On March 27, David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the *World Socialist Web Site*, delivered a lecture of exceptional political and historical significance at Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) in Nuremberg, Germany.

The event, organized by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), was the first public meeting held by the IYSSE at FAU—and it drew an enthusiastic response. Over 80 students, youth and workers attended despite the lecture falling during the university’s spring break, a testament to the depth of concern over the war and the growing audience for a socialist antiwar perspective.

The Nuremberg lecture capped a highly successful series of public meetings across Germany, following well-attended events in [Leipzig](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/23/pynw-m23.html) and [Berlin](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/24/dted-m24.html).

North opened his remarks by addressing the city’s indelible association with the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46, in which the surviving leaders of the Nazi regime were prosecuted for the supreme international crime—the planning, preparation and waging of wars of aggression. It was this legal and historical foundation that North brought to bear, with devastating precision, on the present war against Iran.

North stressed that it was not the Holocaust but the waging of crimes against peace that the Nuremberg Tribunal designated as the supreme crime. Quoting the tribunal’s verdict, he explained: “A war of aggression is ‘the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’” He emphasized the implications of this formulation: “Every atrocity committed in the course of an aggressive war, every civilian killed, every building destroyed, every act of torture and collective punishment flows from and is contained within the original criminal decision to launch the war.”

Crimes against peace: The Nuremburg Trials precedent and the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran