Format of the On-line Guide
The database contains catalogue entries for the archive collections in numerical order.
Format of a catalogue record
Each catalogue record, effectively a summary level description of the collection, contains data prepared with the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)), adopted by the International Council on Archives in Stockholm in 1993. The University of Southampton Library is contributing the archive descriptions found in this database to the Archives Hub. The data used in the records in the database is structured as follows:
TITLE: This contains the reference and the name of the collection:
MS 200 Papers of the International Military Tribunal and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
DATE: The covering dates for the collection:
1945-1949
EXTENT: This gives the size of the collection in terms of standard units, generally the number of boxes. For example:
500 boxes
ADMIN/BIOG: This provides an administrative history or biographical details of the organisation or individual whose archives are held at Southampton. An example would be:
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was established in consequence of the London Agreement of 8 August 1945, which dealt with the punishment of the war criminals of the European Axis. The IMT was composed of representatives of France, Great Britain, the USA and the USSR under the Allied Control Commission and its purpose was to try the major war criminals. Even before the war had ended, the Amercian and British armies had established special investigating teams whose purpose was to collect documentary evidence of war crimes. The material was then sorted and the most significant documents were transmitted to Nuremberg. An opening session of the IMT was held at Berlin on 18 October 1945; the tribunal convened at Nuremberg on 14 November 1945 and concluded its business with the passing of sentence on twenty-two defendants on 1 October 1946. These defendants were Hermann Wilhelm Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Ketel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walter Funk, Karl D”nitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Saukel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Constantin von Neurath, Martin Bormann, Hjalmar Schact, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche.
The Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) or `subsequent proceedings' were tried by the United States in pursuance of the Allied Control Commission Law 10, which empowered the commanding officers of the four allied zones of occupation to conduct criminal trials on charges of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of an organisation aiming at such crimes. President Truman took the decision to prosecute, through the Office of the United States Goverment for Germany (OMGUS), over one hundred and seventy more Germans. Evidence was provided by the Office of the US Chief Counsel and its chief counsel, Joseph T.McNary, established six US military tribunals which conducted the twelve trials held before the NMT. The trials ran from 26 October 1946 to 14 April 1949 and the defendants included high-ranking officials, among them cabinet ministers, diplomats, military and SS leaders, industrialists, physicians who had been involved in medical crimes, as well as middle-ranking SS officers who were implicated in crimes at concentration camps or in genocide in German occupied areas. Although the trials were military, they were conducted before American civilian judges, on indictments filed by Brigadier General Telford Taylor, United States Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, acting on behalf of the USA.
SCOPE AND CONTENTS: This contains the summary description of the archive collection:
The documentation is divided up to reflect the twelve cases:
Case 1 (Medical): charged twenty-four defendants with performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and other living human subjects
Case 2 (Milch): charged Erhard Milch with the exploitation of slave labour and carrying out medical experiments on concentration camp inmates
Case 3 (Justice): charged sixteen defendants with war crimes and crimes against humanity through abuse of the judicial process and the administration of justice
Case 4 (Pohl): charged eighteen defendants with running concentration camps or economic enterprises of the SS using slave labour
Case 5 (Flick): charged six defendants with criminal conduct in relation to slave labour, the the spoliation of property in occupied France and the USSR, and the 'aryanisation' of Jewish industrial and mining properties
Case 6 (Farben): charged twenty-four senior executives of I.G.Farben with spoliation of property in occupied countries and participation in a slave labour programme
Case 7 (Hostage): charged twelve generals assigned to South East Europe with criminal disregard of the rules of warfare in respect to the treatment of hostages and civilians
Case 8 (Rusha): charged fourteen officials in the race and settlement office of the SS with carrying out systematic programmes of genocide
Case 9 (Einsatzgruppen): charged twenty-three officers of the SS in charge of extermination squads with the murder of 2,000,000 people
Case 10 (Krupp): charged twelve executives of the Krupp industrial concern with using slave labour and spoliation
Case 11 (Ministries): charged twenty-one defendants with playing an important part in the political and diplomatic preparation for war, violation of international treaties, economic spoliation and diplomatic implementation of the extermination programme
Case 12 (High Command): charged fourteen defendants who held high command or staff positions in the armed forces of ordering the killing and mistreatment of prisoners of war and of deporting or abusing civilians in occupied territories
The documents collected by the special investigation units were classified and numbered. Those used for the NMT cases were registered in four principal series: NG, `Nuremberg Government', documents relating in the main to government agencies of the Third Reich; NI, `Nuremberg Industrial', documents principally dealing with industry and finance (some were further designated NID, for the operations of the Dresdener Bank, or NIK, for the activities of the Krupp organisation); NO, `Nuremberg Organisations', documents connected with the various organisations of the Nazi party; and NOKW, `Nuremberg Oberkommando der Wehrmacht', documents concerned primarily with the High Command of the German Army.
The documentation for both the IMT and NMT was reproduced, either as mimeographs or as carbon copies, and was distributed by the Office of the Chief of US Counsel for War Crimes, Document Division. Official publications were prepared of much of the IMT material, and of some sections of the NMT.
Material relating to the IMT:
18 boxes of official transcripts of court proceedings, 21 Nov 1945-30 Sep 1946; document books (incomplete series)
Material relating to the NMT:
approximately 460 boxes of official transcripts of the court proceedings; summaries of interrogations; document books containing compilations and translations of the evidence
LANGUAGE: This lists the languages of the material in the collection. For example:
German and English
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: This provides information on catalogues of the collections, related material and publications of or relating to the collection.
For a list of the collection see K.Robson MS200 PAPERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL AND THE NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS 1945-9 University of Southampton archive lists, catalogues and guides series 1, 1993
The transcripts were printed in three series (blue, red and green) of TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL. Details of the documents are given in J.Robinson and H.Sachs THE HOLOCAUST: THE NUREMBERG EVIDENCE. PART ONE: DOCUMENTS (Jerusalem, 1976) and in the Green Series, volume 15, pp. 1229-31.
PERSONAL NAME, CORPORATE NAME, PLACE NAME, SUBJECT: These are index terms for names, places and subjects mentioned in the collection description in the Scope and Contents section. Examples would be:
PERSONAL NAME
Goering | Hermann Wilhelm | 1893-1946 | Deputy Fuehrer | head of the Gestapo
Hess | [Walter Richard] Rudolf | 1894-1987 | Deputy Fuehrer
Ribbentrop | Joachim | von | 1893-1946 | German Nazi leader and foreign minister
Ketel | Wilhelm | 1882-1946 | General Field Marshal | Chief of OKW
CORPORATE NAME
I G Farben
International Military Tribunal | IMT
Nuremberg Military Tribunals | NMT
Allied Control Commission
PLACE NAME
France
Great Britain
United States of America
United Soviet Socialist Russia | USSR
Nuremberg | Germany
Berlin | Germany
SUBJECT
World War II | Second World War | war crimes
World War II | Second World War | military trials