Uncovering the Forgotten Women of Nuremberg: How Author Natalie Livingstone Rewrites the History of Nazi Trials

When glancing at Dame Laura Knight’s famous painting of the Nuremberg Trials, viewers are easily left with the impression that the historic international pursuit of Nazi war criminals was a strictly male affair. The canvas, familiar to generations of students and historians, depicts the male Nazi defendants surrounded by a sea of men filling the courtroom. However, as author Natalie Livingstone reveals, that standard visual depiction is far from the whole truth of what actually happened in post-war Germany.

Sparked by her personal connection as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Livingstone has investigated a deeply buried chapter of twentieth-century history. In her new book, The Nuremberg Women—which has already become an instant Sunday Times bestseller in the United Kingdom—she brings to light the stories of eight forgotten women who played vital, groundbreaking roles in bringing the architects of the Third Reich to justice.

Reflecting on the atmosphere that birthed her research, Livingstone recalls sitting quietly in the bar at Nuremberg’s Grand Hotel, trying to imagine the immense historical weight that room had witnessed decades earlier. The space was dark, defined by low lamplight and polished grey floors, with symmetrical square tables placed with geometric precision and glossy grey bar stools arranged in unyielding ranks. Yet, as she looked closer at the enduring physical details, she was mentally transported back eight decades. For nearly a year after the conclusion of World War II, this hotel did not host business travelers attending routine modern conferences; instead, it accommodated a vast, complex cast of individuals gathering for one of the most critical legal reckonings in human history. Among that bustling, historic multitude, Livingstone discovered, were numerous pioneering women whose contributions had been systematically sidelined by mainstream history.

Sitting in that very hotel bar in her mind’s eye, the author could vividly visualize famed writer Rebecca West, her chin up with an uncompromising, sharp gaze; celebrated painter Dame Laura Knight, older but wide-eyed and giddy on the historic company she was keeping; and Erika Mann—the brilliant, stern, and androgynous daughter of a Nobel Prize-winning writer—standing aloof and watching the unfolding drama.

Growing up as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Livingstone had always believed she possessed a comprehensive understanding of the Nuremberg Trials. The momentous legal undertaking had naturally loomed large in her family background and education. Yet, everything she had read and seen of the trials had reinforced the prevailing narrative that it was a distinctly male affair. As her deep historical research eventually made clear, that assumption was wildly incorrect.

The first woman Livingstone encountered was Laura Knight, whose magnificent painting of the courtroom dock she already knew from its reproduction in numerous history books. While Knight’s artwork prominently featured the male defendants and the male-dominated courtroom, other figures were harder to trace. While Livingstone recognized prominent names like Rebecca West and Erika Mann, she initially had no idea of the true significance of their specific contributions to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Many other women—who were not well-known at the time and remain even less recognized today—had been quietly pushed to the margins of historical record.

One such trailblazer was the brilliant, Yale-educated lawyer Harriet Zetterberg, whom Livingstone discovered as a literal footnote tucked away within the published memoirs of assistant U.S. prosecutor Telford Taylor. Zetterberg’s remarkable story now forms the starting point of Livingstone’s book. Tasked with the monumental responsibility of writing the legal brief to prosecute the notorious "Butcher of Poland," Hans Frank, Zetterberg worked tirelessly day and night under terrible conditions. Her exhaustive efforts successfully constructed an airtight case that ultimately led to Frank’s conviction.

However, the institutional sexism of the era severely curtailed her professional recognition. When the case was presented in court, Zetterberg was forced to hand her painstakingly crafted work over to an American male colleague to read aloud. To advocate directly in court at that time would have necessitated obtaining an official waiver of disability—the legal disability in question being simply that she was a woman. Later, when Zetterberg became pregnant, her brilliant legal mind and indispensable labor were casually dismissed, and she was shipped back home to return to an unfulfilling suburban life.

By drawing on overlooked archives, personal letters, private diaries, and other sources that had gathered dust for decades, Livingstone uncovered women operating at Nuremberg in almost every conceivable capacity. Beyond lawyers like Zetterberg, women served as linguists, specialized researchers, secretaries, official courtroom artists, journalists, and witnesses. During her research, Livingstone was fortunate to connect with family members who spoke passionately about their female relatives, bringing their past lives vividly into the present as she pored over boxes of memorabilia kept with immense family pride.

In The Nuremberg Women, the author sought to throw open the doors to the backrooms where female lawyers directed teams of female researchers, the bars and hotels where women of every vocation mingled, drank, and danced, and the shared residences where dozens of female journalists were forced to navigate primitive conditions—such as a single villa bathroom plumbed, naturally, with a single urinal.

Out of this vast and vital cast of historical figures, eight remarkable women emerge as the anchoring focal points of the narrative. Alongside Harriet Zetterberg, Livingstone selected these specific individuals to provide a clearer, more accurate lens through which to view the trial today.

Among them is Erika Mann, the fierce anti-fascist daughter of Germany’s most famous novelist, who arrived as a journalist burning with righteous fury at the "alien homeland" she had been forced to flee during the 1930s. There is also Hungarian Countess Ingeborg Kálnoky, who presided over a guest house where the victims of Nazism and the perpetrators summoned as witnesses slept in adjacent bedrooms and dined in the exact same room.

The narrative also highlights Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a fearless French resistance fighter who survived the horrors of Auschwitz and took the stand to deliver testimony that physically and emotionally shook the courtroom and the watching world. Meanwhile, 68-year-old British painter Dame Laura Knight expertly captured the heavy, tense atmosphere of Courtroom 600, creating what remains the most iconic and enduring visual record of the entire trial.

In the interpretation booths, Tatiana Stupnikova provided real-time translations for the Soviet delegation while simultaneously navigating political perils that were entirely unimaginable to her Western colleagues. Ursula von Kardorff arrived hoping to report on the proceedings from a distinctively German perspective, all while remaining in deep denial regarding her own complex and compromised past under the Third Reich. Finally, Rebecca West, reporting for The New Yorker, traveled to Nuremberg while undergoing a severe personal crisis, seeking both escape and personal renewal—and ultimately finding both in the most unexpected places.

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

These women played an indispensable role in helping deliver international justice to a fractured world, only for that same world to subsequently overlook and forget them. With the publication of The Nuremberg Women, Livingstone has stepped forward to ensure their pivotal contributions are restored to their rightful place in history.