The Americans succeeded in having the "Trial of the Major War Criminals" held in their occupation zone. The intact court buildings and adjacent prison tipped the scale in Nuremberg's favour. The photo shows the defendants dock in Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. It was the first time that representatives of a state were held personally accountable for war crimes before an international military tribunal.

Albert Speer, the architect responsible for the buildings on the rally grounds and later armaments minister, received the comparatively mild sentence of twenty years in prison. Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi weekly, "The Stormtrooper", was sentenced to death for inciting anti-Semitic violence.