In her prologue to The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice, Natalie Livingstone recalls visiting the Imperial War Museum in London, where a painting by Laura Knight led her to wonder about the role of women during the landmark Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Livingstone tells us that the story of the Nuremberg Trials has always been a story by and about men. This is certainly borne out in the books I’ve read about the Trials. Women make appearances, here and there, but we rarely get to learn about their contributions or experiences. This book is Livingstone’s attempt to shine a light on what women—well, eight women—did before, during, and after the Tribunals.
Livingstone had to make choices about which women to include in her history of the Trials. There were hundreds of women involved with the Tribunals, in various roles, and it would be impossible to tell everyone’s story. Instead, Livingstone introduces us to a lawyer (Harriet Zetterberg), journalists (Erika Mann, Rebecca West, and Ursula von Kardorff), a countess turned hostess (Ingeborg Kálnoky), a witness (Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier), an artist (Laura Knight), and a translator (Tatiana Stupnikova). This cast was well chosen. Not only do each of these women play a different role at the Tribunals, they also represent the wide array of feelings people had about the validity of the Trials at the time. For example, Stupnikova, Mann, and Vaillant-Couturier were very supportive of the Trials. Mann actually thought that the Trials and Denazification didn’t go far enough to mete out punishment to the Nazis who’d committed crimes against humanity. Ingeborg Kálnoky, who had the closest contact with some of the defendants and defense witnesses, was more inclined to downplay the severity of Nazi war crimes.
There were some stories that resonated more with me than others. I was massively impressed by lawyer Harriet Zetterberg, who helped write briefs against Hans Frank and other defendants. Her words are in the official transcripts of the trial, though she didn’t get credit for them. As a woman, she had to contest sexism and male egos to do her job of prosecuting war criminals. (And good lord are there some egos on display in this book.) Tatiana Stupnikova’s intellect and stamina were also tested throughout the Trials. She had the job of simultaneously translating German and Russian for the Russian judges and prosecutors. Not only did she have to do the mind-melting task of translating legal language and harrowing accounts of war crimes for hours at a time, Stupnikova had to cope with the specter of the NKVD breathing down her neck in case she did anything “counter-revolutionary” or against Soviet interests.
The woman who stood out the most to me was Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier. During the war, Vailllant-Couturier served with the French Resistance, mostly by passing messages. She was arrested by the French collaborationist police and handed over to the Gestapo. She was later sent to Auschwitz, then Ravensbrück. When Ravensbrück was liberated, Vaillant-Couturier stayed at the camp to help nurse the sick before being repatriated to France. She gave testimony at Nuremberg. She was one of the few witnesses called, but her words made a huge emotional impact. It’s one thing to read reports or even written testimony. It’s another thing entirely to listen to a women who the Nazis tried to kill in their death camps recount what happened to her and the women she was incarcerated with.
Livingstone sometimes meanders while recounting these women’s stories to touch on topics as varied as Mann’s relationship with her father, the author Thomas Mann; the British government’s program of hiring artists to create war propaganda and document historic events; nightlife in Nuremberg during the trial; the tensions between local Germans and the Allied forces; and a host of other things. But I like it when historians wander where there interests take them. I also very much appreciated how often Livingstone let these women speak for themselves. Livingstone uses letters, memoirs, and family recollections fill these narratives with the women’s impressions of their time in Nuremberg. As a good historian, Livingstone also points out when some of these memoirs, such as the one produced by Ingeborg Kálnoky, were “massaged” to paint their authors in a better light than they might’ve deserved. I was fascinated throughout.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration.