
Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg
Francine Hirsch
(Author)Description
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.
Product Details
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publish Date | July 08, 2020 |
Pages | 560 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9780199377930 |
Dimensions | 9.4 X 6.5 X 1.8 inches | 2.1 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"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 JournalA "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"Hirsch remind us that fairly prosecuting senior officials for high crimes is a monumental challenge well worth pursuing." -- James A. Goldston, Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and previously worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court
Earn by promoting books