Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 - Softcover

Richard Overy is Professor of Modern History at King's College, London. He has written extensively on modern German and European history, and is the author of Russia's War and The Penguin Atlas of the Third Reich.

Desperate rats will devour one another to survive. At the end of World War II, the members of the captured Nazi hierarchy were indeed desperate to survive. Craven and cringing, they dissembled with their captors, attempting to sacrifice one another to escape inescapable guilt. As historian Overy (Russia's War) points out, though there was never any doubt about the criminality of the Nazi regime, subjecting that regime to judicial process was very risky: if the case were not proven, the accused might actually go free. Overy presents excerpts of the pretrial interrogations that provided the Allies with much of the information they needed to convict those responsible for the war and its atrocities. Overy's descriptions of the interrogations and illuminating commentary reveal the leaders of the "master race" to be weak-willed cowards. It was typical for the primary defendants to deny responsibility for the barbarity that occurred right under their noses or to feign incredulity that such fantastic cruelty could even occur. Copiously annotated and supported by an extensive bibliography, Interrogations is highly recommended, especially for academic libraries with a strong emphasis on 20th-century or military history. Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge
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