Nuremberg Diary [Paperback]

G. M. Gilbert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1995

In August 1945 Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the United States established a tribunal at Nuremberg to try military and civilian leaders of the Nazi regime. G. M. Gilbert, the prison psychologist, had an unrivaled firsthand opportunity to watch and question the Nazi war criminals. With scientific dispassion he encouraged Göering, Speer, Hess, Ribbentrop, Frank, Jodl, Keitel, Streicher, and the others to reveal their innermost thoughts. In the process Gilbert exposed what motivated them to create the distorted Aryan utopia and the nightmarish worlds of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. Here are their day-to-day reactions to the trial proceedings; their off-the-record opinions of Hitler, the Third Reich, and each other; their views on slave labor, death camps, and the Jews; their testimony, feuds, and desperate maneuverings to dissociate themselves from the Third Reich's defeat and Nazi guilt. Dr. Gilbert's thorough knowledge of German, deliberately informal approach, and complete freedom of access at all times to the defendants give his spellbinding, chilling study an intimacy and insight that remains unequaled.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

G. M. Gilbert was the prison psychologist before and during the Nuremberg trial and is the author of The Psychology of Dictatorship.

Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306806614
• ISBN-13: 978-0306806612
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Crimes, July 5, 2001

By 

Jonathan Marin (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nuremberg Diary (Paperback)

The author, Gilbert, was an American intelligence officer who in his capacity as prison psychologist at the Nuremberg Jail had unlimited free access to the top Nazi leaders throughout their trial. He produced an invaluable book. With few exceptions, the top Nazis reveal themselves as ordinary men promoted to higher positions than their abilities merited, and willing to do or at least tolerate pretty much anything in order to hold onto them. What they say privately about each other gives a unique perspective on the interplay of personalities and motivations that produced the Nazi regime and its horrors.

Foremost among those exceptions is Hermann Goering. Goering's character is rich and multifaceted. The facets can hardly be reconciled as belonging to the same person. So much about him is appealing - his intelligence, his sense of humor, his expansive good-natured bonhomie, his childlike responses to praise or reprimand. But a man can smile and smile and still be a villain. Goering uses the weaker defendants to pressure the more independent ones to toe his "party line" of maintaining loyalty to Hitler. He offers to trade or withhold testimony, inveigles his lawyer into intimidating a witness, and even threatens retaliation by the Feme kangaroo courts. In part because the author's duties required him to prevent that sort of behavior, he spent more time with Goering than with any of the other defendants. In part, though, I think he just found him fascinating.

The author's duties as psychologist required that he spend considerable time with Streicher, whose leering, lascivious, bigotry probably indicated mental illness. Streicher's anti-semitism was obsessive - it was the only subject he talked about - and he incessantly lobbied anyone who would listen. Gilbert also had to monitor Hess (Bormann's predecessor) and Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister) because of Hess's recurrent amnesia and Ribbentrop's descent into depression. Hess was empty-minded even when his memory was intact. Ribbentrop was an endless stream of rationalizations, denials, evasions, and lies - truly a washrag of a man. These entries become tedious, but are instructive as an antidote to the Hollywood image of the hard, focused, strong-willed Nazi. So too with Keitel, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces High Command whom the author fairly describes as having no more backbone than a jellyfish, and with Hans Frank, Governor General of Occupied Poland. When with the author, Frank was all introspection and contrition, but in the dock with his fellow war criminals, he joined freely in their stock rationalizations.

The author is sympathetic toward those defendants - Speer, von Schirach, Jodl, Fritsche - who passionately wanted the world to learn as much of the truth as possible about the Third Reich and its crimes. He usually but not always manages to restrain his animosity toward those who persisted in rationalizing or denying their guilt, particularly the vicious anti-semite Rosenberg (Nazi philosopher and Reich Commissioner for Eastern Occupied Territories) cold callous Frick (Minister of Interior) and the unspeakable Kaltenbrunner (Chief of RSHA - SD and Gestapo).

A story related by Funk (President of the Reichsbank) is especially revealing. After Kristalnacht, his wife wanted him to resign from the government. She said that the whole antisemitic business was just disgraceful, and they should have no part in it. He felt she was right. But to give up the status and luxury that went with his position and go live in a three-room flat? He just couldn't do it. Funk was no monster. Of his own volition, he wouldn't have hurt anybody. But step by step he went along, until he was accepting deposits of dental gold from the camps.

Active malice is rare. This book makes clear that although great evil may originate from active malice, its success in this world depends upon weakness - human, understandable, and frighteningly common weakness.

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Chilling Look at Evil and Justice, September 5, 2001

By 

Cody Carlson (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nuremberg Diary (Paperback)

'Nuremberg Diary' is Gustav Gilbert's narrative of the time he spent with the defendants of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial after WWII. As the prison psychiatrist, Gilbert was given access to all the prisoners and the resulting conversations form the basis of this book. From the unrepentant, pompus bravado of Hermann Goering to the disgusting anti-semitism of Julius Streicher to the absent minded Joachim von Ribbentrop to the humbled Albert Speer, this work proves a keen insight into the men who at one time controlled an empire, but who now faced the world's final justice. Thought-provoking, chilling, and at times even moving, Gilbert's 'Nuremberg Diary' will stand forever as an important witness against Nazi barbarism.

