On November 20, 1945, twenty-four individuals stood in the dock at Nuremberg, accused of waging aggressive wars, establishing slave labor, exterminating racial and religious groups, and other crimes against humanity. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, seven received prison terms ranging from ten years to life, and three were acquitted. The highest ranking condemned man, Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second-in-comand and the most flamboyant and unyielding defendant in the dock, committed suicide just hours before his scheduled execution. As Telford Taylor, a Nuremberg prosecutor and historian of the trials, remarks, bringing these notable Nazis, and later other military and civilian criminals, to justice was a profound advance in international penal law ratified by the United Nations. But the Nuremberg precedent met with a good deal of ambivalence and doubt, since the trials were conducted by the victors in war and the courtroom was s ...

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