Editing Crimes against humanity (section)

===Nuremberg trials===
{{Main article|Nuremberg trials}}
[[File:Defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Nuremberg Trials. The defendants are in the dock. The main target of the prosecution was [[Hermann Göring]] (at the left edge on the first row of benches), considered to be the most important surviving official in the [[Nazi Germany|Third ''Reich'']] after [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler's]] death.]]

After the Second World War, the [[Nuremberg Charter]] set down the laws and procedures by which the Nuremberg trials were to be conducted. The drafters of this document were faced with the problem of how to charge the men at the Nuremberg Trial with committing [[the Holocaust]] and other state-sanctioned atrocities committed in Germany and German-allied states by the [[Nazi regime]]. As far as German law was concerned the men had committed no crime, but only followed orders. Not following orders however, in Nazi Germany, was a horribly punished crime. The problem in trying the individuals responsible for the German atrocities lay in the fact that, like in World War I, a traditional understanding of war crimes gave no provision for atrocities committed by a state on its own citizens or its allies.<ref name="JFS"/> Therefore, to solve this problem and close the loophole, Article 6 of the Charter was drafted to include not only traditional war crimes and [[crime against peace|crimes against peace]], but also ''crimes against humanity'', defined as:
{{blockquote|[[Murder]], extermination, [[Slavery|enslavement]], [[deportation]], and other [[wikt:inhumane|inhumane]] acts committed against any [[civilian]] population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.<ref>{{cite web |title=Nuremberg War Crimes Trial: The Charter Provisions|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judprov.asp |website=avalon.law.yale.edu}}</ref><ref name="black book">Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, [[Stéphane Courtois]], ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]: Crimes, Terror, Repression'', [[Harvard University Press]], 858 pages, {{ISBN|0-674-07608-7}}, p. 6.</ref>}}

Under this definition, crimes against humanity could be punished only insofar as they could be connected somehow to war crimes or crimes against peace.<ref name=Hilberg1145/> The jurisdictional limitation was explained by the American chief representative to the London Conference, [[Robert H. Jackson]], who pointed out that it "has been a general principle from time immemorial that the internal affairs of another government are not ordinarily our business". Thus, "it is justifiable that we interfere or attempt to bring retribution to individuals or to states only because the concentration camps and the deportations were in pursuance of a common plan or enterprise of making an unjust war".<ref name=Hilberg1145>{{cite book|last1=Hilberg|first1=Raul|title=The Destruction of the European Jews|date=2003|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven, CT|isbn=978-0300095579|edition=3rd|pages=1145–1147}}</ref> The judgement of the first Nuremberg trial found that "the policy of persecution, repression and murder of civilians" and persecution of Jews within Germany before the outbreak of war in 1939 were not crimes against humanity, because as "revolting and horrible as many of these crimes were, it has not been satisfactorily proved that they were done in execution of, or in connection with", war crimes or crimes against peace.<ref>"[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judlawre.asp Judgement : The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity]" contained in the [[Avalon Project]] archive at [[Yale Law School]].</ref> The [[subsequent Nuremberg trials]] were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 which included a revised definition of crimes against humanity with a wider scope.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wolfe |first1=Robert |title=Flaws in the Nuremberg Legacy: An Impediment to International War Crimes Tribunals' Prosecution of Crimes Against Humanity |journal=Holocaust and Genocide Studies |date=1 January 1998 |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=443–444 |doi=10.1093/hgs/12.3.434}}</ref>