The Nuremberg Laws and National Sovereignty

Since the end of the Second World War, international states have agreed on the importance of basic human rights. Despite the widespread acceptance of human rights in theory, in practice proponents faced a dilemma. Should the importance of human rights outweigh that of national sovereignty? National sovereignty is the idea that nation states have a right to exist and be free from interference. In short, governments can do whatever they wish, to whomever they wish, inside their own borders. That belief was challenged in the second half of the twentieth century. People began to make arguments for human rights of individual people over the rights of governments. Human rights and the international laws that protect those rights are direct challenges to national sovereignty. Two events in one city in southern Germany show how World War II changed how people thought about national sovereignty and human rights.

On September 15, 1935, the Nazi Party staged a huge rally in Nuremberg, Germany. There, the Nazi leadership enacted a set of laws known as the Nuremberg Laws. They singled out Germany’s Jewish population in the effort to create a homogenous society. The laws came from Nazi ideology, an extreme form of eugenics, and social Darwinism.¹ Such ideas were popular with imperialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Nuremberg Laws defined German Jews not by their religious beliefs but by their ancestry. They took away their citizenship. They also placed restrictions on where they could work and who they could marry.

Adolf Hitler used the Nuremberg Laws to portray Jews as the enemy of the German people. The laws provided the legal framework for purging Germany society of anyone the Nazis felt was not a “pure” German. They also set the stage for the atrocities of the Holocaust. Within ten years, more than 6 million Jews were murdered, and the Nazis put to death millions of disabled, black, Roma, and gay people. Anyone who did not fit their racial and social ideology was a target. The Nuremberg Laws enforced Hitler’s belief that he could do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted inside his borders.

The United Nations and the paradox of human rights

After the war ended in 1945, the victorious allied powers wanted to establish a peaceful world order. They proceeded to debate the role of human rights in ensuring world peace. Nazi crimes convinced them to take international action to prevent such acts and wars from happening again. They were inspired in part by the 1941 Atlantic Charter and President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech that same year. Human rights advocates now argued that international recognition of human rights was necessary to ensure peace and security. Debates about human rights were central at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. There, the Allies met and formed the United Nations. Its Charter was signed by 50 countries in June of 1945.

The UN Charter contains a fundamental problem, though. The introduction and very first article state a “faith in fundamental human rights.” The very next part of the Charter, Article 2, guarantees national sovereignty. It forbids the United Nations from getting involved in any matters “within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” These two articles present a paradox (contradiction): an international organization like the United Nations cannot prevent or punish human rights abuses by governments if those governments are allowed to do whatever they wish inside their national borders.

The Nuremberg trials started just five months after the signing of the United Nations Charter. They tried to address this paradox. In a remarkable display of cooperation, the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France agreed to bring the surviving leadership of the Nazi party to trial. (Hitler had killed himself that April.) The trials helped take ideas about human rights and turn them into formal international laws. It was the first time in history that the international community prosecuted the leaders of a major power.

The Nuremberg Trials

Held from 1945 to 1949, the Nuremberg Trials consisted of a total of thirteen trials of Nazi officials. They took place in the same city where, a decade earlier, Hitler had declared the Nuremberg Laws. The trials sought to hold Germany’s leaders accountable for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The nature of these crimes, the Allies argued, required an international solution.

The Nuremberg trials were something new. They represented the idea that states and national leaders could be punished, not just for aggression toward other nations (as had been the case after World War I), but also for violating the rights of their own citizens. For their part, the German leaders on trial defended their actions on the grounds of national sovereignty. The high-ranking Nazi official Hermann Goering insisted, “That was our right! We were a sovereign state and that was strictly our business.” But the Nuremberg trials rejected that principle, and Goering was convicted and sentenced to death. He committed suicide in his jail cell the night before his execution.

International Law and human rights

The Nuremberg trials importantly made the case for a set of rules that take precedent over (are more important than) the laws of any one nation state. This set of rules is known as “international law.” International law sets expectations for how nation states interact with each other. It is made up of both formal treaties and informal sets of principles.

The Nuremberg Principles were one outcome of the Nuremberg trials. These seven rules explain what a war crime is. They also define things like “crimes against humanity,” and make it clear that “I was just following orders” is not a defense for committing war crimes. The Nuremberg Principles were part of a broader set of documents and understandings. Together, they created concepts of what international law and human rights are. Human rights historians credit the Nuremberg trials with laying the foundations for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). They also guided the development of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). They continue to form the basis of international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

The Nuremberg trials were also important to the development of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century. Without international jurisdiction over human rights abuses within national borders, there could be no global standard for human rights. This is the key difference between human rights and civil rights. Civil rights are rights you are entitled to because you are a citizen of a country. The rights of French citizens differ from the rights of Chinese citizens, for example. Human rights, on the other hand, are rights that we have because we are human beings.

The historian Lynn Hunt argues that human rights require three interlocking qualities: “Rights must be natural (inherent in human beings); equal (the same for everyone); and universal (applicable everywhere).” Theoretically, human rights do not depend on what country you are a citizen of.

A victor’s peace and power over principles

The Nuremberg trials inspired new understandings about human rights. People around the world have used them to challenge and protect themselves from the local authority of nation states. Individuals and groups may ask international organizations to bring charges against governments they accuse of violating their human rights. The European Court of Human Rights has delivered more than 10,000 judgements since 1959. Nuremberg also set the model for the International Criminal Court (ICC), created in 1998.

Many politicians proved reluctant to take stronger action in support of human rights. Several senators argued that international agreements like the UDHR would threaten the independence of the United States. They feared such treaties could force the country to answer to the UN.

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady to former President Franklin Roosevelt, led the committee that wrote the UDHR. She wanted a binding treaty that would bring human rights firmly into international law. President Harry Truman, however, instructed Roosevelt to reject any binding treaties. He asked her instead to draft a non-binding resolution (declaration or oath).

The Universal Declaration is the most translated document in history. However, after its drafting, representatives of the British Empire ran a secret campaign at the United Nations. They limited the document’s translation into the languages of Britain’s colonies to keep it from being widely read by colonial subjects. The United States and Great Britain had just fought a war and held trials that confronted Nazi crimes and imperialism. Yet, both countries feared being held accountable by the United Nations.

Despite these limitations, the Nuremberg trials changed the world. Their rulings offered a check on even the world’s strongest powers. For instance, in 1946, 1947, and 1951, several African American rights organizations appealed to the United Nations. They sought UN support in confronting racial inequality and segregation in the United States.

The Nuremberg trials led to treaties and documents supporting international commitments to human rights. They did not end the principle of national sovereignty. Still, human rights advocates have used international law to challenge national governments. They have refused to accept the idea that governments can do whatever they want inside their own borders.

1 Theories of Social Darwinism emerged in the nineteenth century. These theories attempted to take biological theories and apply them to society, especially the notion of “survival of the fittest.” Social Darwinism has been discredited as bad science and for its racist undertones.