The trial opened on 20 November 1945 in Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice, rebuilt and enlarged for the purpose. It lasted until October 1946, with more than two hundred days of hearings.

Who was missing

The three most powerful Nazi leaders were dead. Adolf Hitler had killed himself in Berlin on 30 April 1945. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and chief organizer of the Holocaust, had killed himself after being captured by the British. Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, had killed himself with his wife after they poisoned their six children. Their absence meant that the trial had to rely on the regime's surviving leaders and on its documents.

The defendants

Twenty-four men were indicted. One, Robert Ley, head of the German Labor Front, hanged himself in his cell before the trial. Another, the industrialist Gustav Krupp, was judged too ill and senile to stand trial. Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary and head of the Party Chancellery, could not be found and was tried in his absence; it was later established that he had died in Berlin in May 1945. Twenty-one men sat in the dock. Among them were:

• Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking surviving Nazi, head of the air force and once Hitler's designated successor.
• Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, who had flown to Scotland in 1941 on a bizarre solo peace mission and had been held by the British ever since.
• Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister.
• Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl, the top military commanders of the armed forces' high command.
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Security Main Office, which ran the Gestapo and security police.
• Hans Frank, governor of occupied Poland.
• Julius Streicher, publisher of the violently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer.
• Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later minister of armaments, who used forced labor on a vast scale.

The prosecution also indicted six Nazi organizations, including the SS and the Gestapo, asking the court to declare them criminal.

The judges

Each of the four powers appointed one judge and one alternate. The British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, served as president of the tribunal, known for his calm, patient manner. The American judge was Francis Biddle, a former attorney general. France appointed Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law. The Soviet judge, Iona Nikitchenko, had helped draft the charter and had sat as a judge in Stalin's show trials of the 1930s, an uncomfortable fact for a court claiming to stand for justice.

The prosecutors

Each power provided a prosecution team. Robert Jackson led for the United States, Sir Hartley Shawcross for Britain, with his deputy, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, doing much of the courtroom work. France's chief prosecutor was first François de Menthon, then Auguste Champetier de Ribes. Roman Rudenko led for the Soviet Union. The teams divided the case: the Americans took the conspiracy charge, the British crimes against peace, and the French and Soviets war crimes and crimes against humanity in the west and east.

Rights of the accused

The defendants received many of the protections of a fair trial. Each could choose a German defense lawyer, paid by the tribunal. They received the indictment in German in advance, could testify in their own defense, call witnesses and cross-examine prosecution witnesses. They were allowed to make a final statement.

Four languages at once

One practical problem threatened the whole trial: the proceedings took place in four languages, English, French, Russian and German. Translating every statement one after another would have made the trial impossibly long. The solution was a system of simultaneous interpretation, using equipment supplied by IBM. Interpreters in glass booths listened through headphones and translated as the speaker talked, and everyone in the courtroom wore headphones and could choose a language. Nuremberg was the first major use of simultaneous interpretation, now standard at the United Nations and international meetings.

Jackson's opening

Robert Jackson opened the prosecution's case on 21 November 1945. In a speech still studied today, he argued that the crimes were so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization could not tolerate their being ignored. He described it as one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason that four great nations, victorious and deeply injured, should hold back from vengeance and submit their captured enemies to the judgment of law.

Worked example: the fair trial checklist

Measure the trial against a basic checklist of fair trial rights, as later set out in human rights law.

• Notice of charges. Yes. Defendants received the indictment in their own language.
• Counsel of one's choice. Largely yes. Each chose a German lawyer.
• Presumption of innocence. Formally yes, and three defendants were acquitted.
• Ability to call and question witnesses. Yes, though defense lawyers complained of limited access to documents held by the Allies.
• An independent and impartial tribunal. The weakest point. All the judges came from the victorious powers, and one had served in Stalin's show trials. No judge came from Germany or a neutral country.
• Right of appeal. No. The tribunal's judgment was final, though sentences could be reviewed by the Allied Control Council for Germany.

The result is mixed. Nuremberg offered more fairness than its defendants had shown their victims, and more than many expected. But it was not an ideal court. Knowing both its strengths and its weaknesses is the basis for judging its legacy fairly.