The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Paperback)

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From Publishers Weekly

The chief prosecutor of the four-power Nuremberg trials (1945-1946) delivers the ultimate insider's account of the war-crimes prosecution of surviving Nazi leaders. A National Book Critics Circle Award winner for Munich: The Price of Peace , Taylor explains how the Allied governments established the legal basis for the tribunal and organized the courtroom proceedings. He introduces the defendants--Goring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Speer et al.--defines the charges against them, outlines the evidence and recounts individual defense strategies, closing arguments, judicial sentences and (in the case of those condemned to death) the details of their executions. Taylor casts doubt on the legality of the charges against Nazi publisher Julius Streicher and argues that Rudolf Hess, mentally incapable of defending himself, should not have been tried. (Incidentally, he clears up the intrigue surrounding how former Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goring managed to conceal the cyanide capsule with which he committed suicide.) This gripping eyewitness report of an unprecedented international military tribunal is the definitive work on the subject. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

The chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials describes in detail the day-to-day proceedings at the trials and discusses the significance of the trials on the establishment of international law.

Product Details

• Paperback: 703 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (P) (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316834009
• ISBN-13: 978-0316834001
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #348,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exercise in futility, November 30, 2006

By	Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Hardcover)

Telford Taylor is an optimist. He waited a while -- over 40 years -- to get a certain distance and perspective before writing up his experiences as a junior (later chief) prosecutor at the Nuremburg International Military Tribunal to try war crimes.
He made it. Then he wrote more than 600 pages, which should have been a lot more than any but specialists would want to read on that subject at this date (1992, when this review was first published).
But various terrible situations, especially in Yugoslavia, have made the subject of war crimes trials current again. (And, in 2006, still, with new venues, like Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, East Timor and, for some, the USA or Israel, under consideration.)
People have floated the idea, usually hesitantly, that maybe the prospect of retribution would give the Serbs, Iraqis etc. pause.
At a higher level, Taylor is an optimist because he believes the rule of law can be used to reduce the overall level of frightfulness in human disputes. He is not so naive an optimist as to believe the disputes themselves can be quelled.
'The Anatomy of the Nuremburg Trials' is a handbook on how to go about using pieces of paper to control, or at least to retaliate against, ruthless, powerfully armed men of evil intent. The trials have been studied by historians, but Taylor offers a deeper look.
He reveals some of the jockeying for position, the careerism and ambition of the players, especially the American team. He assesses the legal tactics, the high-flown sentiments and the low-down cynicism. Overall, he gives the effort good marks.
The idea of war crimes trials was not new in 1945, but the effort after World War I had been futile. The World War II Allies, the United States, Britain, France and the USSR, had widely differing notions of what to do with the Nazi criminals. The eventual Nuremburg tribunal was largely the idea of New York lawyers in the Army, who created legal theories from 1944 on.
The implementation of those theories takes up much of Taylor's book. For present purposes, the interest centers on the ideas of Murray Bernays. There were so many Germans implicated in murder, looting, slavery and other crimes that, in 1944, there seemed no way to process them all for justice.
At Yalta, Stalin suggested shooting the top 50,000 Germans (roughly, everyone with the rank of colonel or equivalent and higher). This would have been justice, since none of these men was innocent. But Winston Churchill wouldn't go along. The usual story is that Churchill took Stalin seriously but turned him aside with a joke. Taylor thinks Stalin was joshing and that Churchill was the serious men. Both men were drunk.
Bernays recommended finding certain organizations criminal, then processing the members for punishment. Mere membership would then include an assumption of guilt, and the accused would have to prove themselves innocent or coerced or in some other fashion unworthy of punishment.
The organizations were monstrous enough -- the SS, German High Command, Gestapo etc. At the trial, some of the organizations were convicted, some acquitted.
The Americans and Britons, unlike the Russians and the Germans, did not have the stomach to keep killing helpless people endlessly, no matter how much they deserved it, so in the end the members of the criminal organizations were mostly turned over to German courts, which set hundreds of thousands of brutal killers free, or slapped wrists.
Taylor says he was always uneasy about the Bernays theory and was relieved when military authorities intervened to set up 'denazification' procedures that allowed the Nuremburg tribunal to mostly duck the issue.
However, niceties about being innocent until proven guilty are exactly the problem with using war crimes measures to prevent, say, massacre of Bosnians. (Technically, today it would be necessary to use the rubric 'crimes against humanity,' since no one bothers to declare war formally any more. The distinction is of interest only to lawyers.)
The big killers can't operate without the help of the little killers. But the little killers have no incentive to rebel against their masters as long as they believe they will be treated lightly if they lose the war. Therefore, to be credible, the threat of retribution must be made against all members of organizations -- the Bernays solution.
This was, I had thought, the position of Taylor in his book 'Nuremburg and Vietnam,' which courageously said that there was sufficient evidence to incriminate Americans, including some in Washington, in war crimes in Vietnam. The only practical way you can do this is to prosecute all members of criminal groups; you will never find an order that says, 'Go commit genocide.' Even Hitler never (so far as anyone has found) put his Final Solution down on paper.
But in 'Anatomy,' Taylor opposes the Bernays theory and says he has done so consistently.
He does say that 'the laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny.' That is the optimistic viewpoint.

ADDENDUM: I was wrong in 1992 to think that no one would ever put his name on a genocide order. The Iranians and Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah changed the old, European rules.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting book, September 21, 2001

By A Customer

The author was a member of the American Prosecution staff at the International
Military Tribunal that was held in Nuremberg in 1945-6 with the purpose of judging
major Nazi war criminals. The book, as the subtitle states, is a personal description of the trial,
including its pre-history, that is, the negotiations between the Allies in the last part of
the War that resulted in the decision of constituting the IMT and helding the trials (largely
an American idea) instead of some other methods of dealing with the emprisioned Nazi top leadership (such
as shooting them without trial, as Churchill defended, or prosecuting them in national courts). The
problems and frictions encontered in drafting the Charter of the IMT, the Indictements, and the selection
of the defendants is covered in detail in the first fourth of the book. The remaining deals with the
trial itself. What makes this a very interesting book is that it not only describes the public
part of the trial but also the backstage, and even some developments that would probably never been known
if the author had not been himself personaly involved in the works. Near the end of the trial the author was
made Chief U.S. Prosecutor for the ensuing war crimes trials that took place in Nurember for the
next three years. It would have be interesting to read his account of those ones.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well writen important history of the trial., March 24, 1998

By A Customer

An important history of the trial, written by a
participant. Taylor does not pull his
punches, he calls them as he saw them.
If you are interested in WWII in any aspect
in particular the legal aspects of the trial
from an insiders viewpoint, this is one book
that you must read.