The court that tried between November 1945 and October 1946 the 22 main leaders of the German Government and Army captured in the death throes of the Third Reich, as well as the institutions linked to the regime, is considered to be the first great precedent of the Criminal Court. International, established in 1998 in The Hague. And this despite being an exceptional military court, created expressly and marked from its inception by serious doubts about its jurisdiction, partiality and retroactivity.
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The establishment of a court to judge the leaders and collaborators of Nazism was the subject of a long discussion among the allies, which began in 1942 in Moscow. The difficult configuration of a court endowed with legitimacy to prosecute and convict war criminals without an international criminal corpus did not convince, in principle, either London or Washington. Soviet pressure made future trials become a reality at the Potsdam Conference of 1945, with the compelling argument of legitimizing the Allied position and, therefore, its policy of trying and sentencing the leaders of the Soviet regimes. countries that remained under its jurisdiction.
This exceptional court also prosecuted more than half a thousand soldiers, professionals and businessmen.
Beyond the trial of those mainly responsible for the Holocaust and other war crimes, this exceptional court prosecuted more than half a thousand soldiers, professionals and businessmen who contributed to the commission of all types of crimes inspired by or related to Nazism during the Second World War in 12 other different processes.
In all cases, for the crimes that the court itself classified as crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and conspiracy against peace, based on the Treaty of Versailles (signed by Germany in its surrender after the First War World) and in the Geneva Convention of 1907 (in force in 63 states at the beginning of the war, including Germany).