Three of the defendants sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials– Nuremberg, Germany, 1945/6

Right to left: Alfred Rosenberg – Minister for Occupied Areas in the East; Hans Frank, Governor of the Generalgouvernment in occupied Poland; and Alfred Jodl – Head of Operations of the General Staff. The reactions of the defendants to their indictments differed. There were those, headed by Hermann Göring, who rejected the authority of the court to try them, and stood by the claim that all their actions were with the authority and for the good of the German people. There were those who denied their personal responsibility and claimed that they just carried out orders; and there were those like Hans Frank, who expressed remorse. A well-known saying of Hans Frank from the trial was: “A thousand years will pass, and the guilt of Germany will never be obliterated.”