A glance at the defendants at the Nuremberg tribunal and their fates.
— Hermann Goering, commander of air force and departments of fanatical SS elite forces. Escaped the gallows by committing suicide.
— Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. Arrested after flying to Scotland in 1941 in what some have speculated was a secret peace effort. Sentenced to life imprisonment; committed suicide in Berlin’s Spandau prison in 1987.
— Alfred Jodl, senior military official and strategic adviser to Hitler. Hanged.
— Ernst Kaltenbrunner, high-ranking SS official, headed central Nazi intelligence organization and several concentration camps. Hanged.
— Wilhelm Keitel, commander of armed forces. Hanged.
— Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister, negotiated deal to divide Baltic countries and Poland with Soviet Union. Hanged.
— Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi party philosopher and ruler of occupied territories in Eastern Europe. Hanged.
— Fritz Sauckel, headed slave labor program for German factories. Hanged.
— Julius Streicher, anti-Jewish propagandist. Hanged.
— Hans Frank, leader of occupied Poland. Hanged.
— Wilhelm Frick, interior minister. Hanged.
— Arthur Seyss-Inquart, instrumental in takeover of Austria, later gauleiter of occupied Netherlands. Hanged.
— Erich Raeder, head of German navy to 1943. Life in prison. Released in 1955 due to illness. Died in 1960.
— Baldur von Schirach, head of Hitler Youth. Twenty years. Released in 1966, died in 1974.
— Albert Speer, minister of armaments. Twenty years. Released in 1966, died in 1981.
— Karl Doenitz, head of German navy from 1943. Became president of Germany after Hitler’s death. Ten years.
— Walter Funk, minister of economics. Life imprisonment.
— Konstantin von Neurath, protector of Bohemia and Moravia, resigned in 1943. Fifteen years.
Acquitted:
Hans Fritzsche, head of news division of propaganda ministry.
Franz von Papen, German chancellor in 1932 and Hitler’s vice-chancellor from 1933, later ambassador to Turkey.
Hjalmar Schacht, prewar president of national bank. Acquitted.
Martin Bormann, Nazi party secretary, was sentenced to death in absentia; it was later thought he had died in Berlin in the final days of the war.