Almost 80 years ago, a military tribunal was held at Nuremberg where twenty-two top political and military leaders of the Third Reich were put on trial. Stories of Hitler’s war were aired in the world media for the best part of a year, and the trial set out a public narrative of Nazi crimes.

Nuremberg is still this term that gets invoked today – it seems to set the terms of our current understanding on international criminal justice and is used a lot in conversations on international law – for example in some of the episodes of our Summer re-runs. So it’s high time that we put the spotlight again on the meanings, myths and realities of Nuremberg.

In the episode that was first released in December 2021, Steph and Janet talk to distinguished guests Francine Hirsch and Dianne Marie Amman. They discuss the important role of people at the trial who were hitherto not part of the dominant narrative about Nuremberg that was produced mainly by Anglo American men.

Francine Hirsch is the Vylas distinguished achievement Professor of History at University of Wisconsin Madison and recently wrote Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II.

And Diane Marie Amann is the University of Georgia Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. She’s writing a book about women at Nuremberg.

A book that was mentioned several times in the epsiode was The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. And the artwork by Dame Laura Knight we mentioned can be seen here or at the Imperial War Museum. Another book recommendation was The Execution of Willie Francis about racism and justice in the American South in the 1940’s. And the Russian TV series – The Optimists – set during the Cold War was also highly recommended.