Hitler's Generals on Trial

By prosecuting war crimes, the Nuremberg trials sought to educate West Germans about their criminal past, provoke their total rejection of Nazism, and convert them to democracy. More than all of the other Nuremberg proceedings, the High Command Case against fourteen of Hitler’s generals embraced these goals, since the charges—the murder of POWs, the terrorizing of civilians, the extermination of Jews—also implicated the 20 million ordinary Germans who had served in the military. This trial was t