Who Speaks for the Guilty? Nuremberg and the Making of German Memory

It has been eighty years since the Nuremberg trials opened in November 1945, the first international tribunal to prosecute state leaders for aggressive war crimes, and crimes against humanity. At the time, Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson declared that “civilization cannot tolerate [these crimes] being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated” (Jackson, 1945/ 2019 §2). The proceedings could thus be seen as a moment of moral renewal rather than vengeance. Yet, German responses proved far more intricate than it seems: initial opinion surveys showed that a majority believed the trials to be fair, but 92% rejected the idea of collective war guilt (OMGUS Survey, 1946). This reflects an early tension between justice, legal accountability and personal denial. Nuremberg was not only a courtroom milestone; but a case in point where the meaning of guilt, responsibility and memory was challenged. By tracing German reactions from 1945 to the late 20th century, this article explores how the trials moved from punishment to remembrance. This article argues that while Nuremberg succeeded as a legal response to unprecedented crimes, its more important legacy was the gradual transformation of German memory from postwar silence to a culture  of historical responsibility. 

Immediate reactions in Germany (1945–49)

German responses to the Nuremberg Trials in the immediate postwar years were complex, shifting between acknowledgement of guilt, resentment of Allied power, and a desire to move forward without prolonged confrontation with the Nazi past. Although Allied leaders hoped that Nuremberg would force Germans to confront their nation’s crimes, early reactions suggest that the trials did not immediately produce deep moral reflection. In the American occupation zone, an October 1946 public opinion survey found that a majority of Germans regarded the proceedings as fair and “the verdicts just,” and that more than half reported having learned from the trial, including lessons about dictatorship and “the inhumanity of the concentration camps” (OMGUS Survey, 1946). Yet the same survey revealed that 92% rejected the idea of collective guilt, with many respondents insisting that responsibility lay only with top Nazi officials, not with ordinary Germans. This distinction would shape early West German memory for years.

Denazification policies also shaped attitudes toward the trials. While the Allies attempted to re-educate Germans and remove former Nazis from public life, the process was often perceived as arbitrary and punitive, reinforcing a sense of German victimhood rather than encouraging deeper acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Historian Dan Stone argues that many Germans responded defensively, convinced that “only Germans get punished,” a sentiment that echoed in early postwar debates about “victors’ justice” (Stone, 2004, p. xx).

Emerging West German political leadership also played a significant role. Konrad Adenauer, who would become Chancellor in 1949, publicly condemned Nazi crimes but prioritised national recovery and social stability over moral reckoning. Bloxham (2006) notes that by the late 1940s, a strong social impulse to “draw a final line” under the past was already gaining ground. Early amnesties and efforts to reintegrate former Nazis into society signalled a shift toward pragmatic reconstruction rather than sustained confrontation with guilt.

Memory and denial (1950s–60s)

If the immediate postwar years produced a fragile, conflicted willingness to accept the justice of Nuremberg, the 1950s in West Germany were instead marked by what many historians describe as a societal retreat into silence. The period of the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, encouraged a forward-looking nationalism that prioritised reconstruction over confrontation with guilt. As Bloxham argues, by 1947 the dominant impulse in West German society was to “draw a final line” under the Nazi past and limit further trials (Bloxham 2006, p.1605). Legislative developments reflected this agenda: the 1951 and 1954 amnesty laws, along with sentence reductions and pardons for convicted perpetrators, facilitated the reintegration of former Nazis into professional and political life. These policies not only shortened the moral reach of Nuremberg but strengthened a public narrative that justice had been sufficiently served.

