About

The resources presented here by the Harvard Library ITS Nuremberg Trials Wikidata Projects Team are intended to supplement the primary source materials in the collection of the Harvard Law School Library which have been made accessible in the Nuremberg Trials Project.

“This is the raw material of history in wonderful profusion.”

Telford Taylor (Chief of Counsel, Nuremberg Military Tribunals), writing on the value of the Nuremberg Trial documents in 1948.

(Source: An Outline of the Research and Publication Possibilities of the War Crimes Trials, November 1948. Law School MSS Small Manuscript Collection. Harvard Law School Library.)

Background

These curated and assembled resources herein relate to all 13 Trials, from the International Military Tribunal (conducted by the Allied powers from 1945-1946) to the 12 Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT, also known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials and conducted by the U.S. Military between 1946-1949). The Nuremberg Charter, adopted by the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union in August of 1945, provided the legal basis for the trials which sought to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. The Trials also derived jurisdictional authority from the Moscow Declaration (Nov. 1, 1943), the London Agreement (Aug. 8, 1945), the Berlin Protocol (Oct. 6, 1945), U.S. Executive Orders 9547 (May 2, 1945) and 9679 (Jan. 16, 1946), Allied Control Council Law No. 10, (Dec. 20, 1945) and U.S. Military Government Ordinances 7 and 11 (Oct. 18, 1946), and U.S. Forces European Theater General Order 301 (Oct. 24, 1946). These documents were filmed by the U.S. National Archives.

(Source: Joseph M. Stone photographs and memoranda, 1946-1998. Articles/Pamphlets 1948-1998. Box 1, Folder 13, Harvard Law School Library.)

“There shall be established after consultation with the Control Council for Germany an International Military Tribunal for the trial of war criminals whose offences have no particular geographical location whether they be accused individually or in their capacity as members of organisations or groups or in both capacities.”

(Source: Article 1 of the Agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis and the annexed charter were formally signed by France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States on 8 August 1945.) 

Securing the Trial Record for Posterity: Bringing the Documentary Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials to the Harvard Law School Library

Efforts to bring a complete set of Nuremberg Trial records to the Harvard Law School coalesced well before the conclusion of the proceedings in Germany. Their enduring documentary value was recognized by Nuremberg Military Tribunal Chief of Counsel Telford Taylor (1908-1998), a class of 1932 Harvard Law School graduate. At the close of the Trials, he wrote “it is not the verdict but the record of documents and testimony that is more important” (Nuremberg Trials: Synthesis and Projection. OMGUS Information Bulletin, No. 162. May 31, 1949). Planning for the permanent deposit and preservation of the Trial records in Cambridge was a collaborative effort between the Pentagon’s War Crimes Branch, Telford Taylor’s Document Division staff, Harvard Law School Library Director Arthur C. Pulling (1887-1963), and Harvard Law School Professor Benjamin Kaplan (1911-2010).

Professor Kaplan had a professional connection to the Trials: He served as a legal advisor at the International Military Tribunal (1945-1946). The letter featured below was written by Professor Kaplan to Telford Taylor who visited the Law School during the coordination of the transfer of Trial documents to Cambridge in early 1949.

As Chief of Counsel for the NMT, Taylor was keenly aware of the intrinsic value of the Trial documents. As early as 1948, before the Trials concluded, he expounded on the value of the documents for posterity, and, with a clear vision he sought the most suitable repositories for their permanent retention. In November of 1948 he wrote:

“Only a very limited number of complete sets of the testimony and documents of all the Nurnberg trials can be assembled. Each of these sets is very voluminous and requires a large amount of library space…It will require the support of at least several large institutions and the best efforts of many minds.”

-Telford Taylor, 1948.

Telford Taylor conceived of the preserved and accessible documentary record as a second and equally important phase of the Nuremberg Trials. The second phase is being fulfilled by collaborative efforts across Harvard University. The Harvard Law School Library’s Nuremberg Trials Project digitization work has paired with the Harvard Library Information and Technical Services Wikidata Project to best leverage the voluminous documents and realize the collaboration first envisioned by Telford Taylor. In 1978, decades after the original records were crated and shipped to the Harvard Law School Library, interest in their curation and potential for significant study remained strong among former Nuremberg staff. Drexel A. Sprecher (HLS, 1938), visited the Law Library in 1978 and offered suggestions on indexing and cataloging the collection.

(Source: Taylor, Telford. An Outline of the Research and Publication Possibilities of the War Crimes Trials, November 1948. Law School MSS Small Manuscript Collection. Harvard Law School Library.)