49 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Monsters of the Dritte Reich, or just a mirror?, December 20, 2002

By 

Dale Raby (Green Bay, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nuremberg Diary (Paperback)

Ever have the urge to get into the mind of a monster just to see how he thinks? Sound like another serial killer book? Well, in a sense, Nuremberg Diary is that, but it is so much more as well.

About a month ago, I watched the TNT production about the Nuremberg trial and took note of the names of some of the characters portrayed in it. The character of Captain Gilbert interested me. He was a prison psychologist who visited with many of the prisoners in their cells... spending an inordinate amount of time with Goering. I speculated that very probably that individual might have written a book after the trial.

I did a search on his name and guess what... he did indeed write a book about his experiences. It was published originally by Farrar, Straus & Company in 1947... barely a year after the Nuremberg trial was over. I quickly emailed a query off to Tracy at The Attic... could she get me a copy? The reply came back a day or so later... yes, she could, it would cost a certain amount... and if I wanted one with the dust-cover still intact... a certain amount plus about eight bucks... if I remember right. I placed the order and a few weeks later (coming from Canada), it arrived and Tracy emailed me to come pick it up. I showed up the next day to behold a beautifully preserved first-edition copy with the name "Clayton J. Golding" inscribed with an old-fashioned fountain pen. Thanks Tracy... good scrounge!

What's the book about? Well, some of you web-surfers are a bit young, I suppose.

After WWII was over, the victorious Allies decided to have a trial... charging 23 of the aforementioned monsters with four separate offenses. Two of the defendants, Robert Ley and Hermann Goering, killed themselves before sentence could be carried out, Ley, barely before the trial was even started. The others were either convicted and had their sentence carried out, or were released with a "not guilty" verdict... leaving them to the tender mercies of the German government.

During most of their time in captivity, an American officer, the aforementioned Captain G. M. Gilbert, Phd., for a time the Prison Psychologist, had access to the prisoners in their cells as well as at other times. He administered psychological tests... including intelligence tests, (they were all of fairly high intelligence... which I found a bit surprising) interviewed them at length, and even visited with some of their families... most noteworthy, the wife and daughter of Hermann Goering. Most importantly, he kept a journal... making careful notes as soon as he left the presence of the individual in question.

The book is lengthy, comprising some 471 pages, including the index. I found it to be fascinating at the outset, though the oft repeated anti-Semitic Nazi party line became a bit tedious toward the end.

Surprisingly, the defendants were willing to talk to Captain Gilbert quite openly... displaying lewdness, bigotry, hatred, stupidity, piousness, resignation, and every extreme of emotion that any group of men might display under similar pressures. One can really get a flavor for what these men of Hitler's inner sanctum were like.

After finishing this book, I was left with some questions, and a rather disturbing conclusion, that should not have surprised me but did. I wondered why they decided to try all these men simultaneously. Normally criminals are tried separately, not as a group. The defendants were judged guilty/not guilty of different crimes, indeed they were widely different in beliefs and temperament as well as tasking within the Dritte Reich. So why did they do it that way? The sentencing tends to support my questioning this as they were not sentenced as a group.

Initially, Goering was able to exert his yet considerable influence upon his co-defendants. As things began to heat up, and people saw, among other things, the incredible wealth of stolen artwork in Goering's larder, the absolutely horrifying conditions of the concentration camps, the lies, the signatures on orders, etc., his hold on them was broken. It was broken further when he was prevented from communicating with them. It was surprising how powerful he was perceived to be by the others who would hang with him... almost literally. Gilbert shows this in great detail by the words and activities of the other prisoners he chronicled.

I was surprised by what I saw of the monsters of the Dritte Reich. What surprised me most was that they were not monsters at all. They were just ordinary men. As a group, more intelligent on the average than most, but still fairly run-of-the-mill in terms of character and judgment. Yes, they were racists, certainly they were guilty of many crimes... but for all that, they were not significantly different from many other men of their time... not so very different than men of our own era. They sought to put the blame on others, to justify their actions by comparing themselves to other men in history, to deny knowledge... much like our own politicians do when they get some body part from the nether regions caught in a trap. (I was very much reminded of the words of William Jefferson Clinton during the Monica scandal.)

This is the truly scary part... the fact that they were not monsters. For if they were not monsters, then what makes them different from any one of us? Could not any of us, even including those of us blessed with high intellect, be seduced by a charismatic leader?

This is one that more people should be reading today, lest history repeat itself. The message is timeless... and should never, ever, be forgotten.

Dale A. Raby
Editor/Publisher
The Green Bay Web