In a dramatic scene from the 1961 film Judgement at Nuremberg, fictional Chief Trial Judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) proclaims that Nuremberg stands for the American ideals of “truth and justice.” Reminiscent of Robert Jackson's opening statement, Haywood places the United States at the moral and legal centre of international justice and thereby challenges the claim that Nuremberg was a fait accompli, nothing more than victor's justice. And, lest there be any doubt about the fairness of Nuremberg, in the final scene Judge Haywood visits defendant Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster) in his cell, so that Janning can acknowledge his own guilt and thereby affirm the legitimacy of Nuremberg. Not surprisingly, such popular films underscore the most compelling elements of criminal trials, not so subtly persuading audiences of their legal value and inherent drama, full of strong personalities, moral dilemmas, captivating testimony, and redemptive endings. Never do movie-goers witness the gaping silences, backroom deals, political compromises, or mechanics of multilingual and multicultural justice that led American journalist Rebecca West to label the Nuremberg trial she sat through in 1945–1946, a “citadel of boredom.” The moralistic, Amero-centric story of Judgment at Nuremberg underscores what Francine Hirsch has identified as the “Nuremberg myth” – the belief that international justice, born in the courtrooms of Nuremberg after World War II, was a singularly American invention. In Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg, the latest addition to the ever-growing Nuremberg historiography, Hirsch aims to set the record straight. In drawing the curtain back and writing the Soviets into the narrative of Nuremberg, not only does she topple long-standing myths about American exceptionalism and international justice, but she does so magnificently.

Between November 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946, in what arguably was the last great act of Allied unity in World War II, the Americans, British, French, and Soviets prosecuted twenty-two high-ranking Nazis at Nuremberg in what was known as the International Military Tribunal or IMT. The defendants were charged with four counts: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy. These are well-known legal facts. What isn't well-known is the important role the Soviets played in this historic trial. In four parts, fifteen chapters, and 420 pages, Hirsch deftly brings a myriad of characters to life. From propagandists to press agents, from legal theorists to political figures, she skillfully weaves together the lives of the people who made up the Soviet team at Nuremberg. Shaped by the particularities of the Stalinist system and the Russian experience of the war, Nuremberg was a complicated tangle of individuals loyal to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Andrei Vyshinsky, deputy foreign minister and former chief prosecutor of the Moscow show trials of the 1930s, who was appointed by Molotov in 1942 to investigate war crimes committed by the Germans, was one of the most important players. It was Vyshinsky who developed the framework for international criminal justice (the Indictment Commission) and who brought the brilliant legal thinker Aron Trainin on board; together, they developed what became postwar judicial policy in the Soviet Union. The Soviet filmmaker Roman Karmen, sent to Nuremberg by Stalin to document the proceedings for Soviet audiences, also features prominently in this story. Karmen, a seasoned propagandist, had spent time embedded in the Red Army documenting Leningrad during the siege. His mission at Nuremberg was to craft “a visual narrative that showed the world the immense sacrifices the Soviet Union had made in order to defeat the Nazis” (4). There were others too: Roman Rudenko, the Soviet chief prosecutor, Nickolai Ivanov, a former diplomat and expert on German-Russian relations, Iona Nikitchenko, the Soviet chief judge, and a litany of minor players. Unlike the American and British trial teams whose political leaders were mostly absent from Nuremberg, Stalin was out of sight too but nonetheless ever-present in the courtroom. By telling the Soviet story through this web of characters, Hirsch offers the reader a behind-the-scenes look at Nuremberg that till now was only imagined, and in doing so, she enriches our understanding of the landmark trial.

Hirsch is a gifted writer, so much so that at times the reader feels almost sorry for the Soviet prosecution team who were frequently stymied by the oppressive top-down rules of an authoritarian political system that kept their hands tied and bound them to the whims of Moscow and a chain of command that was slowed by fear. She also captures a certain naivety of the Soviets, whose chief aim was to use the courtroom at Nuremberg to demonstrate the horrific crimes committed by the Germans on Soviet soil and who seemed surprised to discover their allies had a different vision for this important trial. She explains how poorly equipped the Soviet legal team was to meet the rules and requirements of Western justice, scrambling at the eleventh hour to translate documents and write legal arguments to present to the court. The Soviets had wanted Nuremberg to be pro forma, a stage on which to tell their story. As it turned out, they had nothing to fear from the West. While justice prevailed, politics were never far from the Russian gavel.

In the end, Soviet Justice at Nuremberg is not just a judicial origin story. It is also the story of the intersection of politics and law at a moment in history when nothing was clearcut. From the Soviet perspective, at least, Nuremberg was not characterized by the “extreme tedium” Rebecca West encountered. Rather, it was full of hope and disappointment, legal milestones, and political will. It was, as Francine Hirsch so colourfully brings to life, “messy business,” and it is this mixture of politics and justice that makes the Soviet story at Nuremberg such compelling reading.