A few months after the end of World War II, with the international community outraged at the excesses committed by Germany, trials against war criminals were convened in Nuremberg, the symbolic seat of Nazism. There was a series of twelve trials, but it was the first that was the most prominent. Top military and governmental figures including Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, and Doenitz were among those first prosecuted. Later trials followed against doctors, bankers, industrialists and others. Entirely composed of historical footage, including some newly discovered archival films, "Nuremberg" brings to life the challenge of administering justice when crimes are on such a scale.
On 20 November 1945, in what had once been the spiritual centre of the Nazi Empire, the first Nuremberg trial opened. Nuremberg examines the first trial in detail: the scale and speed of the US-led effort to place the Third Reich's leaders in the dock; the charges brought against them; the courtroom drama; the final judgements. Of the 21 defendants, three were acquitted, seven given jail sentences and the remaining eleven sentenced to death, among them Hitler's right-hand man, Hermann Goering.
This programme, marking the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, also explores the twelve subsequent trials against the backdrop of the emerging Cold War and the shifting allegiances of allies and enemies in the immediate post-war period.
Viewed against the backdrop of the unfolding Cold War, the Nuremberg Trials take on a new importance for understanding the second half of our century. There are two reasons why this film will be regarded as a definite documentary for October's fiftieth anniversary of the Nuremberg judgements. First, it presents a concise and analytical account of the First Nuremberg Trial and the twelve minor trials that followed it, combining archive footage never before seen on television and the personal photo albums of prosecutors and defenders.
Secondly, it presents the trials in their proper historical context: they are established against a tense political background which opens with Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in February 1946, and concludes with the Berlin Airlift in 1948 - after which there can be no doubt that the former Soviet and western allies are now at loggerheads, and that the subsequent proceedings at Nuremberg are colored by the United State's and European allies' overwhelming need to "normalize" Germany in order to strengthen the western alliance.
Stephen Trombley's Emmy award-winning film uses original black and white photography shot on location in New York, Washington, London and Nuremberg, combined with unseen archive images and the private photographs of prosecutors and defenders to create a memorable account of the trial of the century.
Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming category in 1997.

Directed by Stephen Trombley ; Worldview Pictures Production in association with The Discovery Channel, YLE-TV2 (Finland), Channel Four (UK), AZ MEDIA for RTL (Germany) and EO Evangelische Omroep (Netherlands)