunal was conducted in four languages: English, German, Russian, and French. Simultaneous interpretation not only shortened the trials, it paved the way for worldwide use.

250 global correspondents convened on Nuremberg to report the horrors of war crimes, war booty, and the Holocaust. Learn how they covered the trial at a time when radio and print media were the only mediums of communication available.

Profiles of key defendants’ personal lives, their connection with Hitler, shifting rivalries—and how each was involved in Nazi Germany’s vast criminality.