Top Photo: Cecelia Goetz reads a portion of opening statement. Goetz was the only woman to give an opening statement at the Nuremberg Trials. National Archives

A woman lawyer joining the war crimes justice process in the summer of 1945 was so novel that major newspapers took notice. A headline from the New York Times announced, “Woman joins staff of war crimes group.”1  Katherine Fite, the lawyer in question, arrived in London in June 1945 to help craft the London Agreement and Charter. In 1945, only three percent of American lawyers were women, and even fewer held prominent positions. In this environment, women lawyers shaping the Nuremberg Trials was groundbreaking. 2

Popular memory of the Nuremberg Trials centers on Robert Jackson, Telford Taylor, and the Nazi leaders accused of war crimes. Behind these men, however, were a handful of female lawyers whose contributions to the proceedings have been largely overlooked. Though often marginalized in official and personal accounts, women lawyers at Nuremberg were essential to the trials’ legal and historical legacy. Their contributions demonstrate both the barriers these women faced in the American legal world of the 1940s and the intellectual labor they performed to help build modern international criminal law. Because Fite left behind unusually detailed letters, her story provides a vivid entry point into the experiences of women lawyers at Nuremberg—though she was only one among many whose important contributions remain understudied.

London, 1945

Katherine Fite graduated from Yale Law School in 1930 and was one of only four women in her graduating class of 76.3  After working in private practice and in the United States-Mexico General Claims Commission, Fite joined the Office of the Legal Advisor in the State Department in 1937. In 1945, on the recommendation of her supervisor, Fite became the first American woman lawyer to join Justice Robert Jackson’s staff in London, where he and his team were drafting the London Agreement and preparing for the International Military Tribunal.4  Fite wrote to her parents that upon her arrival, Jackson was “grand—takes me right into high quarters & introduced me to everyone.”5  Three days later, she traveled with him to Nuremberg, where Jackson asked her to join General Edward Chambers Betts, the judge advocate in the European theater of operations, and his assistant, Colonel Charles Fairman, for a business discussion. Although Fite “felt as tho (sic) I were in very high quarters,” she “spoke up nevertheless.”6  Jackson later invited her to observe a case in the House of Lords, which she believed was due to her “female and perhaps State Department status.”7  Fite wrote that 

“being the only woman on the staff has many drawbacks, [but] from the social point of view, it pays. A masculine society is eager for women and we have the added advantage of being in civilian clothes. Tho when we go into Germany for the trial we may have to get into uniform to be more easily identified…My army colleagues are, I am sure, jealous of my trips, for I do go places and travel in high circles, but they are very gallant about it. At least I am seeing how topside fares in military occupation.”8  

Fite’s letters demonstrate that she was there to do her job and that, despite some challenges, she was welcomed into the highest levels of preparation for the tribunal.

Katherine Fite Lincoln and Justice Robert H. Jackson. National Archives

Fite witnessed the signing of the London Agreement and Charter on August 8, 1945, writing: 

“Wednesday was a big day for us, the signing of the agreement, though I suppose the Russian entry into the Pacific War dwarfed it in the Thursday papers. I went down to witness the signing—it was a barrage of lights and photographers.”9  

By October 1945, Fite and Jackson’s team relocated to Nuremberg to prepare for the IMT, which began on November 20. 

Delegation from the Four Powers inspect Nuremberg, Germany, in preparation for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, ca. 1945. Katherine Fite, second right from middle, is the only women. Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, National Archives.

During preparation, Fite “engineered an interrogation of [Wilhelm] Frick, formerly Minister of Interior later pushed out by [Heinrich] Himmler. I mean I set the wheels in motion and we gave our questions to the interrogator,”10  illustrating her role in shaping the prosecution’s work in preparation for the IMT. Although Fite’s detail was set to expire on November 13, 1945, a week before the start of the tribunal, she asked to stay on. Jackson requested her extension for the duration of the trial or until further instruction. By early November, Fite was immersed in frantic preparation for the upcoming trial: 

“We are in a wild rush with briefs due a week from tomorrow…I don’t see how we can be ready for the 20th… They say the British say—Come Hell or highwater—trial by the 20th. So it’s Hell now and highwater later. I think it’s a shame if just two weeks could make a better case. We [the Americans] are carrying the mammoth share.”11  

Fite’s letters reflect the broader stakes of the trial, and her own feelings about it:

 “Europe is a sad worn out continent. I’m glad to leave. The U.S. is sitting atop the world…I realize how remote and exuberant and luxurious the U.S. is going to seem. We have to run the world—but the vast majority have no idea what the rest of the world is like. And how can equilibrium be maintained between wealth and energy on the one hand and poverty and exhaustion on the other?”12  

Fite left the trials to return home in December 1945, feeling that the work had been rushed.13  Her departure, however, did not mean the end of women at the Nuremberg trials.  

