A Visit to Nuremberg’s Courtroom

In the fall of 2024, I enjoyed my first river cruise in Europe. The cruise began in Amsterdam, traveled along the Rhine, Main, and Danube rivers, and ended in Budapest, Hungary. We visited many historic sites and cities along the way, one of which was Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the Nazi Trials after World War II.

Getting to Amsterdam was an adventure in itself. While waiting to board the plane in Minneapolis, a thunderstorm with large hail and high winds “blew” through the airport and damaged the plane sufficiently that my flight was canceled until the next day. As a result, I missed the first of the two-day pre-excursion, which was to be an unguided exploration of Amsterdam.

When I arrived in Amsterdam a day later, I visited the Rijksmuseum with its Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh paintings and other Dutch national artistic treasures. But for me, the highlight was touring the Anne Frank House and hearing once again the story of Anne and her family and friends, as well as the Nazis’ treatment of the Amsterdam Jewish population, much of which was concentrated in the same neighborhood. The tour of the secret annex, Anne’s living quarters, where she, her family members, and others hid from the Nazis and hearing the stories about the hardships, restrictions, and risks with which they lived every day brought to life the reality of her experiences recounted in her famous diary. One display included a Jewish neighborhood dot map (each dot representing ten Jewish lives) created by the Amsterdam municipality for use by the Nazis to implement their plan for racial segregation, deportation, and extermination of European Jews. After concluding my tour of the Anne Frank House, I walked around the neighborhood haunted by thoughts of what took place there during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in World War II. This experience left a lasting impression on me.

The riverboat departed Amsterdam and after viewing famous windmills in Kinderdijk, Netherlands, it stopped at a number of ports in Germany, including Cologne where, among other things, we toured the Cologne Cathedral built during a six hundred plus year period starting in 1248 and ending in 1880, and walked across a short stretch of an original Roman highway, next to which was a section of an original wall built by the Romans. Another German port stop was Koblenz, where we saw a monument comprised of actual pieces of the Berlin Wall after it was torn down. The monument was erected as a reminder of the reunification of Germany. One of my favorite ports was Passau in Lower Bavaria near the Austrian border and at the confluence of the Danube, Inn, and Ilz rivers. Our tour guide was a law student studying at the University of Passau to become an international business lawyer. I enjoyed learning about his career path and future plans.

My “bucket list” stop was Nuremberg, where we visited the famous Courtroom 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the site of the Nazi Trials held from November 20, 1945, to April 1949. To set the stage for our visit to the Courtroom, we had the opportunity to walk the Nazi Party Rally Grounds that were used from 1933 to 1945 by the Nazis not only to rally the members of the Nazi Party and depict widespread support of the Nazi Party’s exclusionary society, but also to establish camps for prisoners of war and forced laborers, as well as deporting Franconian Jews to extermination camps. Nuremberg-Site of the Nazi Party Rallies. I was struck by the immense size of the Rally Grounds, which comprised about 1.5 square miles in total area and was comparable to twelve soccer fields. At the front of the Rally Grounds was a concrete grandstand used for seating and a podium from which Adolph Hitler would deliver his speeches to the crowds. In order to enable people to see the podium, it was common to have wooden grandstands erected around the remaining three edges of the field. The area was designed to accommodate up to 200,000 people.

In close proximity to the Rally Grounds was the Documentation Center Museum that contained numerous displays recounting the activities and political developments in Nuremberg during this same period. I was so engrossed by the different displays that I nearly missed my tour bus’s departure to visit the Courtroom.

