Nuremberg sought justice for the millions murdered or persecuted
US Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney Harris and other eyewitnesses are returning to the courtroom where 22 high-ranking Nazis were put on trial.
A conference on the historical legacy of the trials is also taking place.
Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, seven received long prison terms and three were acquitted.
Nazi air force chief Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Joachim von Ribbentrop were among those placed on trial.
Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy, was tried in absentia.
The Nuremberg trials are seen as setting an important legal precedent, preparing the ground for subsequent international war crimes prosecutions and the International Criminal Court.
New offences
The court was set up by the victorious allies after World War II and the defendants were tried by a panel of judges from the US, Britain and the Soviet Union.
The chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson, described the trial as a continuation of the Allied war effort.
The defendants were charged with the then-new offences that have since become fixed in international law, including waging a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Nuremberg cases were also the first time government leaders were held personally responsible for their actions during war.
They mostly claimed that they had not known, or were not responsible for what happened.
The trial was an international sensation, but Germans also took a keen interest in the proceedings.
Local newspapers were full of the horrific details of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities.
However, secret opinion polls carried out by the American state department and made public three years ago showed that it was not until the 1970s that most Germans thought the trial was fair.
Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel in the front row.
The city of Nuremberg has marked the 60th anniversary of the opening of the trials against Nazi war criminals.

At a ceremony in the Palace of Justice, where the tribunal was located, participants of the trials gathered and remembered. Whitney R. Harris, a member of the U.S. prosecution team, emphazised the importance of Nuremberg for contemporary international law claiming that "the principles of the Nuremberg case have been followed in recent years and the fact that we conducted Nuremberg has given impetus to the establishment of these more recent tribunals". But the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Philippe Kirsch, is frustrated that there is still opposition against modern international tribunals like his court: "The spectre of politically motivated prosecution which is a running theme against the ICC is so unfounded that it is to me intellectually difficult to understand".

On November 20, 1945 the trials began in the courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice. A total of 24  defendants were tried, among them Hermann Göring and Rudolf Heß. With Geoffrey Lawrence being chair of the court, the trial took 218 days and ended with 12 death sentences, 7 jail terms and 3 acquittals. One defendant killed himself during the trial, another one was declared unfit to stand trial. 

Some controversy does exist as to whether the Nuremberg Principles have been adhered to in the years following the trials.  Noted intellectual author, Noam Chomsky, has claimed that all US presidents since the end of the war would be judged to be war criminals according to these principles.