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This book provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the twelve war crimes trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949, collectively known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs). The judgments the NMTs produced have played a critical role in the development of international criminal law, particularly in terms of how courts currently understand war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. The trials are also of tremendous historical importance, because they provide a far more comprehensive picture of Nazi atrocities than their more famous predecessor, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT). The IMT focused exclusively on the ‘major war criminals’ — the Goerings, the Hesses, the Speers. The NMTs, by contrast, prosecuted doctors, lawyers, judges, industrialists, bankers — the private citizens and lower-level functionaries whose willingness to take part in the destruction of millions of innocents manifested what Hannah Arendt famously called ‘the banality of evil’. The book is divided into five sections. The first section traces the evolution of the twelve NMT trials. The second section discusses the law, procedure, and rules of evidence applied by the tribunals, with a focus on the important differences between Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the tribunals' jurisprudence. It covers Law No. 10's core crimes — crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — as well as the crimes of conspiracy and membership in a criminal organization. The fourth section then examines the modes of participation and defences that the tribunals recognized. The final section deals with sentencing, the aftermath of the trials, and their historical legacy.

After the Second World War, the Australian military prosecuted almost a thousand alleged Japanese war criminals. These prosecutions were not only an attempt to punish Japan for its wartime militarism, but also a move to exert influence over the future course of Japanese society, politics, and foreign policy, as well as to cement Australia’s position in the Pacific as a regional power. During the Allied occupation of Japan (1945-52), Australia energetically pursued Japanese war criminals, and took a tough stance on Japan in general. The U.S. authorities, who dominated the Occupation, initially took the same line. As the Cold War in Asia intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, the U.S. government ceased to consider Japan a threat to Pacific security, and instead began to cultivate Japan as a potential democratic ally against communism. By the end of the Occupation, U.S. officials were firmly committed to pursuing good relations with the Japanese government. Gradually, in the 1950s, the Australian government came to share the U.S. view of Japan. As Japan shifted in official thinking from being a former foe, to a potential economic and political partner, concerns about the guilt of individual Japanese soldiers made way for pragmatism and political gain. The war criminals became entangled with Australian moves to establish good relations with Japan, and to draw the U.S. into a close alliance. Variations to their sentences - through repatriation to Japan, and later through parole or other forms of early release - became diplomatic bargaining chips. By the end of 1957, all of the surviving war criminals prosecuted by Australia had been released.