What types of Nazi documents were used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials?
Executive summary
The prosecution at Nuremberg built its case largely on documentary evidence produced by the Nazi state itself — a vast, heterogeneous archive that included official orders, administrative files, photographs and films, and commemorative albums — supplemented by witness testimony and Allied-captured audiovisual material [1] [2] [3]. While thousands of documents and films formed the backbone of the evidentiary record, the presentation was also shaped by practical constraints and political aims, and at times prosecutors struggled to connect indiscriminate documentary piles to individual defendants [1] [4] [5].
1. Official state records, orders and correspondence: the bureaucracy on the stand
Primary evidence at Nuremberg included internal government records such as directives, orders, minutes and correspondence from Nazi ministries and agencies — the kind of documents that demonstrated planning, authorization and coordination of policies from the top down — because prosecutors deliberately sought “the Germans’ own words” to prove intent and conspiracy [2] [6] [7].
2. Concentration camp administration, transport lists and personnel files: the mechanics of murder
Exhibits included administrative camp files, transport manifests and personnel records that tied deportations and camp operations to state structures; these papers, together with testimony from camp officials like Rudolf Höss, documented the functioning of extermination sites such as Auschwitz [2] [8] [7].
3. Photographs and film footage: audiovisual evidence compiled from liberation and German sources
Motion picture evidence — both Allied liberation footage of camps and German-produced films — was used heavily and shockingly in court, sometimes interrupting proceedings with its impact; the IMT relied on edited films such as “Nazi Concentration Camps” and raw motion-picture holdings to present visual proof of atrocities [3] [9] [10].
4. Commemorative albums and propaganda records: the Stroop Report and the Nazis’ own documentation of operations
Some of the most damning single exhibits were German-produced commemorative records like the Stroop Report — an SS album chronicling the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in words and photographs — which prosecutors entered precisely because they came from perpetrators’ own documentation [2] [1].
5. Economic, logistical and technical documentation: finance, production and movement
Prosecutors also introduced economic records, armaments and logistics files, and engineering or construction papers to show how the Nazi state mobilized resources for war and reprisals; these documents underpinned counts concerning crimes against peace and war crimes by linking policies to material implementation [11] [12].
6. Interrogation records, affidavits and witness testimony integrated with documents
Documentary evidence was coupled tightly with interrogations, witness statements and live testimony; transcripts and interrogation files — now preserved in the Blue, Red and other series — formed an integrated record so that papers could be explained and anchored to specific actors [2] [12] [7].
7. The scale and provenance: captured, assembled and published records
Allied armies seized millions of German records at war’s end and prosecutors submitted tens of thousands of documents and exhibits to the tribunal, with some counts supported by hundreds of specific documentary exhibits (the prosecution presented hundreds of documents and the published trial record runs to dozens of volumes) [1] [13] [7].
8. Limitations, presentation problems and political context
The evidentiary project was not flawless: some German records had been destroyed in bombing or retreat, and historians note that disorganized or indiscriminate presentation sometimes hampered efforts to prove overarching conspiracy charges — a problem acknowledged in contemporary accounts of the American prosecution [1] [4]. Moreover, Allied authorities explicitly used the documentary record for broader purposes — denazification, public education and political messaging — which colored choices about which photographs and posters to publicize [5].
Conclusion: documentary evidence as historical refutation and courtroom proof
Taken together, the Nuremberg exhibits — bureaucratic orders and correspondence, camp files and transport lists, personnel and economic records, films, photographs and commemorative Nazi albums like the Stroop Report — created a dense, largely self-authored evidentiary web that has remained central to both legal judgments and the historical refutation of Holocaust denial, even as scholars note gaps, presentation challenges and the political uses of the record [1] [2] [3] [5].