Arriving at the Palace of Justice, we were escorted to Courtroom 600 for the noon program. Upon entering the Courtroom, I was impressed by four things. First, the ornate wood paneling throughout the Courtroom, including the ceilings. Second, the large metal crucifix that was hung above and behind the bench where the presiding Judges sat for the trials. Third, the ornate chandeliers that hung from the ceilings to provide light. Last, the room seemed small for the number of people who were involved with the Trials. I have since learned that the Courtroom had originally been enlarged by the United States in order to accommodate all of the expected participants and was subsequently restored in the 1960s to its original size. I have also discovered that the chandeliers and the crucifix were not present during the Trials and were added as part of the renovations to the Courtroom in the 1960s. At the time of the Trials, where the crucifix now hangs, there was a filming booth with plexiglass in front of it. Depicted in pictures of the Courtroom during the Trials were fluorescent overhead lights instead of chandeliers.

Precisely at noon, the Courtroom doors were closed, and the program began. A black mesh-like screen was lowered between the public seating area, and images were projected onto it as the narration of the history behind the Courtroom was presented.

Nuremberg was selected as the site for the Trials by the Allies, i.e., the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Soviet Union since it had been a primary site of Nazi propaganda rallies. “The Allies wanted Nuremberg to symbolize the death of Nazi Germany.” The Palace of Justice was selected for the courtroom in which to conduct the Trials because it was the largest courtroom in Bavaria and had been spared from much of the damage during the Allied forces’ bombings of Nuremberg. Also, there was a prison with individual prisoner cells adjacent to and behind the Palace of Justice that could hold the Nazi prisoners and be connected to the Courtroom to transport them for trial. To accommodate all of the people anticipated to be present during the Trials, the back wall in Courtroom 600 had to be removed, and the Judges’ bench was turned 90˚ to face the new back wall.

On August 8, 1945, the Allies signed the London Agreement and Charter to establish procedures for the Trials and create the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Each of the Allies appointed judges and a prosecution team. For the United States, the chief prosecutor was Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who had been instrumental in persuading the Allies to sign the London Charter. The United States’ Judges were Francis Biddle, John J. Parker, and Edward Francis Carter. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain served as the Presiding Judge.

In the first of the Nazi Trials, twenty-four Nazi government officials were indicted for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which the IMT defined as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation …or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds.” The development of the concept of “crimes against humanity” is considered one of the great legal innovations post-World War II. Because he had committed suicide previously, Adolph Hitler was not one of the indicted defendants.

The evidence presented during the Trial included “[f]ootage of Nazi concentration camps taken by Allied military photographers during liberation … graphic scenes of what had taken place in Europe …. screenings of the Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps and The Nazi Plan films, … detailed description of the Final Solution, the murders of prisoners of war, atrocities in extermination camps, and countless cruel acts to [persecute] Jews.”  

Of the twenty-four indicted defendants, three (Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Robert Ley) committed suicide before their Trials began. Nineteen defendants were convicted, and three were acquitted. Twelve defendants were sentenced to die by hanging, and eleven were executed approximately two weeks later. The twelfth, Herman Goering, committed suicide before his scheduled execution. Three of the remaining defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, and four were sentenced to prison terms of ten to twenty years.

Twelve additional trials for war crimes were held in the Courtroom from December 1946 to April 1949. These trials included physicians, judges, industrialists, SS and police commanders, military personnel, civil servants, and diplomats. One hundred seventy-seven defendants were tried, resulting in one hundred sixty-six convictions, twenty-four death penalty sentences, twenty life imprisonments, and ninety-eight other prison sentences. Twenty-five defendants were acquitted.

Not everyone will be as fortunate as I to visit Courtroom 600 in person. As an alternative, one can take the virtual tour of Courtroom 600. Along with a picture of the Courtroom and a zooming function that enables the viewer to see the entirety of the Courtroom or to zoom in on different locations within the Courtroom, there is historical information presented at each location. The viewer can take as much or as little time as he or she desires to learn about the Courtroom and the Nazi trials that were held in it.

I am thankful to have experienced the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Nazi Rally Grounds and Documentation Center Museum in Nuremberg as preparation for my visit to the Courtroom. The information from those experiences set the stage for my appreciation for the history of Courtroom 600 and the Trials held in it.