When Katherine Fite arrived in London in the summer of 1945, her role in the post-World War II justice process was so novel that the New York Times took notice. “Woman joins staff of war crimes group,” the paper proclaimed. Fite told the Times that “she would not know the scope of her assignment until she had arrived overseas, but that she had been conversant with most phases of the work of the State Department on war crimes.” As the quest for postwar justice continued, Fite became one of just a few women lawyers participating in what became known as the Nuremberg Trials.
On May 2, 1945 — just six days before Victory in Europe, or V-E Day — Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson agreed to serve as chief prosecutor. That summer, as Europe emerged from the war, Jackson worked with his team and the Allies to prepare for the first ever international war crimes trials. Fite joined both the negotiations and legal research that led to the August 8 signing of the London Charter, creating the International Military Tribunal.
Fite was the only woman lawyer present in the preparation phase. In September 1945, a month before the trials began, Fite toured Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich. She wrote home about the experience: “The gardens might well look fertile — human ashes were readily available for fertilizer.” A Polish-Jewish man who had survived Dachau showed her the gas chambers, disguised as shower rooms.
After the first trial, which lasted until October 1946, the United States launched 12 more trials that continued through 1949. Men dominated the courtroom — both as lawyers and as defendants — so women’s contributions were often overlooked. From the beginning, however, the American legal team relied on women’s work in key ways, from Fite’s work in the planning through the execution of the final trials, to Belle Zeck’s foundational work investigating German manufacturer I.G. Farben, to Cecelia Goetz’s key role prosecuting Krupp Industries.
Fite was not the only woman present at the Nuremberg Trials, but she was the highest-level female attorney in the early phases. Harriet Zetterberg was another early participant, the only woman lawyer assigned to the main prosecution team for the first Nuremberg trial, beginning in mid-August and lasting until June of 1946. Zetterberg arrived in Nuremberg in mid-September and prepared trial briefs, including one on slave labor and how it was used as a method to kill. Zetterberg felt the weight of the work, calling the six interrogations she witnessed “extremely interesting — one gets a sense of listening to history in the making.”
While Zetterberg remained with the trial for much longer, Fite was only tasked to work with the planning group for a few months. She returned home at the end of December, going back to her job at the State Department. A month earlier, she had expressed concern that things were being rushed. She once caught a critical punctuation error in the London Charter’s section on crimes against humanity. “More sloppy work,” she told her parents. “So you see it’s not all a glorious, joyous crusade.”
Belle Mayer Zeck was one of the prosecutors on the I.G. Farben case in 1947 and 1948, but she began investigating the company in the summer of 1945 when she worked as a lawyer with the Treasury Department. Like Fite, she was sent to London that summer as preparations for international justice began. I.G. Farben, a major German supplier of wartime materials, was best known for creating Zyklon-B, the chemical used to kill more than a million people in the concentration camp gas chambers. She helped find evidence that I.G. Farben was making money off of the war.
By the time the Farben trial began in 1947, Zeck’s deep knowledge of the company proved essential. She prepared the first version of the indictment against I.G. Farben, served as an associate counsel member of the prosecution team, and explained all of her research findings to the judges. Thirteen of the accused were found guilty of war crimes when the trial concluded.
The Krupp trial, which began in late 1947, focused on a German company known for manufacturing steel and weapons, and accused of using slave labor during the war. American lawyer During the Krupp trial, Cecelia Goetz became the first woman to give part of an opening statement in any of the Nuremberg trials. Goetz provided background on how Krupp had helped Hitler achieve his goals of national expansion, asserted that Krupp had relied on slave labor to do so, and concluded that “the Krupp firm shared in the spoils of conquest.”
After Nuremberg, Fite, Zetterberg, Zeck, and Goetz returned to the United States; it was rare for any of them to speak much about their experience. In 1995, Goetz spoke up when she participated in a panel at New York Law School that focused on the Nuremberg Trials. Noting that the purpose of the panel was to think about Nuremberg as a standard for later trials, she explained, “I am terribly anxious not to see such atrocities go unpunished. However, I think Nuremberg is a flawed precedent.” She felt that Nuremberg was so important, but the trials had not achieve the outcome that she and others had hoped to see: “The sentences imposed were minimal.”
Even with its shortcomings, the women who participated in Nuremberg saw value in the effort. In a 1999 interview with the Shoah foundation, Zeck reflected on the importance of Nuremberg. “I think we accomplished a great deal where international law was concerned. I think that the Nuremberg principles have become a very important part of international law.” But her experiences at Nuremberg had been trying. “For many years,” she explained, “I maintained the proposition that there were certain experiences that one was better off not to have had…I just felt that [the trial] was a very searing experience…Today I feel that it was really a tremendous experience. Where would anybody like me get that kind of experience?”
Though a turning point in international justice, the Nuremberg Trials were constrained by the politics and prejudices of their time. In July 1945, the Allies decided not to prosecute antisemitism as an ideology, a choice made by Justice Jackson. He did not believe that this was a goal the United States had in mind when it came to justice. The extermination of European Jews was addressed, but the hatred that fueled it — antisemitism — remained unnamed.
The women of Nuremberg knew justice would be difficult, and that the trials were extraordinary — and unfinished. Katherine Fite worried about the errors and rushed procedures. Harriet Zetterberg was immersed in the intensity of interrogations. Belle Zeck called it a “searing experience.” And yet, they helped lay the foundation for modern international law. Their work — and their doubts — remain powerful reminders that justice is always a process, never a finished product.
The Nuremberg Trials didn’t end antisemitism or fully reckon with the ideological roots of genocide. But the women who served in those courtrooms helped build the legal scaffolding we still use to pursue accountability for crimes against humanity.
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