Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor (Hardcover)

~ Joshua Greene (Author) "By mid-March 1945, in the final days of World War II, the U.S. Army's 42nd Infantry Division, known as Rainbow, had suffered heavy losses..." (more)
Key Phrases: war crimes program, forty defendants, malaria experiments, Ilse Koch, Lieutenant Guth, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

For nearly two years, William Denson led the prosecution team at Dachau, Germany, that by August 1948 had found 177 Nazis guards and officers guilty of war crimes at Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Ninety-seven were sentenced to death, 54 to life imprisonment, and the rest to terms of hard labor. After Denson's death in 1998 at the age of 86, his wife sorted out boxes of documents in their basement: 30,000 pages of trial transcripts, miles of microfilm, stacks of photographs and newspaper clippings, death's head insignias, and letters from both SS officers and victims of Nazi horror. Greene, coauthor of Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, posits that with the rise of the cold war, American priorities shifted from punishing Germans to winning Germany's support in the fight against the Soviet Union, and points to the fact that one by one, the sentences of Nazis found guilty at Dachau were either commuted or completely reversed. George Cohen
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Review

"A new American hero--William Denson--bursts forward in the riveting pages of Justice at Dachau. An Alabama human rights lawyer, Denson was sent to Europe by the U.S. Army to prosecute Nazi butchers feigning innocence in the bloody aftermath of the Second World War. Brilliantly written and fastidiously researched, Joshua M. Greene?s narrative builds chapter by chapter in dramatic Hollywood-like fashion. Each war criminal Denson convicts brings a cheer to the heart. This is historical storytelling at its finest.?
-Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans and co-editor of Witness to America: An Illustrated Documentary History of the United States from the Revolution to Today


"Justice at Dachau is a mesmerizing account of one of history's most infamous periods. Joshua Greene takes the reader back in time by weaving together a riveting narrative of the trial and its central figure, Judge Advocate William Denson, a true hero and humanitarian. This book is destined to be a classic among Holocaust histories."
-Patrick O'Donnell, author of Beyond Valor and Into the Rising Sun -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (April 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767908791
• ISBN-13: 978-0767908795
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #585,806 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, much needed book on The Holocaust, April 28, 2003

By	Mike Feder (New York City) - See all my reviews

This is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in WW2, The trials that took place after the war, The Holocaust and the basis of criminal law itself.

This is a compelling story of one decent, civilized man; a lawyer, Colonel William Denson, who found himself in an almost impossible position: As lead prosecutor in the trials of the Nazi criminals at Dachau, Mauthausen and other camps--how was he to handle and balance the common, accepted practices of law and jurisprudence when faced with the almost incomprehensible crimes of the Holocaust.

The book is about Denson's personal struggle with these trials and about the trials themselves. Also, of course, about the details of the camps and the perpatrators and the victims.
These trials, along with the larger, more famous Nuremberg trials, helped establish the foundations for all the international criminal tribunals that have followed.
The book examines the political winds that blew behind the scenes of the trials and how that affected the charges brought and the final outcomes of the trials (including sentencing).

If you are interested in how humanity evolves, especially in the area of international law and punishing international criminals, I advise you to read this book.

Mike Feder/WBAI-FM

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A look into the lesser known concentration camp trials, October 13, 2003

By A Customer

"Justice at Dachau" chronicles the life and times of Prosecutor William Denson, who headed the trials held at the former Dachau camp site. These trials were overshadowed by the Nuremburg trials. For two long miserable years Denson tried and prosecuted hundreds of defendants from the concentration camps Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald. Those looking for a comprehensive record of the trials will be disappointed; the book only focuses on a few of the trials' highlights and concerns itself with only a couple of the major criminal figures. (The Flossenburg trial was hardly even mentioned!)The author mentions this in the endnotes and it should come as no suprise. There are thousands and thousands of transcripts and there was only room for some of them in a single book. Despite this minor flaw the book offers a good synopsis of the trials. Anyone who reads this book cannot help but admire William Denson-he was truly a remarkable human being! The reader should be forewarned that some of the testimony is quite graphic.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The flawed telling of an interesting saga, April 12, 2005

By	A. Courie "Treb" (Freedom's Fortress) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Justice at Dachau" is the story of post-WWII military tribunals told by an author who is neither a lawyer nor a soldier. Joshua Greene has unearthed a trove of interesting information that he reveals in this book, and this book is a worthwhile read because its subject has been ignored for years, but this book lacks the insight of a legal mind and the perspective of a soldier.

Joshua Greene tries to tell the story of the tribunals from the point of view of the chief prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel William Denson. These tribunals tried hundreds of Germans (and others) who ran the concentration camps at Dachau, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald. Although the book is a worthwhile read, it suffers many weaknesses. The first is that it its legal analysis is quite weak. The author tries to argue that, although the tribunals were ad hoc, the defendants were still given due process. But the author's selected quotations from the trial transcripts show loss after loss by the defense counsel, as they argue points that would prevail under basic tenets of American justice and common law.

It is also apparent that the author is not familiar with the United States military or the history of the US Army in World War II. He constantly refers to General Lucien Truscott as Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel Lucien Truscott (3rd Army Commander in Germany after WWII); he does the same with General Lucius Clay, military governor of Germany, incorrectly calling him a "lieutenant colonel" on one page then a "general" on another. The reader never gets a sense for the higher-level decisions made regarding the trials at "JAG HQ" or quite understands how the US Army was functioning in Germany during the immediate post-war period.

Many parts of the trials are brought to life through the extensive use of excerpts from the trial transcripts. These are very interesting and engaging, as few can tell the stories of these trials better than the witnesses and participants themselves. The trials are never quite wrapped up, though, because the author fails to follow up on many of the defendants and tell the reader who was actually executed and whose sentences were commuted. Despite this, a flawed look at these fascinating trials is better than none at all.