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After the 1945 Nuremburg Trials by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, British authorities established British Military War Crimes Courts to prosecute Nazis and others for war crimes in Europe. Parallel prosecutions were held by the US in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, and other prosecutions were carried out by French and Russian courts, and by national courts in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and many other European countries. More than 500 trials were held by British courts in Germany (Lüneburg, Hamburg, Essen, Borken, Elten, Hannover, Brunswick, Helmstedt, Burgsteinfurt, and Wupperthal), the Netherlands (Almelo), Austria (Klagenfurt) and Italy (Bari, Rome, Venice and Padua). Of the 524 cases heard before British courts that were reported to the United Nations War Crimes Commission, 27 were included in the 15 volumes of the Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals selected and prepared by the Commission before it was disbanded in March 1948.
The British Military Court was established under a Royal Warrant dated 14 June 1945 (Army Order 81/45) to bring prosecutions for "violations of the laws and usages of war"; that is, war crimes. The Royal Warrant did not provide jurisdiction to deal with the two other categories of crimes identified in the Nuremberg principles as punishable under international law: crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Jurisdiction for the British trials was also based on the fact that the UK, France, the US and the USSR, as Allied Powers occupying Germany, had assumed "supreme authority" over Germany under the 1945 Berlin Declaration. The UK asserted the right to try German nationals for crimes of any kind as part of its duties in administering the British Occupation zone of Germany. In addition, the UK asserted the general doctrine of universality of jurisdiction over war crimes set out in the Nuremberg principles, and that the United Kingdom has a direct interest in punishing the perpetrators of crimes if the victim was a national of an ally engaged in a common struggle against a common enemy.
Commissions were also established for the trial of war criminals in Wupperthal and Hamburg, like the courts established by US authorities in Dachau, under Law No.10 (punishment of persons guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity) of the Allied Control Council, made on 10 December 1945. This Law was given effect in the British Zone by the creation of Control Commission Courts, established by Ordinance No.68 of the British Zone on 1 January 1947, replacing the Military Government Courts established under Ordinance No.2 of General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force on 18 September 1944. As cooperation between Allies became more difficult, the Allied Control Council issued Directive No.38 on 12 October 1946, which allowed the four occupation governments discretion as to treatment of persons suspected of war crimes arrested by them, including the right to grant amnesty.
After Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch died in Hamburg in 1948 before he could be prosecuted, and a decision was taken not to prosecute Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt and Generaloberst Adolf Strauss on medical grounds, the last British war crimes trial in Germany was that of Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein in 1949. Von Manstein was the only exception to the announcement made by Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, of a Cabinet decision not to prosecute any more war criminals after 31 August 1948, with any remaining cases to be dealt with by domestic German criminal courts.
By October 1949, British military tribunals had tried 937 people in the British zone in Germany on war crimes charges, convicting 677, of whom 230 were sentenced to death and 174 executed. Another 447 were sentenced to custodial sentences. These figures do not include the trials were conducted before Control Commission Courts for crimes against humanity committed against Allied nationals, and before German domestic courts for crimes committed against German nationals or stateless persons. None of the death sentences passed after the end of 1946 were carried out. Some officers were transferred for trial in Italy, where the trials often turned out to be more favourable to the defendants. The most senior SS commanders in Italy, Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff and Himmler's personal representative in Italy, SS Standartenführer Eugen Dollmann, escaped prosecution.
Many of the defendants who were sentenced to death were hanged by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint, who travelled to Germany and Austria 25 times to execute 200 war criminals. Others, such as Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, were executed by firing squad.
Other prosecutions were carried out by British Military Courts in the Far East.