By: Melanie Escobar
This week’s blog post focuses on the Nuremberg Trials and historians’ roles in determining the outcomes of these trials. For some who may be unaware, the Nuremberg trials happened between 1945 and 1949 regarding the events of World War Two. These trials were meant to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, Nazi party officials who were heavily involved in the affairs of World War Two. Historians at the time were asked to display an accurate recount of the European past to justify the bar of international crime. Since the Nuremberg trials, the relationship between the legal process and historical research has been the subject of much scrutiny, leading to a consensus that courts produce distorted and poor historical accounts of the causes of mass atrocity.
Before the Nuremberg trials took place, members of the Tribunal were expected to look into European history to assess the bar of international crime. Some of these international crimes involved the 1899–1902 Second Boer War that resulted in the use of concentration camps on over 26,000 women and children in South Africa. This trial presented challenges for historians—to consider not just the events of World War Two but also the history of Europe to determine judgement. Many historians state that these historians were called to conduct a “historic exercise in judgement.” They were asked to truthfully and accurately recount the historical background surrounding Europe and determine the best case of a judgment. It is difficult for the historian to be an accurate expert during hostile cross-examination. Historians are accustomed to qualifying statements in a multitude of ways to indicate the varying degrees of certainty or conjecture with which they are made. And yet, the law demands clear-cut, definite, and unambiguous statements.
A 19th-century English historian George Kitson Clark states, “It is the object of an historian to get as near to the truth about people and events in the past as he can…the primary object of a law court…must be to come to a decision.” Historians are made for explanation and interpretation, not moral judgement. In other words, what Clark is stating is that historians should not per se be the ones to come to the overall conclusions about events or people’s decisions. The law, courts and judges are meant to make the deciding factor with the information handed to them. Rather than viewing historians as determining guilty and not guilty, historians should consider “truth” and “lack of” when assessing historical evidence in cases such as the Nuremberg trials.
Overall, there are continuous debates regarding the roles historians should take on and whether they are retelling accurate and truthful accounts of the past objectively. The Nuremberg trials were the first examples of how providing the role of judge to the historian can cause scrutiny and distrust on the part of historians. It stands to reason that the blur between the law and history intertwines at the international level. However, it might be safe to say that it is better to keep the role of judgement on those in the legal realm.
Work cited
Bilsky, Leora. “The Judge and the Historian: Transnational Holocaust Litigation as a
New Model.” History and Memory 24, no. 2 (2012): 117–56. https://doi.org/10.2979/histmemo.24.2.117.
Biddiss, Michael. “The Nuremberg Trial: Two Exercises in Judgment.” Journal of
Contemporary History 16, no. 3 (1981): 597–615. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260323.
Onion, Amanda, Missy Sullivan, and Matt Mullen, eds. “Nuremberg Trials - Definition, Dates &
Purpose - History.” Nuremberg Trials. History.com, 2019. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials.