Nuremberg at 75: Revisiting the International Military Tribunal and Its Lessons

Abstract:This essay examines the lessons and the legacy of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) of 1945-1946 from a new angle. It challenges the myth that Nuremberg was fully grounded in Western liberal ideas about justice and the law, and argues that Nuremberg would not have happened in the first place had it not been for the insistence of the Soviet Union. The tremendous Soviet contribution to the IMT is considered, as well as the many ways in which Soviet participation threatened to undermine the IMT's legitimacy. The essay also uses Soviet archives and the Soviet experience to tell a sometimes surprising story of the Nuremberg Trials as a whole. It argues that the Nuremberg Trials became an early front of the Cold War—and that understanding Nuremberg as such gives us a necessary perspective on the post-war movement for human rights.