Nuremberg Defendants

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NUREMBERG DEFENDANTS

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LEADING FIGURES IN THE NAZI PARTY AND THE STATE

Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe (Air Force), President of the Reichstag (German parliament), Director of the Four Year Plan, and at the outbreak of war in Europe Hitler's acknowledged successor. Göring was sentenced to death. On the eve of his scheduled execution, he committed suicide by taking cyanide.

Martin Bormann (1900-1945)
Head of the Party Chancellery (1941) and, officially in 1943, Secretary to the Führer. He was tried in absentia in Nuremberg, where he was sentenced to death. West German authorities officially declared him dead in 1973, after his remains were discovered and positively identified.

Wilhelm Frick (1877-1946)
Reich Minister of the Interior from 1933-1943, and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. He was executed on October 16, 1946.

Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Longstanding personal aide to Hitler, and Deputy Party Leader of the Nazi Party (until 1941). In May 1941, Hess flew to Scotland with the hopes of making peace between Germany and Britain. He was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was the only one of the defendants to serve the full life term; he committed suicide in prison at age 93.

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946)
Foreign Minister of Germany. Ribbentrop was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974)
Leader of the Hitler Youth (1933-1940) and Gauleiter in Austria (1940-1945 Schirach was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released from prison in 1966.

Hans Fritzsche (1900-1953)
Head of the Radio Division of the Propaganda Ministry. Although he was acquitted by the IMT, he was then arrested again and brought before the German denazification courts. He was sentenced to nine years imprisonment and released in September 1950.

Walther Funk (1890-1960)
Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank. Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1957 due to poor health.

Franz von Papen (1879-1969)
Former Chancellor of Germany, Ambassador to Austria (1934-1938), and Ambassador to Turkey (1939-1944). Papen was acquitted of all charges in Nuremberg. In 1949 a denazification court sentenced him to time in a labor camp; however, he was released immediately following appeals.

Julius Streicher (1885-1946)
Propagandist and editor of Der Stuermer, a virulently antisemitic newspaper. Streicher was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

LEADING FIGURES IN THE OCCUPATION GOVERNMENTS

Hans Frank (1900-1946)
Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland. He was executed on October 16, 1946.

Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946)
Official chief Nazi philosopher, head of the Nazi Party's Foreign Affairs Department, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Rosenberg was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

Konstantin von Neurath (1873-1956)
Foreign Minister of Germany (1932-1938), Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1941). Neurath was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He was released in 1954 due to ill health after serving 8 years of his sentence.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892-1946)
Reich Governor of Austria, Deputy Governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland and Reichskommissar for the German occupied Netherlands. He was sentenced to death. Seyss-Inquart was hanged on October 16, 1946.

LEADING MILITARY FIGURES

Karl Dönitz (1891-1980)
Commander of Germany's U-Boat fleet from 1939. In 1943, Dönitz was appointed Commander in Chief of the German War Navy, succeeding Erich Raeder. In May 1945 he was appointed Reich President as per Hitler's will, after Hitler committed suicide. Dönitz was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

Alfred Jodl (1890-1946)
Chief of the Armed Forces High Command Operational Staff. Jodl was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946)
Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces High Command. Keitel was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

Erich Raeder (1876-1960)
Commander in Chief of the German Navy until his resignation and retirement in May 1943. Raeder was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released due to poor health in 1955 after having served 9 years of his sentence.

LEADING FIGURES IN FINANCE AND WAR ECONOMY

Fritz Sauckel (1894-1946)
Plenipotentiary General for the Deployment of Labor. He was sentenced to death. Sauckel was hanged on October 16, 1946.

Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970)
Reichsbank president until 1939 and general plenipotentiary for the war economy. He was acquitted in Nuremberg; however, he was tried and sentenced by a denazification court to eight years in a work camp. He was released in 1948.

Albert Speer (1905-1981)
Hitler's architect, and Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions from 1942. He sentenced to 20 years in prison.Speer was released in 1966.

Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1870-1950)
A leading German industrialist and chairman of the Reich Association of Industry. Krupp's firm made extensive use of forced labor during the war. He was deemed too ill to stand trial at the IMT, and at the subsequent Krupp Case heard in Nuremberg in 1947. He died in 1950.

Robert Ley (1890-1945)
Head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF; German Labor Party). Ley committed suicide in his cell at Nuremberg shortly before trial began.

ONLY POLICE OFFICIAL TRIED AT NUREMBERG

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903-1946)
Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and Chief of Security Police following Reinhard Heydrich's assassination. Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death and hanged on October 16, 1946.