It used to be the case that tyrants could torture and murder their own subjects, and those they conquered, with impunity. That all changed on November 20th, 1945, when the War Crimes Tribunal began its hearings at Nuremberg, following the end of World War II.

The military tribunals were held by the Allies under international law, in order to put on trial 24 of the leading Nazi political and military leaders who had planned or participated in mass murders and other war crimes. They marked a major advance in international law because they put on trial people who had committed acts that were not illegal in their own countries at the time, but were deemed to be crimes against humanity.

Many of those most guilty of such crimes could not be tried because they were already dead. Hitler had shot Eva Braun and then himself. Goebbels and his wife had poisoned their six children before killing themselves. Himmler, although captured, had swallowed cyanide concealed in a false tooth when he was about to have his mouth examined. Bormann was tried in absentia because they did not realize he was already dead.

Amongst those who were tried, the most prominent was Goering, who was convicted and sentenced, but escaped the hangman’s noose by taking cyanide in his cell on the eve of his execution. Of the 24, 12 were sentenced to death, and 10 were hanged on October 16th, 1946. The two not hanged were Bormann and Goering, both already dead.

The Nuremberg trials were the first to mention genocide, “the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people” (count three, war crimes). They led in the years that followed to the establishment of an international jurisprudence for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The outcome was the creation of the International Criminal Court, the international tribunal that operates in The Hague, with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for such crimes.

The legacy of the Nuremberg Tribunal is that those who inflict crimes against humanity can be brought to justice. The knowledge that this could happen might restrain some people from committing acts of barbarism they might otherwise hope to perpetrate with impunity. The knowledge that those who do these things can later have justice meted out to them affords the world some satisfaction that humanity is no longer prepared to tolerate the mass cruelty and savagery that it once had no recourse to deal with. It is another sign that we are less passive about violence, and that “The Better Angels of our Nature” have made another advance towards a more civilized life.