Thirty-six years after the event, the Nuremberg trials remain the most important (and controversial) international legal assault ever launched against aggression and atrocities. Yet, until quite recently, the full story behind the decision to go to Nuremberg could not be told because the essential documentation was unavailable. Now, in The road to Nuremberg, Bradley F. Smith, whose widely acclaimed Reaching judgment at Nuremberg revealed how the judges actually reached their verdicts, provides us with the first authoritative account of how the Allies finally agreed to try the surviving Nazi leaders under international law rather than summarily shoot them.