Nuremberg Trials (Opening Day, November 20, 1945)

On November 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal convened in Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, a city scarred by bombing and by the propaganda rallies that had once celebrated the Reich. There, the victors of the European war—Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—brought leading Nazi officials to answer charges of aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Twenty-four major defendants were indicted, including Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, and Julius Streicher. Some tried to hide behind “orders,” bureaucracy, or national destiny. Yet thousands of documents, films, and eyewitness testimonies exposed a planned system of terror: mass shootings, slave labor, starvation, medical atrocities, and the industrial murder of the Jews of Europe. Many had doubted such evil could be real; the courtroom made denial harder to sustain.

American chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson pressed a simple moral claim: law must bind rulers as well as the ruled. Justice at Nuremberg did not erase grief or restore the dead, but it insisted that power does not cleanse guilt. Scripture echoes this sober truth: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews