Episode 15: Eighty years since the Nuremberg Trials

On 20 November 1945, the world gathered in a courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany, for the first ever international war crimes tribunal – a moment when the victors of the Second World War put Nazi leaders on trial for crimes against humanity.

Over ten months of testimony, evidence, and eyewitness accounts, the horrors of the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine were laid bare before the world, documented not just in words, but in films, photographs and the voices of survivors.

Listen to John's memories of the Nuremberg Trials

In the courtroom in Nuremberg sat the architects of a regime that had brought Europe to ruin - Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel – and caused the horrific murder of millions of people.

And looking down from the press gallery, watching history unfold, was young Royal Air Force navigator John.

Now aged 103, John recalls how he came to be there, bearing witness to a historic battle for truth and justice.

A black and white photograph of John, seated inside an aircraft. Edited beside a photo of John today in a suit and medals

Listen to John's story

John's photographs from Nuremberg

John's flight log and his photograph of the courtroom

View photos of the court programme

Matt remembers the War Crimes Investigation Unit

After fighting a brutal war in Italy, SAS soldier Matt was given the grisly job of filing records of heinous war crimes he'd rather forget.

"I did an awful lot of paperwork and you can't read paperwork quick enough, can you? But we knew that some of the crimes they committed were terrible. To be quite honest, as time went by you pushed it out of your mind.

"Some were so cruel that you just couldn't think of them. They were very difficult to hear. They were very, very, very cruel in the concentration camps. They were absolute swine, and the people they brought out of there were terrified for years."

Listen to Matt's SAS experiences