There were no atheists at Nuremberg

Today—Nov. 20—marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, the proceedings that brought the Nazi regime before the bar of justice for its world-historical barbarism.

I confess that the events of Nuremberg fascinate me. On the one hand, the idea that a temporary military tribunal comprised of the Allied Powers would formulate legal standards almost ex nihilo  to put Nazi leaders on trial raises perennial philosophical questions about legal authority and legitimacy. Was this a court with true jurisdiction or simply the moral will of the victors? The question still lingers.

Yet as a professor of Christian ethics, it is not merely the procedural complexity that holds my attention—it is the moral gravity. Nuremberg was not simply a courtroom. It was humanity’s attempt to reckon with evil so horrific and so intentional that ordinary categories seemed insufficient. The Nazis’ crimes were grotesque and intentionally dehumanizing, and those crimes demanded justice. The trials stand as evidence that human conscience and the laws of nations cry out for justice.

After the Allied victory in World War II, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union formed what became known as the International Military Tribunal. That tribunal, a criminal court, was established to prosecute the highest surviving officials of the Nazi government. Four legal categories were established: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit the same. These standards did not arise from any nation’s legal code but from universal principles of justice. They rested on the natural law.

That point is decisive: The Nazis’ preferred defense—“we were obeying lawful orders”—collapsed the moment a law higher than German positive law was acknowledged. Natural law established a moral jurisdiction transcending national sovereignty.

Why, then, was a trial necessary? Justice Robert H. Jackson of the Supreme Court of the United States, the chief American prosecutor, framed the answer soberly and unmistakably in his opening statement: “The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

For Jackson, Nuremberg was not merely punitive—it was a civilizational test for whether the world possessed the legal temerity to reckon with the horrors that visited it. Humanity had to prove it possessed moral resources sufficient to prevent such evil from recurring.

Still, the trials were morally and philosophically fraught. Was this simply victor’s justice? Were the Allies themselves not guilty of moral wrongs in war? Was it legitimate to try defendants on legal grounds formulated after their actions had occurred? And could anything called “international law” truly bind—and supersede—sovereign nations?

These questions are not trivial. They remain live issues in jurisprudence, ethics, and international relations.

Even so, one feature stands out with clarity: When confronted with atrocities of such scale, humanity instinctively appeals to an objective moral standard. Abstract academic debates about relativism sound impressive in seminar rooms. They sound absurd amid the piles of shoes at Auschwitz.

Nuremberg stands as a modern vindication of the moral law of God—the natural law. It demonstrated that evil cannot be excused by legality, that positive law cannot be the final authority, and that justice demands reference to a universal moral order grounded in human dignity. If positivism were true—if the state is the highest lawgiver—then no atrocity could ever be condemned. Murder, enslavement, rape, extermination—if commanded by the state—would be moral by definition.

That conclusion is repugnant, and the world knew it, which is why the Nuremberg trials had to take place, even amid the protracted debates over the court’s legal authority.

Thus, the crimes of the Nazis were not merely offenses against other nations; they were violations of the very grain of the universe—the moral order stitched into creation.

At Nuremberg, the nations of the world looked into the abyss of human depravity and rendered judgment—not merely by power, politics, or treaty, but by appeal to a law higher than man. That law is nothing less than the law of God—written on the heart and revealed in creation.

Scripture names what Nuremberg demonstrated: Humanity knows there is a moral law above human decree. As the Apostle Paul teaches in Romans 2:14-16, God has written His law on the human conscience.

We often repeat the phrase, “There are no atheists in foxholes”—meaning that at the brink of death, the denial of God collapses under the weight of staring existential reality down at the end of a gun barrel. That is true.

Atheism and moral relativism are powerless in the face of Nazi atrocities. They are impotent and sterile in their attempts to provide an ethical framework for adjudicating gross injustice. When we confront evil so profound that language strains to describe it, the human heart knows instinctively: There must be justice, and justice must be grounded in something higher than the state. But the moral horror we feel in the face of Nazi atrocities teaches an additional truth: There were no atheists at Nuremberg.