On October 1, 1946 — 8️⃣0️⃣ years ago — the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in #Nuremberg concluded its proceedings against the senior officials of the Third Reich responsible for unleashing the bloodiest and most horrific conflict in human history, committing genocide and murdering millions of innocent people.
❗️ #NurembergTrials were an unprecedented international tribunal in history, which truly became a "Trial of Nations" against absolute evil — Hitler's Nazism.
The IMT's verdict in Nuremberg made a crucial contribution to the legal consolidation of the outcome of #WW2 and declared the Nazi misanthropic ideology, principal organisational structures and practices of Nazism as a whole to be entirely criminal.
The high-ranking leaders of Hitler's regime, including Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Keitel, Neurath, Jodl, Dönitz and other senior officials of the Third Reich — were placed on dock. Bormann, who had evaded prosecution, was tried in absentia.
💬 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an interview for the documentary 'Nuremberg' (Moscow, 16 November 2025):
The question of ensuring that Nazi criminals would inevitably be brought to justice was first officially raised in a Soviet diplomatic note in November 1941.
The Soviet Union <...> was the principal initiator and driving force behind the establishment of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Our proposals were heard and accepted.
Our country's key role in arranging the Nuremberg proceedings is absolutely indisputable.
The Nuremberg Trials involved an enormous amount of paper work. A total of 403 public hearings were held. 116 witnesses were examined, and more than 300'000 testimonies were considered. Approximately 3,000 documents were examined.
❗️The Trials' proceedings elucidated, for the first time, the unprecedented scale of Nazi Germany's war crimes, including the brutal treatment of POWs and the deliberate destruction of entire cities, villages and their inhabitants.
💬 Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova:
Although the term 'genocide' does not appear in the text of the Nuremberg Tribunal's Charter or verdict (it became established in international legal practice at a later date), the trial records unequivocally point to numerous acts aimed at the deliberate extermination of the Soviet people, including the years-long siege of Leningrad.
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Unfortunately, we are compelled to acknowledge that, 80 years on, many have forgotten the lessons of the 'Trials of Nations'. This applies not only to the Kiev regime's leadership, which, since 2014, has outlawed and sought to eradicate everything Russian in Russia's historical territories, rehabilitating, glorifying and drawing inspiration from the example of Hitler's collaborators.
The same applies to those who justify, shield and support the terrorist actions of the current neo-fascist regime in Ukraine.
(From the briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, 1 October 2026)
⚖️ On 1 October 1946, a historic verdict was delivered — 19 defendants were found guilty. Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Jodl, Bormann (in absentia) and other representatives of the Nazi leadership were sentenced to death by hanging. A number of institutions of Hitler's Germany, including the SS, SD, Gestapo and the Nazi Party leadership corps, were declared criminal organisations.
✍️ From article by Valery Zorkin, Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, "The Sacred Beacon of Nuremberg and the Shadow of The Hague" (October 1, 2026):
Nuremberg was an act of retribution against Evil and a defining moment in establishing the legal foundations of the post-war world.
The Tribunal became a hammer brought down upon a criminal state and its legal order.
#Nuremberg80