History and Justice: Paradigms of the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes

The confluence of two distinct disciplines—history and justice—in the investigation and prosecution of Nazi war crimes and crimes against humanity has been the subject of controversy since the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. Particularly controversial, and often poorly understood, is the role of historians in the trials of National Socialist perpetrators of genocide. Addressing this issue in its philosophical, methodological and practical dimensions, this article details the interaction of history and justice in Nazi crimes prosecutions at Nuremberg and in the Ludwigsburg-initiated West-German proceedings. Although the objectives and modi operandi of the two disciplines are dissimilar, a comparative analysis demonstrates that both law and justice benefited from this interaction. Jurists could not do without history and, in the service of justice, historians fashioned and refashioned the historiography of the Holocaust.