Francine R. Hirsch

This project offers a major retelling of the Nuremberg story, drawing on newly declassified archival sources to bring in the perspective and contributions of the USSR. It presents Nuremberg as an important site of postwar cooperation for the wartime allies—and also as the battleground for a political and ideological struggle among those same states about the meaning of the Second World War and about the shape of the postwar order. It argues that the Soviets significantly shaped the legal framework of International Military Tribunal and the postwar vision of international law. But it also shows how the Soviets were greatly hampered on the international stage by the particularities of the Stalinist system (and by their own expectations of a show trial)—and how they ultimately lost the victory to the Western powers.