The Nuremberg Interviews

Oct 8, 2024 9:19 PM

Author:Leon Goldensohn,Robert Gellately

The Nuremberg Interviews reveals the chilling innermost thoughts of the former Nazi officials under indictment at the famous postwar trial. The architects of one of history's greatest atrocities speak out about their lives, their careers in the Nazi Party and their views on the Holocaust.

Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a U.S. Army psychiatrist. Dr Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defence and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years.

Here are interviews with some of the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernest Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with lesser-known officials who were, nonetheless, essential to the workings of the Third Reich.

Goldensohn was a particularly astute interviewer, his training as a psychiatrist leading him to probe the motives, the rationales, and the skewing of morality that allowed these men to enact an unfathomable evil. Candid and often shockingly truthful, these interviews are deeply disturbing in their illumination of an ideology gone mad.

Each interview is annotated with biographical information and footnotes that place the man and his actions in their historical context and are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.

Reviews

A gripping work of history, a series of oral narratives that drag the reader, almost by force, into the nightmarish mental landscape of the Third Reich

—— William Grimes , New York Times

A rare document...striking proof of the banality of evil

—— Kirkus Reviews

Goldensohn serves as a down-to-earth Dante in these anterooms to hell, getting one damned soul after another to reveal himself in his own words...as Goldensohn made his rounds, he mostly kept his astonishment and dismay under control. It's more than readers will be able to do

—— Newsweek

Goldensohn's conversations with these men are perturbing because most of the them seem like many of us except for the circumstances that lured them into opportunistic deviance. Goldensohn may not have left a headline-making legacy of belated revelations, but he has complicated further the tapestry of evil

—— Publishers Weekly

Virtually all the top Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg are interviewed here, and their responses make for fascinating yet chilling reading... Without necessarily intending to do so, these men reveal how easily totalitarian systems can induce acquiescence to or even enthusiastic participation in evil

—— Booklist

A dashing and vivid account of Charlotte and Victoria's lives

—— Daily Telegraph

Examining the death of Princess Charlotte, and Victoria's own struggle for power, this is a bracing recreation

—— Scotland on Sunday

Detailed and sympathetic

—— Independent

An illuminating biography

—— Tatler

This fascinating book by Sarah Rose tells the story of Robert Fortune, an early 19th-century botanist who, disguised as a Mandarin, was employed by the East India Company to discover the secrets of tea-growing in China

—— The Observer

Fortune's act of agricultural espionage is the subject of Sarah Rose's fascinating book

—— The Tablet

Sarah Rose's For All the Tea in China is a gripping spy story, which brilliantly recounts how plant-hunter Robert Fortune committed one of the greatest acts of industrial espionage in history... Rose's account is superbly well written

—— Good Book Guide

In this lively account of the adventures (and misadventures) that lay behind Robert Fortune's bold acquisition of Chinese tea seedlings for transplanting in British India, Sarah Rose demonstrates in engaging detail how botany and empire-building went hand in hand

—— Jonathan Spence, author of THE SEARCH FOR MODERN CHINA

As a lover of tea and a student of history, I loved this book. Sarah Rose conjures up the time and tales as British Legacy Teas are created before our eyes. We drink the delicious results of Robert Fortune's adventures every day

—— Michael Harney, author of THE HARNEY & SONS GUIDE TO TEA

For All The Tea In China is a rousing Victorian adventure story chronicling the exploits of botanical thief Robert Fortune, who nearly single-handedly made the British tea industry possible in India. Sarah Rose has captured the thrill of discovery, the dramatic vistas in the Wuyi Mountains, and the near-disasters involved in Fortune's exploits. For tea-lovers, history buffs, or anyone who enjoys a ripping good read

—— Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

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