Nuremburg trials

Laws & Survivors: The Nuremberg Story
On November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg, Germany, a trial started that would change the way people viewed the law and war. During World War II the Allies were determined that both Hitler and the men around him should be punished for starting World War II as well as the crimes they had committed while they were waging it. These crimes included the extermination of the Jewish people of Europe, known today as the Holocaust. After some debate it was decided that the fairest way to proceed was the public trial of the men and organizations who committed the crimes.  
Originally, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had advocated a policy of summary execution with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, and was only dissuaded from this by pressure from the U.S. later in the war (2).   A bill of attainder is an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime, and punishing them, without benefit of a trial, which is against the US Constitution, and therefore, wasn’t very favorable for the United States.   The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing nearly all of the surviving German staff officers, ranging anywhere from 50,000-100,000 (5). The US and Great Britain were both against the idea of mass, cold blooded executions of soldiers who fought for their country. After a series of meetings and negotiations between the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, details of the trial were worked out and it was set to commence in the city of Nuremberg on the mourning of November 20, 1945.
At the Nuremberg Trial, 22 individual Nazi officials, and seven groups that had been organized to carry out the Nazi programs, were indicted and placed on trial for their crimes.   For this trial, there were four possible indictments a defendant could face.   The first of these indictments was for participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace (1)....