The International Military Tribunal, 1945–46

While Fite’s experience offers the fullest record, she was joined by other women whose contributions to the trials, though less documented, were essential to the prosecution’s work. Harriet Zetterberg, a 1941 graduate of University of Wisconsin Law School, worked in the legal department at the Board of Economic Warfare before joining the prosecution team as the first woman formally assigned to the IMT.14  Her job was to prepare trial briefs, including one on slave labor as a means of murder. Zetterberg felt the weight of the work, calling the six interrogations she witnessed “extremely interesting—one gets a sense of listening to history in the making.”15  

The same frenetic energy from Fite’s letters can be seen in Zetterberg’s. To her mother, she wrote in November 1945 that “we are frantically busy on the briefs. My goodness, day and night, and night and day.”16  Zetterberg’s male colleagues insisted that her name should be listed first in their brief “on account of I’m a girl. I thought it was very sweet of them.”17  Like Fite, Zetterberg was there to do her job, and her colleagues recognized that.

The Subsequent Trials, 1946–49

World War II had a profound impact on the ability of women lawyers to find employment—if only temporarily. As young male associates left for war, women filled those roles. Some major New York law firms like Cahill Gordon, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett hired women to handle the legal work left behind by male associates who had joined the Armed Forces.18 But as men returned home, they returned to their jobs. Some women left to hang their own shingles, while others stayed at firms in lesser roles, like legal secretaries and librarians, or were relegated trusts and estates, work that was considered less masculine than other types of law.

The US government, like many law firms, also recruited women to fill some of the gaps left by men who joined the military. Cecelia Goetz, a 1940 graduate of NYU Law, joined the Solicitor’s Office in the Department of Justice because she could not find employment in the private or judicial sector, despite being the first female editor-in-chief of a major American law journal.19  Goetz was also considered “much too attractive” to be a good lawyer.20  Because of her talent, Goetz became the first woman to ever be offered a supervisory role in the department, which she turned down to apply for the prosecution team at the IMT.21  

Goetz’s application was rejected because she was a woman, and she was told that there were no adequate facilities for her, despite there being adequate facilities for the female nurses, secretaries, and clerks in the American Zone. Goetz finally appealed to Taylor, who, fortunately for her, saw Goetz’s potential and pushed for her appointment in 1946. Fite later noted that Taylor was “ahead of his time [in] recruiting female prosecutors,”22  recognizing the need for legal talent, regardless of where it came from. However, the women he recruited still faced barriers in their contributions to the trials. Taylor had to sign a disability waiver for Goetz and the four other nonlawyer women he employed in 1946; their disability was that they were women.23  Goetz later became the only woman to read an opening statement at the Krupp Trial, the trial at Nuremberg that focused on the Krupp Group’s armament of the German military and its use of forced labor, in 1947.

Photograph of Cecelia K. Goetz. National Archives, National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records. 

Other women played crucial, but largely hidden, roles, particularly in the I.G. Farben case—which focused on the German chemical company’s creation of the Zyklon B gas used in concentration camps to commit genocide—in research and case preparation. Belle Zeck, a 1940 graduate of Fordham Law School and general counsel for the US Treasury, served on the case, untangling the complex web of corporate trusts and explaining dense financial documents to the judges.24  Phillis Rosenthal, a 1944 graduate of Columbia Law School and member of the US Navy WAVES, joined the Nuremberg team in 1946 to read and classify documents that detailed what had been done at the Auschwitz plant, revealing just how little food was given to the prisoners to keep them working for six months before they died.25  

Despite the novelty of women lawyers at the Nuremberg Trials, extremely little has been written about Fite, Goetz, or any of the other women on the American prosecutorial team. Though often overlooked, their efforts were indispensable, both in shouldering the immense pressures of the trials and in providing the intellectual labor that sustained it. While their roles were not glamourous, these women’s contributions underscore how women lawyers were often tasked with the behind-the-scenes intellectual labor that made the trials possible—work that was essential but rarely acknowledged in official records. Narratives focus on Jackson, Taylor, and other male leaders, while women’s contributions to the trials were folded into the background of research, briefs, and preparation. 

