This article reviews recent historical investigations of transitional trials held after the Second World War. It identifies three main strands of historiography. One group of studies has been dominated by the trials' participants who have shaped the perception of the trials' scope, their achievements, and their shortcomings, and pursued political, legal, or biographical agendas. A second group has treated the trials as a mere epilogue to the history of the deceased regimes. A third, more profound approach has conceptualized the trials as places where collective memory was assembled, configured, and shaped. This notion opens the debate to an analysis of how law and history on the one hand, jurisdiction, jurisprudence, and historiography on the other interact and how they impact on one another. The article compares and evaluates the benefits drawn from this research. It finds that historical analyses which take seriously the epistemological premises of the law as well as the courtroom's performativity manage to bypass well-trodden paths of interpretation which either deplore the limited, inadequate punishment meted out, or celebrate the triumphant march from Nuremberg to The Hague. The article concludes that such interdisciplinary readings help to avoid widespread disillusionment with the results of transitional trials.

This historiographical review explores the impact of new interdisciplinary, comparative, and cultural approaches to studying the First World War upon the historiography, as the centenary of the conflict approaches in 2014. It assesses to what extent these approaches have led to new consensus regarding five key established historiographical questions: why did war break out; why did the Allies win; were the generals to blame for the high casualty rates; how did men endure trench warfare; and to what extent did civilian society accept and endorse the war effort? It also examines how these historiographical approaches have led to the emergence of new themes – in particular, military occupation, radicalization, race, and the wartime body – in the war's historiography. Ultimately, it concludes that how the war is understood has undergone radical revision since the 1990s as a result of these changes.