The Soviets at Nuremberg

International Law, Propaganda, and the Making of the Postwar Order

Bibliographic Data

ID6002352
AuthorsFrancine Hirsch (corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume113
Issue3
Pages701-730
Publication date2008-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/ahr.113.3.701
OpenAlexW1996163355
LanguageEN
Citations received30

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS OF NOVEMBER 1945 TO OCTOBER 1946 are still seen through the distorting lens of the Cold War. Nuremberg was a foundational event of the postwar era, generating numerous retellings in memoirs, monographs, and films. The classic account of the trials is an Anglo-American tale of liberal triumph in which the high-minded U.S. chief prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, along with representatives of the other Western powers, put the desire for vengeance aside and gave the Nazis a fair trial before the law-marking one of “the law’s first great efforts to submit mass atrocity to principled judgment” and ushering in a new era of international human rights.1 This narrative became established in the West during the long decades of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, when Soviet materials relating to the trials, and to postwar diplomatic relations in general, were off limits in the Soviet archives. For politicians and historians who helped create the classic narrative of Nuremberg, the role of the Soviets in the International Military Tribunal (IMT) was, and remains, an awkward fact. Most English-language accounts describe Soviet participation in Nuremberg as “the Achilles’ heel” of the trials: regrettable but unavoidable, a Faustian bargain that the U.S. and Britain made in order to bring closure to the war and bring the Nazis to justice.2 Popular works that have shaped conventional

Art · Aside · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Nazism · Nuremberg trials · Political science · Politics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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