Uncovering the Forgotten Women of Nuremberg: How Author Natalie Livingstone Reclaims History

Glancing at Dame Laura Knight’s famous painting of the Nuremberg Trials, one might easily assume that the historic pursuit of Nazi war criminals was a strictly male affair. The canvas presents a dramatic, austere courtroom dominated by male defendants, male judges, male prosecutors, and a dense sea of men filling the public galleries. However, as author Natalie Livingstone reveals, that standard visual depiction is far from the historical truth. Sparked by a deep personal connection as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Livingstone has penned a groundbreaking new book, The Nuremberg Women, which has already captured critical acclaim and become an instant Sunday Times bestseller in the United Kingdom. Through meticulous research into overlooked archives, letters, diaries, and rare sources, Livingstone uncovers the stories of eight forgotten women who played vital, indispensable roles in bringing the architects of the Third Reich to justice.

Revisiting the Grand Hotel and the Specter of the Past

Sitting quietly in the bar at Nuremberg’s Grand Hotel, Livingstone tried to imagine the immense history that the room had witnessed decades earlier. The space retains a quiet, muted atmosphere—dark, with low lamplight and polished grey floors, where everything appears symmetrical, from square tables placed with geometric precision to glossy grey bar stools arranged in unyielding ranks. Yet, looking deeper into the details, some of which remain unchanged since the immediate aftermath of World War II, the author found herself mentally transported back eight decades.

For nearly a year following the collapse of the Nazi regime, this historic hotel did not welcome casual business travelers or conference attendees as it does today. Instead, it served as a bustling, high-stakes hub for an international cast of characters gathered for one of the most monumental legal reckonings in human history. Among that sprawling cast, Livingstone discovered, were numerous women whose contributions have long been sidelined by history.

In her mind’s eye at the hotel bar, she could vividly picture them: famed writer Rebecca West, sitting with her chin up and an uncompromising gaze; celebrated painter Dame Laura Knight, older but wide-eyed and giddy on the extraordinary company she was keeping; and Erika Mann—the brilliant, stern, and androgynous daughter of a Nobel-Prize-winning writer—standing aloof and silently observing the unfolding drama.

Challenging the Myth of a Men-Only Tribunal

Growing up, Livingstone felt she knew the history of the Nuremberg Trials well. As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, this momentous legal undertaking loomed large in her family’s consciousness and identity. Yet, everything she had read, studied, and seen of the trial had left her with the distinct impression that it was a strictly male enterprise.

As she began her archival research, she quickly realized how wildly incorrect that perception was. The first woman who initially drew her attention was Laura Knight, whose magnificent and evocative painting of the defendant’s dock she recognized from numerous history books—the very image that portrays a courtroom dominated almost exclusively by men. While she was already familiar with cultural luminaries like Rebecca West and Erika Mann, she had remained entirely unaware of the actual significance and depth of their contributions to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Many other women—who were not widely known at the time and are even less so today—were systematically pushed to the margins of historical accounts.

One such trailblazing figure was the brilliant Yale-educated lawyer Harriet Zetterberg, whom Livingstone stumbled upon merely as a literal footnote in the memoirs of assistant U.S. prosecutor Telford Taylor. So struck was Livingstone by this fleeting mention that she chose to begin her book with Zetterberg’s story. Tasked with the grueling assignment of writing the legal brief to prosecute the notorious "Butcher of Poland," Hans Frank, Zetterberg worked tirelessly, day and night, under terrible, grueling conditions. Her meticulous dedication helped construct an airtight legal case that ultimately led to Frank’s conviction.

However, when the time came for the trial’s proceedings in court, Zetterberg was forced to hand her brilliant work over to an American male colleague to read aloud. To advocate directly inside the courtroom at that time would have required obtaining a formal waiver of disability—the "disability" in question simply being that she was a woman. Later, when Zetterberg became pregnant, her exceptional legal mind and painstaking efforts were abruptly cast aside; she was shipped back home to the United States to return to a conventional and unfulfilling suburban life.

A Vast Cast Across Every Capacity of the Tribunal

Drawing extensively on overlooked archives, private letters, personal diaries, and little-noticed historical sources, Livingstone found women operating at Nuremberg in almost every conceivable capacity. Beyond lawyers like Harriet Zetterberg, women served as linguists, specialized researchers, administrative secretaries, courtroom artists, journalists, and vital witnesses. She was fortunate enough to connect with family members who fondly spoke of their female relatives who had been stationed at Nuremberg, bringing them back to life as she pored over family heirlooms, photographs, and documents kept with immense pride.

In The Nuremberg Women, Livingstone aimed to throw open the doors to the backrooms where female lawyers quietly directed the work of female researchers, the vibrant bars and hotels where women of every vocation mingled, drank, and danced, and the crowded villa where dozens of female journalists shared a single bathroom—plumbed, naturally, with a single urinal left over from its previous military occupation.

From this vast, vital, and diverse cast, eight remarkable women emerge as the narrative anchors of the book. Alongside Harriet Zetterberg, Livingstone carefully selected figures through whom she now views the entire trial with greater clarity and accuracy.

There is Erika Mann, the fierce anti-fascist daughter of Germany’s most famous novelist, who arrived as a war journalist burning with righteous fury at the "alien homeland" she had been forced to flee in the 1930s. There is Hungarian Countess Ingeborg Kálnoky, who presided over a unique guest house where victims of Nazi persecution and the perpetrators of those very atrocities—both summoned as witnesses—slept in adjacent bedrooms and dined together in the same communal room.

The narrative also highlights Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a fearless French resistance fighter who miraculously survived the horrors of Auschwitz and took the stand to deliver testimony that physically and emotionally shook the courtroom and the global public watching outside. Alongside her stands the 68-year-old British artist Dame Laura Knight, who managed to capture the heavy, tense atmosphere of Courtroom 600 in what would ultimately become the most iconic and enduring visual record of the trials.

Further enriching the historical tapestry are figures like Tatiana Stupnikova, who interpreted the complex proceedings in real-time for the Soviet delegation while navigating acute political perils that her Western colleagues could scarcely imagine. Ursula von Kardorff arrived hoping to report on the trial from a distinctly German perspective, while privately grappling with and remaining in denial about her own chequered past and compromises under the Third Reich. Finally, Rebecca West, reporting for The New Yorker, traveled to Nuremberg during a period of personal crisis, seeking a sense of escape and renewal—and finding both in the most unexpected corners of a ruined city.

Through the intersecting lives of these eight women, Livingstone sought to reveal Nuremberg not as a distant, rarefied historical abstraction, but as a living world fizzing with drama, complexity, and stark contradiction. It is a story defined by lofty legal concepts set against grubby human realities, moments of deep sobriety juxtaposed with chaotic abandon, century-defining political enmities, briefly burning love affairs, suspicious deaths, and unexpected new life. Above all, it remains a timeless story about the arduous search for truth amidst a sea of falsehood, finding hope among ruins, and understanding what it truly means to pursue justice against all odds.

These women helped deliver a foundational measure of justice to a broken postwar world, only for that same world to subsequently overlook their efforts. With the publication of The Nuremberg Women, Livingstone has ensured that their pivotal, groundbreaking contributions will never be forgotten again.