Origins of the Criminalization of Aggression: How Crimes against Peace Became the “Supreme International Crime”

In October 1943, the Allies launched the United Nations War Crimes Commission. The United Nations War Crimes Commission was established at a Diplomatic Conference convened at the Foreign Office in London on 20 October 1943. The goal of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and of the London Conference was to punish the Nazis, and criminalization of aggressive war seemed the most secure way for this to take place. Within the United States government, the debate about whether aggressive war should be punishable only surfaced in November 1944. The Commission was to a large extent superseded in mid-1945, when the initiative for international criminal prosecution was taken up by the various powers at the London Conference. The "supreme international crime" expression used by the Nuremberg judges to describe crimes against peace was an almost inexorable consequence of the prosecutorial strategy and the evidence that was led before the Tribunal.