The Nuremberg Interviews [Hardcover]

Leon Goldensohn (Author), Robert Gellately (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2004

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 defense and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years.

Now, Robert Gellately–one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany–has transcribed, edited, and annotated the interviews, and makes them available to the public for the first time in this volume.

Here are interviews with the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with the 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 that places the man and his actions in their historical context. These interviews are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"How did you figure a six-month-old Jewish infant must be killed—was it an enemy?" Goldensohn asked Otto Ohlendorf at Nuremberg. "In the child," explained the SS lieutenant general, "we see the grown-up." Goldensohn, an army psychiatrist, was assigned in 1946 to the Nuremberg trials. In his evaluations of the German defendants, he quickly got over his shock at their casual acceptance of Nazi doctrine and refusal to take personal responsibility for their acts. Goldensohn died in 1961, and recently his brother Eli collected the long-stored transcripts edited by historian Gellately (The Gestapo and German Society). Goldensohn tried to coax childhood memories from the men, seeking early motivations for later monstrousness, and found little to go on. Most were ordinary people who took unexpected opportunities in politically festering interwar Germany. Few expressed even meager repentance, blaming betrayal of the Nazi ideal for the thwarting of the Garden of Eden promised by Hitler, who remained for them a political and military genius. 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. 31 photos.
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From Booklist

In 1946 Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, conducted a series of interviews with many of the defendants and witnesses as the Nuremberg war-crimes trials unfolded. Until Gellately edited them, these interviews have been unavailable to the public. Virtually all of the top Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg are interviewed here, and their responses make for fascinating yet chilling reading. There are few surprises. Most of the defendants insist that they were unaware of the extermination camps, and many of them say they now realize the criminal nature of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels. What is striking about them is what Hannah Arendt called the sheer "banality of evil." These men, with the possible exception of Julius Streicher, don't come across as fire-breathing monsters or even fanatics. In fact, under other circumstances, some of them would be viewed as rather decent. Goering, who was the charismatic "star" of court proceedings, was clearly a man of considerable intelligence and charm. Yet most of these men willingly played integral parts in a machine that practiced atrocities as a matter of routine. Without necessarily intending to do so, these men reveal how easily totalitarian systems can induce acquiescence to or even enthusiastic participation in evil. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First edition (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037541469X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414695
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Book in Many Ways, October 13, 2004

By 

D. L. Workman (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nuremberg Interviews (Hardcover)

Everything about this book is utterly fascinating - it contains verbatim interviews with the Nazi leaders on trial for their lives at Nuremberg, conducted by Leon Goldensohn, a military psychiatrist who passed away in 1961. Dr. Goldensohn's hand-written and typed interview notes were kept in boxes in his family's home for over 40 years. The interviews read like narratives - details of the prisoners themselves, their surroundings, their motives, are described in ways that read like a good story, although very chilling at times. Not surprisingly, each man conveys an unwillingness to assume responsibility for his part in the Holocaust. This is a must read for those interested in Jewish history but also for anyone who is intrigued in the story behind the story - how a young Jewish doctor from Newark, New Jersey was able to sit in a prison cell with leaders of the Nazi party and get them to talk so openly about themselves.

78 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neuemburg interviews, October 29, 2004

By 

Donald G. Brenner (Hayward, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nuremberg Interviews (Hardcover)

I am a personal friend of Eli, and first read some of this material at his home in NY. I was unable to respond to my emotions other than to say "the world has to see this". Handwritten pages of interviews transcribed every night to typewritten pages. Pages filled with the most mundane complaints concerning prision life, only interesting because these people were the architects of the most well known genocide of my life. That the author was a Jew and able to distance himself and gain the confidence of these people is nothing less than amazing. I an very pleased to see this in print, it came very close to being lost forever.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unique Perspective on the Nazi Leadership, March 3, 2005

By 

Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Nuremberg Interviews (Hardcover)

This is a most useful book, and one that is quite interesting to read for the most part. The author, who died in 1961, was an Army psychiatrist assigned to interview a number of the Nuremberg defendants and some of the witnesses (many of whom later were tried themselves). The editor has reclaimed the author's notes (which are almost verbatim transcripts) of the interviews and put them into a handy format for review, including introductory brief biographies. While at times repetitive (e.g., the individual knew nothing of the "final solution" because Hitler insisted that each official only be concerned with the work of his own department; they point to Bohrmann, Goebblels, and Himmler as being the real malignant characters more than Hitler), there is nothing comparable to hearing defendants like Goering, Hans Frank, von Ribbentrop, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, Oswald Pohl and Erhard Milch recounting their views of the war and Hitler. There is a nice representation of civilian and military leaders. I found the interviews of Hitler's translator, Paul O. Schmidt, and that of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, particularly interesting. Not surprisingly, most of the interviewees were not especially interested in talking about concentration camps and Jewish extermination--rather, a wide number of topics are touched upon relating to the Nazi party, Hitler, and military tactics. A helpful introduction and a discussion of how the interviews were obtained and preserved compliment the interviews themselves.