Over 24 major Nazi war criminals were tried at the Nuremberg Trials following World War II. Additionally, thousands of Nazis were also tried in various other trials for their roles in the Holocaust and other war crimes.

After the war ended, many of the surviving leaders were put on trial, famously at Nuremberg. First the highest ranking political and military leaders of Nazi Germany, like Goering, Speer, Hess, Jodl and Doenitz were tried. Most of them were executed after being found guilty of various war crimes, although some simply received lengthy prison sentences. After this first major trial, there were a series of lesser trials against judges, doctors, businessmen, other lower ranking military leaders, and so forth. Most of these subsequent trials were to get the people who had carried out or benefited from the Holocaust.

Additionally, in countries where Nazi Germany had occupied and done horrible things to the people, these people occasionally attacked Germans (and not just Nazi-linked ones) in retaliation for the horrors they had suffered. This was especially pronounced in Eastern Europe, in the countries liberated by the Soviet Union. Thousands of captured German soldiers (again, not just Nazis) died in Soviet labor camps after the war. There were also violent attacks in countries like Yugoslavia and Poland- I once met a woman of German descent who had to flee a town in northern Yugoslavia after the war due to the reprisals.