ABSTRACT
Before the end of 1943, Allied leaders had begun to discuss the fate of Nazi leaders once the war was over. Allied opinions divided over the use of trials or courts-martial with summary executions. By the summer of 1945, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union had agreed to pursue “legal forms” and hold a trial of the major criminals. The charges against them were gathered under four chief headings: common conspiracy, or the use of government power to plan foreign aggression; crimes against peace, or the planning and waging of wars of aggression; war crimes, or the murder of civilians and prisoners of war, the conscription of slave labor, and the wanton destruction of cities and private property; and crimes against humanity, or the deliberate extermination of people on political, racial, or religious grounds.
