Hans Lammers, former chief of the Reich Chancellery and legal adviser to Hitler, is pictured following his sentencing to 20 years imprisonment by the IMT. Nuremberg, April 13, 1949. After two reductions of his sentence, Lammers was released from prison in December 1951. He died a free man in 1962.
— USHMM, courtesy of John W. Mosenthal
Twenty-one defendants, including three German government ministers as well as state secretaries and members of the Nazi party hierarchy, stood trial for committing crimes against peace for planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression, in addition to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The trial ran from January 6 to November 18, 1948, making it the second-longest Nuremberg proceeding after the main International Military Tribunal. The court acquitted two of the defendants and sentenced another to time served. The other defendants received prison terms ranging from 4 to 25 years. The United States High Commissioner later reduced eight of the sentences to various shorter terms or to time served.
