Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 04

This is not a history of the Nuremberg Trials. It is the Trials themselves. Volume Four contains the opening proceedings of the International Military Tribunal: the formal establishment of the court, the swearing in of judges, the reading of the indictment, and the rules of procedure that would govern the most significant criminal proceeding in history. Here, in their own words, the defendants hear the charges against them. Here, the Tribunal establishes its authority and sets the terms for how the world would reckon with the Holocaust, with aggressive war, with crimes against peace. The document captures the tension in the courtroom: defense attorneys obstructing, defendants attempting to communicate with the press, the Tribunal asserting control. But most significantly, this volume begins to lay out the evidence of the conspiracy to commit atrocity. Testimony regarding the planned starvation of populations and the design for soviet annexation appears here, in raw, documentary form. For anyone who has ever wondered what justice actually looks like in the aftermath of genocide, this volume offers the answer: not a summary, not a retelling, but the actual transcript of the courtroom where the perpetrators were forced to answer for their actions.