Rosenberg, Alfred, 1893-1946

German national socialist leader.

Biographical/Historical Note

German national socialist leader.

Representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France organized the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in 1945 to try cases against twenty-four Nazi leaders: Martin Bormann, Karl Dönitz, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Fritzsche, Walter Funk, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Robert Ley, Konstantin von Neurath, Franz von Papen, Erich Räder, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Horace Greely Hjalmar Schacht, Baldur von Schirach, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, and Julius Streicher. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946 the IMT was convened, and verdicts were handed down on 30 September and 1 October 1946. The verdicts resulted in twelve death-by-hanging sentences, seven life terms, and three acquittals.

ROSENBERG, Alfred: Born in Revel (now Tallinn) in Estonia, Rosenberg was of Baltic German descent. He fled to Germany in 1918. There he joined the pan-Germanic and occult Thule Society. He spread his antisemitic and anti - Bolshevik views through such works as Die Spur der Juden im Wandel der Zeiten (The Track of the Jews through the Ages [1919]) and Unmoral im Talmud (Immorality in the Talmud [1919]) . In his popular work, Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century [1935]), he argued that race was the main influence that shaped all aspects of culture and that Teutonic honor and religion should replace the traditional Judeo-Christian emphasis on compassion and weakness. Impressing Hitler with his theories of a Judeo-Bolshevik Masonic world conspiracy, Rosenberg climbed the ranks of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. As the editor of the main Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter and head of the Foreign Policy Department, Rosenberg worked to systematize Nazi philosophy and ideology as head of the Foreign Policy Department. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced him to death. He died by hanging on 16 October 1946.