Women lawyers at the Nuremberg Trials were more than assistants. They played important roles in shaping international criminal law. Their contributions add nuance to the Nuremberg narrative and shed light on the early presence of women in international justice. 

• 1

  “Woman Joins Staff of War Crimes Group,” The New York Times, July 11, 1945.

• 2

  J. Gordon Hylton, “Adam’s Rib as an Historical Document: The Plight of Women Layers in the 1940s,” Marquette University Law School (2013). 

• 3

  John Q. Barrett, “Katherine B. Fite: The Leading Female Lawyer at London & Nuremberg, 1945,” Proceedings of the Third International Humanitarian Dialogs (2009), 14. 

• 4

  Jessie Kratz, “It is history and it is fascinating”: Katherine Fite and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, 1945,” National Archives, Pieces of History, November 19, 2020. Accessed September 19, 2025. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/11/19/it-is-history-and-it-is-fascinating-katherine-fite-and-the-nuremberg-war-crime-trials-1945/.

• 5

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, July 20, 1945. Accessed September 2, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559233. 

• 6

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, July 23, 1945. Accessed September 2, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559235?objectPage=2.

• 7

  Fite, letter, July 23, 1945. 

• 8

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, August 5, 1945. Accessed September 2, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559243?objectPage=3.

• 9

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, August 12, 1945. Accessed September 2, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559247?objectPage=2.

• 10

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, October 14, 1945. Accessed September 2, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559318?objectPage=2. 

• 11

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, October 28, 1945. Accessed September 4, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559323?objectPage=2. 

• 12

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, December 28, 1945. Accessed September 4, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559356?objectPage=2. 

• 13

  Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite, December 28, 1945. Accessed September 9, 2025. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/158559315. 

• 14

  “Women at Nuremberg: Harriet Zetterberg,” USC Shoah Foundation (2018). Accessed September 22, 2025. https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2018/05/22016-women-nuremberg-harriet-zetterberg. 

• 15

  Margolies and Zetterberg Nuremberg Papers, File 7: Correspondence Book of Daniel Margolies and Harriet Zetterberg 1945-1946, 146. Accessed September 16, 2025. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn702494?rsc=146027&cv=145&x=1248&y=1523&z=2.1e-4.  

• 16

  Margolies and Zetterberg Nuremberg Papers, File 7: Correspondence Book of Daniel Margolies and Harriet Zetterberg 1945-1946, 148. Accessed September 16, 2025. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn702494?rsc=146027&cv=147&x=1486&y=1432&z=2.2e-4.   

• 17

  Ibid.

• 18

  Cynthia Grant Bowman, “Women in the Legal Profession from the 1920s to the 1970s: What Can We Learn from Their Experience about Law and Social Change?” Maine Law Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, Article 2 (2009), 6.

• 19

  Diane Marie Amann, “Portraits of Women at Nuremberg,” School of Law, University of California, Davis (2010), 5.

• 20

  Dawn Bradley Berry, “Cecelia Goetz,” The 50 Most Influential Women in American Law (Los Angeles: Lowell House 1996), 174. Accessed September 16, 2025. https://archive.org/details/50mostinfluentia0000berr/page/174/mode/2up?view=theater.

• 21

  Camille Talbot, “Cecelia Goetz: First Female Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials,” Women in International Law Network (Manchester: University of Manchester 2017). Accessed August 12, 2025. 

• 22

  Kevin Jon Heller, “The OCC and the Tribunals,” The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 34.

• 23

  Cecelia Goetz, interview by David Brotsky, USC Shoah Foundation, Nov. 6, 1997, 35:55-37:21. Accessed August 29, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haNZzmRqv8. 

• 24

  Belle Zeck, interview by Randy M. Goldman, USC Shoah Foundation, September 12, 1996. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504875. 

• 25

  Emily Yellin, “A War Within the War: Right-Wing, Anti-Semitic Mothers’ Groups and Jewish-American Women,” Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II (New York: Free Press 2004), 348.