Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

Francine Hirsch

The first full-length work to give a complete picture of the role of the Soviet Union in the Nuremberg Trials
A fresh and novel retelling of the Nuremberg trials and all the participants, using the Soviet perspective
Draws on thousands of documents and first-person accounts from the former Soviet archives to recreate the drama of the Nuremberg moment
Reveals the unexpected contribution of Stalin's Soviet Union to the postwar development of international law

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

Francine Hirsch

Description

Organized in the immediate aftermath of World War Two by the victorious Allies, the Nuremberg Trials were intended to hold the Nazis to account for their crimes — and to restore a sense of justice to a world devastated by violence. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this immersive, gripping, and ground-breaking book, a major piece of the Nuremberg story has routinely been omitted from standard accounts: the part the Soviet Union played in making the trials happen in the first place.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers the first complete picture of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), including the many ironies brought to bear as the Soviets took their place among the countries of the prosecution in late 1945. Everyone knew that Stalin had allied with Hitler before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact hung heavy over the courtroom, as did the suspicion that the Soviets had falsified evidence in an attempt to pin one of their own war crimes, the mass killing of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, on the Nazis. Moreover, key members of the Soviet delegation, including the Soviet judge and chief prosecutor, had played critical roles in Stalin's infamous show trials of the 1930s. For the American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson and his colleagues in the British and French delegations, Soviet participation in the IMT undermined the credibility of the trials and indeed the moral righteousness of the Allied victory.

Yet without the Soviets Nuremberg would never have taken place. Soviet jurists conceived of the legal framework that treated war as an international crime, giving the trials a legal basis. The Soviets had borne the brunt of the fighting against Germany, and their almost unimaginable suffering gave them moral authority. They would not be denied a place on the tribunal and moreover were determined to make the most of it. However, little went as the Soviets had planned. Stalin's efforts to steer the trials from afar backfired. Soviet war crimes were exposed in open court. As relations among the four countries of the prosecution foundered, Nuremberg turned from a court of justice to an early front of the Cold War.

Hirsch's book provides a front-row seat in the Nuremberg courtroom, while also guiding readers behind the scenes to the meetings in which secrets were shared, strategies mapped, and alliances forged. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers a startlingly new view of the IMT and a fresh perspective on the movement for international human rights that it helped launch.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

Francine Hirsch

Introduction: The Untold Story
Part I: The Road to Nuremberg
Chapter One: When War Became a Crime
Chapter Two: But What Is Justice?
Chapter Three: Countdown to Indictment
Chapter Four: Ready or Not
Part II: The Prosecution's Case
Chapter Five: The Trial Begins
Chapter Six: Stuck on the Sidelines
Chapter Seven: Course Corrections
Chapter Eight: Bearing Witness
Part III: The Defense Case
Chapter Nine: The Cold War Comes to Nuremberg
Chapter Ten: In the Name of a Fair Trial
Chapter Eleven: Accusations and Counter-Accusations
Chapter Twelve: The Katyn Showdown
Part IV: Last Words and Judgments
Chapter Thirteen: Collective Guilt and the Fate of Postwar Europe
Chapter Fourteen: Judgment
Chapter Fifteen: Beyond Nuremberg
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
Research Note
Notes and Sources
Bibliographical Notes and Suggestions for Further Reading
Index

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

Francine Hirsch

Author Information

Francine Hirsch is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches Soviet and Modern European history. Her first book, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (2005), received several prizes, including the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II

Francine Hirsch

Reviews and Awards

Recipient of the Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship by the American Society of International Law

"It is this version of history that Francine Hirsch confronts in her absorbing and readable new book. Fifteen years in preparation, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg draws on groundbreaking research in Moscow archives to illuminate the Soviet dimension of an episode that was both "the last hurrah" of wartime Allied cooperation and "an early front of the Cold War" ... the rich detail is fascinating and the overall thesis compelling ... an elegant and important piece of scholarship which adds a significant new perspective to the history of the International Military Tribunal." -- David Reynolds, Times Literary Supplement

"This truly ground-breaking book should be read by every lawyer with an interest, general or otherwise, in the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in particular. Author Francine Hirsch, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, deserves high praise as the first scholar to publish a comprehensive study of the role played by the Soviets in the prosecution of Nazi leaders at the IMT ... By looking at Soviet participation in the war crimes prosecution, Hirsch now gives a new and valuable perspective on what happened at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. Or, as she puts it, her book "presents a new history...by restoring a central and missing piece: the role of the Soviet Union." ... Her superlative history of the Soviet Union's role at the IMT deserves to reach the widest possible audience." -- Fred L. Borch III, The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia, The Army Lawyer

"Military historians will want to read this excellent book for at least two reasons. First, it is a new history of the Nuremberg trials because it restores "a central and missing piece: the role of the Soviet Union". Second, Hirsch's book shows how the Nuremberg war crimes trial was an early battle in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union—a foreshadowing of the superpower competition that would last for years." -- Fred L. Borch, Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School, Charlottesville, Virginia, The Journal of Military History

"Fifteen years in the making, drawing extensively on Soviet archives, Francine Hirsch's wonderful book freshly illuminates the paradoxical Soviet impact on the trial of Nazi criminals as well as the inner workings of the Kremlin as it navigated the onset of the Cold War." -- William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era and Gorbachev: His Life and Times

"Meticulous and original, Francine Hirsch's book is also deeply necessary. We cannot understand what happened at Nuremberg in the round without the Soviet angle, and that is what Hirsch provides in this unique and fascinating work." -- Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

"With an unmatched command of the sources and masterful prose, Francine Hirsch offers a comprehensive and revelatory new history of the International Military Tribunal, demonstrating both the contributions of the Soviets to international law as well as the contradictions based on their own wartime crimes. This gripping and compelling book is a landmark study that finally tells the whole story of the first Nuremberg Trial." -- Lynne Viola, author of Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine

"Masterly... Richly detailed and well-written, this important new vantage point on Nuremberg will appeal strongly to history buffs."--Kirkus

"Indeed, Hirsch brilliantly accomplishes her central aim: 'putting the Soviet Union back into the history of Nuremberg trials.' In so doing, the book offers a valuable new addition to the Nuremberg canon, filling a gap in the literature with new research, an engaging narrative style, and delightful details..."--Beth Van Schaack, War on the Rocks

"This well-researched book is an important contribution to the history of the Cold War, and should become the standard account of the International Military Tribunal, with its inclusion of the Soviet perspective." --Library Journal

A "pathbreaking book" --Foreign Affairs

"A fascinating deep-dive into the little-explored Soviet role at the Nuremberg trials." --World War II Magazine

"...An elegant and important piece of scholarship which adds a significant new perspective to the history of the Internaitonal Military Tribunal." -- Times Literary Supplement