In the crimes section, written by Katie Jo Parris and edited by Karen Phinney, you will find a definition for the three different types of crimes that were written into the Tribunal's constitution as punishable under law. These three crimes were the basis for the indictments. The main resource used was Calvocoressi's Nuremberg, the Facts, the Law and the Consequences which provided the definitions and descriptions of what each crime entails. I also used Mielke, F. and A. Mitscherlich book The Death Doctors in order to clear up the misconception about medical experiments and their association with the Trials.
The Military Tribunal, in its attempt to punish the axis powers without reprimanding all of the people from those countries, was forced to develop a coherent set of laws that would bring punishment for those responsible for the atrocities that had occurred during the Holocaust. This daunting task was finally made tangible by the creation of three categories of punishable crimes. At the Nuremberg Trials, and as dictated in the Tribunal's Constitution, the following were those things in which one could be convicted:
§ War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment of deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity (Calvocoressi 45).
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