The Nuremberg Trials took place after the Second World War and aimed to convict various leading members of the Nazi Party for the crimes against humanity that they had committed. The most famous of these trials was the first one to take place and was given the title the ‘Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal’. This tried 24 of the most important and often nototious leaders of Nazi Germany including the commander of the Luftwaffe, Herman Goering and the Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess.

The three main allied powers and France provided one judge, an alternate and prosecutors in order to decide upon the outcome of the trial. Various sentences were handed out ranging from full acquittals to death by hanging.

The Spoken Word has various recordings from the actual trial of the major war criminals in Nuremberg including the opening and closing speeches, the pleas of the defendants and the reading out of the sentences. This is another important snapshot of history from the Spoken Word repository.

• Opening Statement by Lord Chief Justice Lawrence
• Pleas of the Defendants
• Closing speech by Sir Hartley Shawcross
• The President of the Tribunal, Lord Chief Justice Lawrence, pronounces the sentences and reads the dissenting Russian opinion

‘What is so ghastly is not so much the individual acts of barbarism that take place in SS camps but the gradual breakdown of civilisation that happens when human beings are hearded like animals behind barbed wire’

Richard Dimbleby, Bergen-Belsen Nazi Concentration Camp, 15th April 1945.

On 15th April 1945 the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp near Celle, a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is estimated that over 50,000 prisoners died in the site between 1939 and 1945. When the camp was liberated the British troops found 60,000 prisoners inside and a further 13,000 unburied corpses lying around the camp unburied.

Richard Dimbleby was one of the first journalists to enter Bergen-Belsen with the British Troops and this ‘Collection Highlight’ featured report is a testament to one of the most poignant historical events that has ever occurred. Dimbleby recounts a first hand view of the liberation that is obviously both moving to the listener and to the reporter.

• Bergen-Belsen Nazi Concentration Camp, An Eye Witness Account by Richard Dimbleby