The Nuremberg Legacy ….. tonight on the wireless …one to listen to

For those born in the last decades of the 20th century Nuremberg will be a pleasant German city, a place worth visiting for its university, castle, its cultural and culinary attractions and a heap of Renaissance art.

Verdict, 1946

For my grandmother, who was born in Cologne in 1897, the city was that place where the Nazis held their rallies.  

She once told me she listened occasionally to the broadcasts of those rallies on her wireless in the back room of her home in Derby, with a mix of mounting anxiety and revulsion. 

And for me, born just four years after the end of the last world war it is forever linked to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which sat from November 1945 till October 1946, and oversaw the prosecution of leading members of the Nazi State, who planned or participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes.  

All of which makes tonight’s Radio 4 programme one to listen to.

“It's 75 years since the judgement at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Nineteen high ranking Nazis were found guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit those crimes. 

View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal 

Twelve of them were condemned to death. The trial, which lasted almost a year, made history and the principles of international criminal law first established there are still fundamental to international justice today. 

The writer and lawyer, Philippe Sands examines the legacy of Nuremberg in subsequent war crimes trials and the founding of the International Criminal Court in the Hague 50 years later. He speaks to people who were there in Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, as well as leading judges and lawyers in today's international justice system.

Producer Caroline Bayley

Editor Jasper Corbett”

Pictures; Verdict, 1946, Low Visibility A Cartoon History, 1945-53, David Low, 1953, View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.  Photograph | Photograph Number: 61332, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, 1945 October 18 - 1946 October 01

*The Nuremberg Legacy, Radio 4, October 19th, 8 pm, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010pw9