Cold War geopolitics further shaped this moral retreat. As West Germany became a strategic ally against the Soviet Union, culminating in its NATO accession in 1955, Western governments—particularly the United States—began to view anti-communism as more important than sustained legal reckoning. Bloxham shows how German elites attacked the trials as legally flawed and politically motivated, seeking to “rehabilitate Germany’s name” by delegitimising war-crimes verdicts (Bloxham 2006, p.1603). The shift in public opinion was striking: whereas 78% of Germans surveyed in 1946 believed the trials were fair, this had fallen to 38% by 1949 (Bloxham 2006, p.1606). Nuremberg’s moral authority, at least in West German public life, appeared to be fading. Yet silence was never complete. A minority of intellectuals and religious leaders sustained debate about guilt and responsibility. Karl Jaspers, in Die Schuldfrage (1946), insisted that Germans must distinguish between criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical guilt, challenging self-exculpatory narratives. Theologians such as Martin Niemöller likewise warned that evading responsibility risked repeating past atrocities.

Nuremberg’s vast documentary record, however, planted seeds that would re-emerge powerfully in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963–65), where evidence first compiled for Nuremberg was used to prosecute 22 former camp personnel. These trials marked a turning point: they forced a younger generation to confront the Holocaust publicly, challenging what Bloxham identified as the earlier tendency among many Germans to “deafen themselves” to Nazi crimes (Bloxham 2006, p.1602). Thus, although the 1950s brought denial and selective amnesia, the moral architecture of Nuremberg endured—waiting for a society willing to hear it.

Rediscovery and re-evaluation (1970s–1990s)

The 1970s and 1980s marked a profound shift in West Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, as a younger generation rejected the silence of their parents and demanded accountability. This transformation is often traced to the student protest movements of 1967–68, which challenged the presence of former Nazis in government, universities, and the judiciary. Students criticised earlier amnesties and argued that the Federal Republic had betrayed the moral promise of Nuremberg by allowing perpetrators to resume public life. Their protests signalled a breaking point in what Bloxham describes as the postwar desire to “draw a final line” under the past (Bloxham 2006, p.1605).

A central catalyst for renewed public debate was the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem (1961). Televised globally, the trial revealed not only the administrative bureaucratisation of genocide but also the emotional testimony of survivors. Hannah Arendt’s controversial report introduced the phrase “the banality of evil”, arguing that perpetrators like Eichmann were not monstrous aberrations but ordinary individuals who surrendered moral judgment to ideology and routine. This reframed German responsibility: guilt was not limited to a few leaders at Nuremberg but implicated wider society in sustaining Nazi power.

Public memory shifted further with the broadcasting of the American television miniseries Holocaust on West German television in 1979. Viewed by an estimated 20 million Germans, the series provoked thousands of calls to broadcasters and contributed to growing demands for memorialisation and education. For many Germans, it was the first emotional encounter with the lived experience of genocide, challenging abstract legal narratives and making Jewish suffering visible in mainstream culture.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963–65) had laid earlier groundwork, but by the 1980s and 1990s, Germany entered a more sustained era of memorial culture. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of 1990 intensified debates about national identity, contributing to the creation of new commemorative institutions and a more unified, though still contested, German memory. Nuremberg, once resisted, had become a foundational reference point for a nation learning to confront the darkest chapters of its history.

Conclusion

The legacy of the Nuremberg Trials cannot be measured solely by the 22 men who stood in the dock between 1945 and 1946. Rather, Nuremberg marked the beginning of a long, uneven struggle over guilt, responsibility, and memory in Germany. In the immediate postwar years, many Germans rejected the implication of collective responsibility. Yet, despite denial, resentment, and political pressures to “move on,” the trials planted a moral and legal seed that later generations would force to grow. From the Schuldfrage debates of the 1950s to the student protests, the Eichmann Trial, and the televised shock of Holocaust in the 1970s, German society slowly confronted what Jackson had warned the world never to forget. The long evolution of German memory reveals that nations do not absorb moral failure at once; they negotiate it, resist it, and eventually reshape it into responsibility. Today, Nuremberg remains a touchstone of international justice, shaping prosecutions from the former Yugoslavia to the International Criminal Court.

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