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(Wednesday, October 16, 1946, times of death ranged from approximately 1:10 am-2:59 a.m. CET; during the Nuremberg trials) — Ten leading Nazi officials were hanged early today for crimes committed under Adolf Hitler’s regime, including the persecution and murder of civilians, the deportation and enslavement of forced laborers, and the waging of aggressive war across Europe.

The executions, carried out by U.S. Army personnel in a gymnasium at Nuremberg Prison, followed the International Military Tribunal’s landmark trial of leading German political, military and administrative figures. The tribunal found the defendants guilty of various charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The proceedings exposed the machinery of Nazi persecution, including the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews, the plunder of occupied territories and the brutal treatment of civilian populations. The defendants’ responsibilities varied, from organizing Nazi propaganda and implementing racial persecution to directing military operations and administering occupied lands.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, 53, Hitler’s former foreign minister, was the first to be hanged. He was followed by Wilhelm Keitel, 64, former chief of the German armed forces’ high command; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, 43, former head of the Reich Security Main Office; and Alfred Rosenberg, 53, former minister for the occupied eastern territories and a leading Nazi racial ideologue.

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Kaltenbrunner, a senior SS official, was implicated in the Nazi security apparatus responsible for persecution, deportations and mass murder. Rosenberg was associated with the regime’s racial ideology and played a leading role in the administration and exploitation of occupied Soviet territories.

The other men executed were Hans Frank, 46, former governor-general of occupied Poland, where the German occupation brought mass persecution, deportations and the murder of Polish Jews; Wilhelm Frick, 69, former interior minister who helped establish the legal framework for Nazi racial persecution; and Julius Streicher, 61, the publisher of the violently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, whose propaganda helped incite hatred of Jews.

Also hanged were Fritz Sauckel, 51, who directed the forced recruitment and deportation of millions of foreign laborers for Germany’s wartime economy; Alfred Jodl, 56, a senior military operations chief involved in the planning and conduct of Germany’s war; and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, 54, former German commissioner in occupied Holland, where the occupation authorities persecuted and deported Dutch Jews.

The executions began shortly after 1 a.m. The condemned men were taken individually to the execution chamber, where U.S. Army personnel carried out the sentences by hanging.

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Hermann Göring, Hitler’s former deputy and the highest-ranking Nazi official among the defendants, had also been sentenced to death. He committed suicide in his cell Tuesday night, hours before the scheduled executions. His death left 10 men to face the gallows.

Martin Bormann, Hitler’s former party secretary, also was sentenced to death but was tried in absentia because his whereabouts were unknown. He had disappeared during the fall of Berlin in May 1945, and his fate had not been established at the time of the trial. He was believed to have been killed while fleeing Soviet troops, possibly by suicide, on a bridge near Lehrter station in Berlin on May 2, 1945.

The tribunal, established by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and France, opened in November 1945 and delivered its verdicts earlier this month. Its judgments established that leading officials could be held individually accountable for crimes committed in the name of a state, rejecting the contention that official position or obedience to orders automatically excused criminal conduct.

The hangings marked the end of the tribunal’s proceedings against the surviving defendants sentenced to death, though further prosecutions of Nazi officials and other perpetrators of wartime atrocities are expected to continue.