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A nice collector’s edition.

Europe in early 1945 was a vast physical and moral wasteland. It was now that the weary Allied armies, fighting their way through the devastated Reich, truly came to understand the horror the Nazi’s had unleashed. As the Nazi leaders were killed, committed suicide or were captured and the regime fell to pieces, it was through the interrogation of the survivors that the Allies began to find out the true nature of their enemy. In hour after hour of questioning the truth (and of course many lies) about Nazi Europe came spilling out. Richard Overy brings the reader comes face to face with a regime in its death throes and with a world struggling to understand what had really been perpetrated within the gigantic fortress of Hitler’s Reich.

Reviews: Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 is the latest book from Richard Overy, the acclaimed author of The Battle. Interrogations is a massive account of those senior Nazis who were captured and interrogated by the Allies through the grim days of the European war’s aftermath. Overy first considers the general issues, such as “Strategies of Denial” and “Final Retribution” before going on to produce what are essentially transcripts of some of the most memorable and chilling of the interrogations. Not all Allied leaders wanted to go through with the due process of interrogation, trial, and punishment. Churchill, above all, pressed strongly for the prompt shooting of any senior Nazis within six hours of positive identification. “Shot to death” was his precise phase just in case his meaning was still unclear. The Americans agreed, the Attorney General calling for “what we in Texas call ‘law west of the Pecos’–fast justice”. By one of those fine ironies, it was the Soviet Union that insisted on proper trial over such lynch law. The resulting interrogations provide such things as weird close-ups of the Fuhrer’s personal life from his doctor, Karl Brandt. Hitler chose to remain a bachelor, we are told, so that “there was always the chance that any out of the millions of German women might possibly attain the high distinction of being at Hitler’s side”. They provide plenty of instances of doublethink and denial, as with Robert Ley, one minute babbling self-justifying that “Christ himself was anti-Semitic” and the next, “I never persecuted, tortured or imprisoned a single Jew.” Finally, inevitably, one gets the Final Solution. Two old comrades chuckle over the “incredible things at Auschwitz” that they witnessed. At last, one of them concludes, “The only really good thing about the whole affair is that a few million Jews no longer exist.” The interrogations are fascinating, horrifying, sometimes depressing. But what they never suggest is any sense of regret or remorse on the part of the detainees. Not once in 500 pages. Instead, it confirms what we had already learned from the writings of Albert Speer and Hannah Arendt: in the latter’s own phrase, from Eichmann in Jerusalem, we are faced again with “the banality of evil“.–Christopher Hart

Winston Churchill and the Nazi leadership shared one thing in common – they both expected the latter to be shot out of hand. What prevented it happening was the determination of the United States and, ironically, the Soviet Union, to make a public spectacle of Nazism as an aggressive and destructive force which should be exposed for the rotten system it was and represented. In essence -notwithstanding the “crimes against humanity” – the Nuremberg trials were political in nature.

Churchill was not alone in his view which was widely held in his War Cabinet and beyond. Lord Simon, the Senior Government Legal Adviser, proposed the Nazis be treated as common outlaws and executed without the inconvenience of a trial. In general terms this remained the British Government’s position through to 1945. Even during the trial (or tribunal as it was called) Anthony Eden thought the mass suicide of all the defendants would save a lot of trouble. The Americans by contrast wanted to ensure that the Nazi leadership had their full rights as individuals respected according to American legal theory although they also adopted the principle of group responsibility in respect of organisations such as the Gestapo.

Richard Overy is Professor of History at King’s College London. His previous books include WHY THE ALLIES WON, RUSSIA’S WAR and THE BATTLE.