The Betrayal is the first integrated, comprehensive history of the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 70 years. Building on previously unused archival materials it looks at all thirteen proceedings held at Nuremberg between 1945 and 1949, as well as at the corresponding British and French cases. Reappraising the trials' pivotal role in transitioning Germany into a liberal-democratic society, The Betrayal shows how notions of German divergence from a presumed Western path of development informed Allied interpretations of Nazi crimes and fed into the trial design. The idea that Germany had betrayed the Western model figured in virtually all proceedings, yet it was articulated in different ways and with uneven success in court, depending on different sets of protagonists, subject matters, and contexts. Approached from this vantage point, it is not only the effects of Nuremberg but also the way in which history underpins transitional trials which come to the fore.