the evidentiary basis of the subsequent nuremberg trials is quite amusing. prosecutor says USA captured 250 tons of german documents during and after ww2. this could be between 300 and 400 million documents (think about that), which were shipped back to the usa and analyzed by german-speaking jews. those which seemed worth of use in the war crimes trials were shipped back to germany where the prosecution sorted them and created "document books" for use in the trial. defense attorneys had access to "85 to 90%" of the documents selected in this way by the prosecution.

here is the chain of custody
1. german document, written in german, captured, sent to washington
2. a copy of #1 is typed out on a typewriter
3. an english copy is translated from #2
4. a german translation is made of #3 (sometimes)
5. a photostat (an early xerox) is made of #3 and #4 as necessary

so in court the documents presented by the prosecution are typically #5, which bear no actual signatures, no place of origin, no history, they are "a copy of a copy of a copy" and sometimes a re-re-translation. sometimes a part of the document-book will be scattered pages (page 3, page 15, pages 21-24, page 55) from other documents of which the remaining content is unknown.

hans laternser for the defense beat up the prosecution on this so bad that they cried and begged the tribunal to let it slide, since this is what was done in the main NMT trial anyway.