Beyond the Saturation Point of Horror. The Holocaust at Nuremberg Revisited

Abstract

It has long been a matter of contention what role the Nuremberg Trials accorded to the murder of the European Jews. While especially early historiography considered the Allied war crimes proceedings the beginning of «Holocaust trials», a later generation of scholars would argue that the extermination of Europe’s Jews was both under- and misrepresented in the course of the 1945–1949 trials. The present article sets out to reconcile both views by pointing to the heterogeneity of the Nuremberg record, which offered a vast panorama of Holocaust-related evidence and highlighted crimes against Jews at pivotal moments of the trials while also allowing differing, often contradictory narratives to stand side by side. Judicial procedure, however, tended to privilege intentionalist interpretations, and many historians would adopt this prominently formulated paradigm rather than amend it by drawing on the more comprehensive trial record. The article submits that, even measured by the anachronistic standard of present-day Holocaust historiography, Nuremberg’s findings fare surprisingly well.