Nuremberg trial: lessons for present and future times

The article examines the influence of the Nuremberg Trials of the main war criminals of the European Axis countries in 1945–1946 on the development of international criminal law. The said trial is considered in the context of the foreign policy situation as it was in the 1940s. Additionally, the article explores earlier attempts of mankind to bring those responsible for unleashing the First World War to justice under international law. The article describes the attempts of the international community to organize a trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II as the main culprit of the outbreak of the First World War, and analyzes the conditions that led to the failure of this action. A number of cases considered by the German Supreme Court in the 1920s against minor commanders on charges of war crimes committed during the First World War are mentioned. The author regrets that in the interval between the two wars the world community failed to organize an international criminal tribunal under the League of Nations, as planned, and traces the continuity between the first attempts to construct a universal international criminal mechanism and today’s activities of the International Criminal Court. The article examines the progress of the Allied negotiations on the organization of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, and analyzes the initially diametrically opposed positions held by the leaders of the three great powers. The author mainly analyzes the influence of the Nuremberg Trials in three aspects: 1) immunities of senior officials; 2) responsibility for the execution of a superior order; 3) moral and political responsibility of the state for atrocities committed in its name. Each of these aspects is considered in the context of today’s challenges facing the international community. Particular attention is paid to the German experience, in particular the reform of the Code of International Criminal Law carried out in 2024, which significantly updated many previously considered unshakable approaches in the area of functional immunity of foreign officials, as well as media coverage of war criminal trials (the possibility of publishing the judgment in a foreign language, providing translation services to reporters covering such trials, etc.).