This is part three of The Trials of Nuremberg, 1947. Host Judge Stephen Sfekas outlines howGermany’s legal system—once considered among the most advanced in the world—gradually became an instrument of tyranny. He traces the roots from Bismarck’s judicial reforms to Hitler’s Enabling Act, showing how civil law traditions, social class, and career incentives helped create a judiciary loyal to the state rather than to justice itself.

In this episode, Judge Sfekas explores how Nazi leaders used law to legalize persecution, how judges justified their roles, and how the postwar Justice Trial sought to reassert the idea that law must serve humanity, not power. It is a story about the collapseof moral judgment inside the courts.

In Part 2 of The Trial of the Nazi Judges at Nuremberg, host Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the shift from the international IMT to the U.S.-run Nuremberg Military Tribunals. After debate over more international trials, Robert Jackson said no, and the Allies agreed each occupier would pursue justice in its own zone, opening the door for the American program in Nuremberg.

We explain how the NMTs widened accountability, including why rape didn’t appear as a stand-alone charge at the IMT and how evidence involving the Red Army and reports about French troops shaped those choices. We spotlight Telford Taylor, Jackson’s former deputy and later Chief of Counsel, who pursued sectoral prosecutions of doctors, judges and ministry lawyers, corporate leaders, and security officials. He recruited nearly 100 prosecutors, about ten percent women. Sadie Arbuthnot served on the Justice Trial, and Goetz was the only woman to speak in court in the I.G. Farben case.

In 1947, a group of German judges stood before an American tribunal in Nuremberg, accused of war crimes committed under the Nazi regime. How did it come to this — judges, once entrusted with justice, now on trial for betraying it?

In Part 1 of The Trial of the Nazi Judges at Nuremberg 1947, host Judge Stephen J. Sfekas (Circuit Court for Baltimore City) sets the stage for one of the most consequential trials in legal history. Drawing on his own lifelong fascination with Nuremberg — first sparked as a 14-year-old boy and reignited decades later when he joined the bench — Judge Sfekas explores how the Nuremberg process began, the legal and moral questions it raised, and the extraordinary scene inside the courtroom: a U.S. Army tribunal, held on German soil, judging German judges for crimes against their own people.

This episode introduces the International Military Tribunal that set the pattern for all that followed, explains how the United States’ stance toward postwar justice evolved from vengeance to legality, and traces the emergence of figures like Justice Robert H. Jackson. It is the first step in a five-part journey through the arraignment, trial, and legacy of the Justice Case — United States v. Alstoetter — a reckoning not just with Nazi crimes, but with the rule of law itself.