Nuremberg: 60 years since Nazi trials
Goering enters a plea of not guilty from the prisoner's dock at Nuremberg on November 21, 1945. YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Adolf Hitler Germany Crime, Law and Justice or or Create Your Own
NUREMBERG, Germany (AP) -- Witnesses returned to an oak-paneled courtroom in Nuremberg to reflect on the legacy of the trial of Germany's Nazi leaders which, 60 years ago Sunday, broke new ground in holding government leaders responsible for wartime atrocities and human rights abuses.
In Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice on November 20, 1945, Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop and 18 other high-ranking Nazis pleaded innocent to a panel of judges representing the victorious allies -- the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France.
Participants recalled that they realized even then that the then-new offenses of crimes against peace, waging a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity were a key step in establishing an international system of justice.
"It set the precedent for the establishment of the international criminal court, which was needed," said Johann-Georg Hschaetzler, Hess' defense attorney.
U.S. Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney R. Harris agreed that because of the Nuremberg proceedings, tribunals have been able to bring cases against leaders such as former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and those who led the genocide in Rwanda.
"The principals of the Nuremberg case have been followed in recent years and the fact that we conducted Nuremberg has given impetus to the establishment of these more recent tribunals," Harris said.
"Each of these tribunals is significant in its own right and helps to advance the case of international law," he said.
In addition to Hschaetzler and Harris, Arno Hamburger, an interpreter at the trial, and Susanne von Paczensky, a German journalist for the DANA news agency, were present to address the ceremony.
On October 1, 1946, after 218 trial days, Goering -- Adolf Hitler's air force chief and a top aide -- was sentenced to death along with 11 others, including Martin Bormann, Hitler's vanished deputy, who was tried in absentia. Seven drew long prison sentences and three were acquitted.
Fifteen days later, the condemned men were hanged in the courthouse's adjacent prison. Goering committed suicide by swallowing a poison pill in his cell the night before.
Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel in the front row.
The city of Nuremberg has marked the 60th anniversary of the opening of the trials against Nazi war criminals.

At a ceremony in the Palace of Justice, where the tribunal was located, participants of the trials gathered and remembered. Whitney R. Harris, a member of the U.S. prosecution team, emphazised the importance of Nuremberg for contemporary international law claiming that "the principles of the Nuremberg case have been followed in recent years and the fact that we conducted Nuremberg has given impetus to the establishment of these more recent tribunals". But the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Philippe Kirsch, is frustrated that there is still opposition against modern international tribunals like his court: "The spectre of politically motivated prosecution which is a running theme against the ICC is so unfounded that it is to me intellectually difficult to understand".

On November 20, 1945 the trials began in the courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice. A total of 24  defendants were tried, among them Hermann Göring and Rudolf Heß. With Geoffrey Lawrence being chair of the court, the trial took 218 days and ended with 12 death sentences, 7 jail terms and 3 acquittals. One defendant killed himself during the trial, another one was declared unfit to stand trial. 

Some controversy does exist as to whether the Nuremberg Principles have been adhered to in the years following the trials.  Noted intellectual author, Noam Chomsky, has claimed that all US presidents since the end of the war would be judged to be war criminals according to these principles.