1. Welcome to the Museum of
World War II
Artifact 22
Museum Entrance
Science & Technology
Institutions
Literature
Arts
Nuremberg
Trials
Curator’s
Offices

2. Madison Lee & Micaela Imsdahl
Curator’s Office
Madison Lee & Micaela Imsdahl
Welcome to our WWII Virtual Museum! This was created for the sole purpose of helping to inform you about World War II as a whole, as well as some of the smaller topics that fall under it. Our primary focus of investigation was the Nuremberg War Trials, and there is a room designated to the Trials in the back of the museum. Also in our museum, we have rooms for Art, Technology/Science, Literature, and Institutions during the WWII era.
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Note: Virtual museums were first introduced by educators at Keith Valley Middle School in Horsham, Pennsylvania. This template was designed by Dr. Christy Keeler. View the Educational Virtual Museums website for more information on this instructional technique.

3. Art Room
Room 1
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4. Room 2 Institutions Room United Nations Mental Ward Insitutions
Women’s Airforce Service Pilots
United Nations
Imprisonment Institutions
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5. Science and Technology Room
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6. Literature and Documents
Room 4
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7. Nuremberg War Trials Room
Nuremberg Judges
Nuremberg Court Room
Nazi Defendants
Artifact 21
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8. Cartoon
During the Nuremburg Trials many cartoons were made of the Nazi’s on trial. They were about how awful and terrible they were. The cartoons called the Nazi’s names most of the times and reading the cartoons it was obvious that the people wanted the Nazi’s to hang. This cartoon for example shows three of the Nazi’s on trial, they are drawn crudely and stuck up. Many other cartoons about the Nuremburg Trials have the Nazi’s portrayed as evil and low people,(which most people believed they were because of all the horrible things they did to Jews). This is just one of the many cartoons for the Nuremburg Trials.
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9. Poster
During the Nuremburg trails many posters were made, they were kind of advertising the trials and what should happen to the Nazi’s that were on trial. For example, this one states the date of the upcoming trial and how the Nazi’s are going to learn a harsh lesson that day. These posters were hung up everywhere around the area so that people would be made aware of the circumstances. This poster is for the first Nuremburg Trial, so it is a very old one.
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10. Entertainment
After the Nuremburg Trials many books, movies, plays, shows, etc. were made. They taught people who hadn’t seen the Nuremburg Trials what they were about and the events leading up to the trials. These movies along with the other things made about the Nuremburg trials included the actual videos shown at the trials. They have been shown all across the world. This one here is a very popular one.
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11. Newspaper
Lots of newspapers were made about the Nuremburg Trials because the people were very interested to find out how the trials were going and what the fat of the Nazi’s were going to be. The people, (for the most part), hated the Nazi’s and wanted them to be found guilty and sentenced to death or jail. So the newspapers were more than happy to keep up with the latest trials and inform the people of the progress in it.
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12. Information Citation:
United Nations
The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. The growing Second World War became the real impetus for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original U.N. Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.
The principles of the U.N. Charter were first formulated at the San Francisco Conference, which assembled on April 25, The conference created a structure for a new international organization that was to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,…to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
Two other important objectives described in the Charter were respecting the ideologies of equal rights and self-determination of all peoples (initially directed at smaller nations now vulnerable to being swallowed up by the Communist behemoths emerging from the war) and international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems around the world.
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13. Women’s Airforce Service Pilots
From 1943 to 1944, the Women Airforce Service Pilots flew more than 60 million miles across the United States chartering soldiers, test-flying planes and conducting training exercises during World War II. There were 1,102 female pilots.
Information Credits
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Picture Credits

