In keeping with Telford Taylor's admonition, the focus of this article is upon “the ethos of Nuremberg” rather than on a reconstruction of the historical record yet again. And this ethos is itself shaped by the unfolding historical setting. The interpretation of the Nuremberg ethos is at the present juncture very much caught up in the global atmosphere brought about by the end of the Cold War. It has been especially shaped by the decision of the United Nations Security Council in 1993 to convene an ad hoc tribunal at The Hague to indict and prosecute individuals accused of war crimes arising out of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, especially in relation to the war in Bosnia, as well as those associated with the genocidal events occurring in Rwanda during 1994. Almost fifty years passed between the establishment of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the ad hoc arrangements occasioned by the events in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In the intervening period there were many atrocities assuming the form of “crimes against humanity” and even “genocide,” yet no intergovernmental or United Nations initiative ensued. It would seem that the East/West divide precluded the convening of a war crimes tribunal throughout the Cold War, while the absence of strategic conflict in the 1990s has allowed such initiatives. The idea of an international criminal process has even been relied upon as a kind of compensatory undertaking expected to reduce the heat from the public for the failure to mount effective humanitarian interventions to protect the peoples of Bosnia and Rwanda, who were at extreme risk.