Courtroom 600 of the monumental Nuremberg Palace of Justice is disconcerting at first glance. It is smaller than the visitor imagines upon opening the door. The furnishings are different from those that existed during the trial of the Nazi leadership at the end of World War II, 80 years ago.
Ordinary trials continued to be held here until five years ago, and the room retains the bland, functional air of a German regional court. It feels like a place that’s still under construction, much like the idea that was born in this very room between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946.
In an era of wars and massacres with impunity, from Ukraine to the Middle East, passing through Sudan and other parts of the planet, the edifice of international justice that was born in Nuremberg is showing severe cracks.
“If the people who have suffered horror in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Israel on October 7, and in Gaza, in Palestine, ask themselves what international law has done for them, they will answer that it hasn’t done much,” says jurist and writer Philippe Sands by telephone. Nuremberg and what followed from that trial “has not been able to prevent horrors in our time,” he adds.
But Sands cautions that the idea of international criminal justice is, from a historical perspective, very recent: “It’s a system that’s still in its infancy.” It has a long way to go.
Eight decades ago, in Nuremberg, for the first time, the highest-ranking officials of a state sat in the dock of an international tribunal, 21 men associated with the most horrific crimes of the 20th century. Among them were the highest-ranking living Nazi leader, Hermann Göring (Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler had already died by suicide); the minister and architect Albert Speer; the Nazi chief Rudolf Hess; the diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop; Hans Frank, jurist, governor of Poland, and perpetrator of the Holocaust; ideologues such as Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Streicher; and military officers such as General Keitel and Admiral Dönitz.
The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France organized the tribunal to judge crimes “so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive if they are repeated.” These are the words, in his opening statement, of the U.S. chief prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, who added: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
Nuremberg was to try three types of crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It ended with three acquittals, seven sentences of life imprisonment or long prison terms, and 13 death sentences.
Thus was born what Gurgen Petrossian, a jurist at the International Academy of Nuremberg Principles, calls the Nuremberg Idea, which is as follows: “When a person commits an international crime — whether it be genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or crimes of aggression — that person must be held accountable. And this means that, regardless of who committed the crime, when, or where, the fate of these individuals is sealed: it is only a matter of time before they appear before a tribunal.”
After the convictions of the Nazi leaders, 12 more trials were held in Nuremberg, until 1949. A year earlier, the U.N. had adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Then, beginning in the late 1950s, national trials took place in Germany, helping the country — without being forced by the victors — to confront its responsibility for the murder of six million Jews. Trials such as those of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 and Klaus Barbie in Lyon in 1987 were held. But the idea of international justice went into hibernation. It wasn’t until the 1990s, with the massacres in the Balkans and Rwanda, that the International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague and Arusha were established.
It was the golden age of the Nuremberg Idea. “We were very optimistic,” notes French historian Annette Wieviorka, author of The Nuremberg Trials, referring to “this brief historical moment between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attack on the Twin Towers.” That is why, she adds, “the lessons of Nuremberg are difficult to apply today.”
Philippe Sands sees the spirit of Nuremberg in the current International Criminal Court, in whose creation he participated, and in the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998, the subject of his latest book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia. He also sees it in the nascent Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which is reviving the main accusation against Nazi leaders. “Without Nuremberg, everything would have been very different,” says the Franco-British jurist.
Some current dysfunctions of international justice can be traced back to the original sins of Nuremberg. It was a trial, for example, organized by the powers that won the war and their leaders (and one of them, Stalin, had already perpetrated some of his greatest crimes). This “imbalance” persists.
Sands cites the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the beginning of this century and the roles of the United States and the United Kingdom. He also mentions the indictment of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte last March by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity in his war on drugs. This prompts him to reflect: “What is happening in the Caribbean and the Pacific, with 76 alleged drug traffickers summarily executed [by the U.S.], is it compatible with international law? Is it a crime against humanity?”
More imbalances. There are world leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. But it seems unlikely they will ever face trial.
“Pinochet traveled to London in October 1998 thinking he was completely safe, so you never know,” Sands notes. “It’s unlikely, but what we do know is that they receive advice on this matter and they don’t ignore it. It’s better than nothing.”
Faced with the temptation of cynicism, of thinking that what began in Nuremberg is just empty words, he recalls the case of Judge Thomas Buergenthal, a survivor of Auschwitz, who told him a few years ago that he wished there had been a Genocide Convention and an ICC in 1943. It probably wouldn’t have stopped the crimes, Buergenthal maintained. “But it would have told us that we weren’t alone and that it was known that crimes were being committed,” he added. “And it would have given us hope. This is more important than anything.”
In courtroom 600, they avoid discussing specific cases, but Petrossian is also clear: “International law has always been in crisis.” “That the political situation is difficult,” he adds, “doesn’t mean that it has ceased to exist legally, or that the Nuremberg Idea has disappeared.”
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