The Nuremberg Trials as Cold War Competition: The Politics of the Historical Record and the International Stage

We are all familiar with the standard Western account of the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 to 1946. It is a victors’ narrative, celebrating the triumph of truth, justice, and essential liberal values, such as the rule of law, over evil. In the most famous versions US Chief Justice Robert Jackson with his forceful personality and no-nonsense manner shines as the hero of the moment, insisting on a fair trial for even the most monstrous Nazi leaders as “the American way” and countering the demands of the Soviet Union, as well as his own colleague Henry Morgenthau, for a program of reparations that would include the use of German forced labor for postwar reconstruction in the Allied countries. This is a good story, but one that largely leaves out the contribution and perspective of one of the major Allied victors—the Soviet Union.1 In the West the critical role of the Soviet Union as a shaper of and participant in the International Military Tribunal (IMT), first informally and then as one of the four countries of the prosecution, had until recently been almost willfully forgotten. To be sure, there were practical reasons for this omission. For decades critical Soviet documents about the Nuremberg Trials were buried in the former Soviet archives, and even Russian researchers had limited access.2 But there were deep political reasons as well. First, the Soviet Union was regarded by its wartime allies not just as a victor, but also as a rival.