14. Mental Ward Institutions
In September of 1942, Warren Sawyer, a 23-year-old conscientious objector, reported for his volunteer assignment as an attendant at a state mental hospital. The young Quaker was one of thousands of pacifists who had refused to fight and instead were assigned to work in places few outsiders got to see — places like Philadelphia State Hospital, best known as Byberry.
"Byberry's the last stop on the bus here in Philadelphia," Sawyer recalls. "Any young man on the bus, other people knew that we were COs working at the hospital. And they'd make different kinds of remarks, supposedly talking to each other, but hoping that we hear. And you know: 'Yellowbellies, slackers.' "
Those slurs were harsh. But not nearly as harsh as what awaited the young men inside the gates of the chaotic and overcrowded hospital for people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities.
The young pacifists would be changed by what they saw in places like Byberry, and then become a force for change themselves.
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15. Imprisonment Institutions
For seven of the nineteen of the guilty Nazi defendants, they were sentenced to prison time, some for life, while others only had a matter of years. For Rudolph Hess, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Spandau prison. Conditions were harsh and the outside appeared to look like a medieval castle. Hess died on August 17, 1987, still in prison.
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16. Simultaneous Interpretation System
Simultaneous interpretation was new technology that was invaluable in the success of the Nuremberg Trials, since the defendants, judges, and prosecutors all spoke different languages, mainly English, French, German, and Russian. Interpreters could translate and distribute testimonies in these languages all at once. The trial was able to proceed at a rate of 60 words a minute. Each language had 12 translators, 6 interpreters, and 9 stenographers representing them.
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17. Headphones
These are similar to the headphones used by indicted war criminals and judges to hear the testimonies, verdicts , and sentences during the Nuremberg trials. Many different languages were spoken at the trial and the headphones allowed each person to hear the trial in their native language.
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18. Cyanide Capsule
This container represents the poison that Hermann Goering used to commit suicide during the Nuremberg Trials. He was convicted of all four crimes during the trials and was sentenced to death, but he escaped his punishment by poisoning himself.
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19. Films from German Concentration Camps
There were films shown as evidence at the Nuremberg trials that included footage from various concentration camps. When it was shown, it exposed previously unknown horrors and evils and was a strong testament Nazi officials and other defendants. It was very upsetting for many people at the trial. It depicted the terrible conditions in the camp, emaciated people, murdered people, and other horrific elements.
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20. Salvaged Documents
During the Nuremburg trials many documents were taken from the concentration camps and the official buildings where the Nazis resided. Many of these documents told of the murders in the camps and the stages/plans of the Nazis for the prisoners in the camp. Although, most documents were burned or destroyed from the Allied powers bombs at least 3,000 tons incriminating documents where salvaged in 1945 and presented in court.
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21. The Origins
This book documents how the trials were able to break the language barrier by having interpreters come together and allowed the Nuremburg Trials to take place and justice to be made.
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22. Doctors and Medical Records
Medical records and descriptions of patients who lived through the camps and were experimented on by the doctors at the camps were presented in the trials to help prosecute the Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity.
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23. Individuals
Individual testimonies and written eye witness accounts helped to bring more evidence during the Nuremburg trials. On July 13, 1942, Hermann Gabe, a German engineer witness the deportation of Jews into Rowne ghetto in Volhynia. Hermann Gabe’s description of what happened was a great piece of evidence that helped the persecution provide an unwavering case.
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24. Linked citation goes here
Defense Attorneys
At the trials there were 20 main defense lawyers, chosen by the defendants. Those 20 lawyers were supported by a staff of about 70 assistants and other attorneys. Most of the defense attorneys were German. Below are some of the main lawyers names: Georg Fröschmann, Heinz Fritz , Otto Kranzbühler , Otto Pannenbecker, Alfred Thoma, Kurt Kauffmann, Hans Laternser, Franz Exner, Alfred Seidl, Otto Stahmer , Walter Ballas, Hans Flächsner , Günther von Rohrscheidt, Egon Kubuschok, Robert Servatius , Fritz Sauter, Walther Funk, Hanns Marx, Otto Nelte, and Herbert Kraus.
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25. Nazi Defendents
The indicted include Hermann Goering (Hitler's heir designate), Rudolf Hess (deputy leader of the Nazi party), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm Keitel (head of the armed forces), Wilhelm Frick (minister of the interior), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (head of security forces), Hans Frank (governor-general of occupied Poland), Konstantin von Neurath (governor of Bohemia and Moravia), Erich Raeder (head of the navy), Karl Doenitz (Raeder's successor), Alfred Jodl (armed forces command), Alfred Rosenberg (minister for occupied eastern territories), Baldur von Schirach (head of the Hitler Youth), Julius Streicher (radical Nazi antisemitic publisher), Fritz Sauckel (head of forced-labor allocation), Albert Speer (armaments minister), and Arthur Seyss-Inquart (commissioner for the occupied Netherlands). Martin Bormann (Hitler's adjutant) is to be tried in absentia.
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26. Nuremberg Trials Court Room
The Nuremberg War Trials took place in Nuremberg Germany between 1945 and 1946, where judges from the Allied Powers – Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States – presided over the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals. Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death, 7 were given a few years to life in prison. Only three defendants were declared not guilty.
The judges were as follows on October 6, 1945:
Robert H. Jackson (United States)
Francois de Menthon (France)
Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union)
Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)
The defendants were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and against humanity. The trials lasted for about 2 years. There was more than one session of the Nuremberg War Trials because not all of the war criminals appeared in court for the first trials. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide before he had the chance to appear in court. Others fled Germany to live abroad. Simon Wiesenthal, a Nazi-hunter, located Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann had helped plan and carry out the deportations of millions of Jews, and was brought to trial in Israel. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in 1962.
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27. Nuremberg Trials: Judges
At the Nuremberg Trials, there were four judges, each representing a different country which are among the Allied Powers.
On October 6, 1945, the four chief prosecutors were:
Robert H. Jackson (United States)
Francois de Menthon (France)
Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union)
Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)
In other words, the prosecutors were the US, France, Soviet Union, and Great Britain.
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28. Linked citation goes here
Artifact 21
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29. Linked citation goes here
Artifact 22
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30. Palace of Justice
The Nuremberg Trials were held in this building, which was one of the only intact buildings in the whole city. It was chosen in place of Berlin. Nuremberg was also ironically the same city in which racial laws against Jews were made.
sites.google.com
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31. Nuremberg Courtroom
The Holocaust was such an unfathomably horrific, evil event. After the end of WII, humanity had to find some way to make the Third Reich’s members pay for their crimes. They’re solution to this difficult problem – the Nuremberg Trials. Some people say that the Nuremberg Trials were run poorly, however it is safe to everyone agrees that something had to be done to punish the Nazis for their crimes. At the time, the Nuremberg Trials were the best solution. The legacy of these trials is that they “set precedents: in international law, in documentation of the historical record-in seeking some beginning, however inadequate, in the search for justice.”
tripreporter.co.uk
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