Which British judge served as the chief prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the Nuremberg Trials?

Hartley Shawcross served as the chief prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the main Nuremberg Trial. He led the British prosecution team before the International Military Tribunal, which tried major Nazi leaders in 1945 and 1946.

Shawcross’s opening address emphasized that the defendants were accused not simply of wartime battlefield acts but of aggressive war and systematic crimes. The British prosecution presented evidence on Nazi planning, concentration camps, and the persecution and murder of civilians.

He is often confused with Robert H. Jackson, the American chief prosecutor, who served as the tribunal’s leading U.S. prosecutor. The other principal prosecutors represented France and the Soviet Union. The tribunal convicted several defendants of crimes against humanity, a legal category that became central to later international criminal law.