Interrogations: Inside the Minds of the Nazi Elite - Softcover

Overy, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140284540 ISBN 13: 9780140284546

Publisher: Penguin, 2002

Synopsis

From award-winning historian Richard Overy, Interrogations: Inside the Minds of the Nazi Elite is the harrowing true story of the interviews with Nazi masterminds in the aftermath of the Second World War.

How can we ever understand why those in the Third Reich acted the way they did? What could have led them to commit such atrocities in the name of the Fuhrer?

In 1945, as the Nazi regime collapsed, its remaining leaders were imprisoned and interrogated for months before the Nuremberg Trials. In this searing work Richard Overy reveals the original transcripts of these little-known interviews with key Nazis: the brutal and unrepentant Goering, the selective amnesiac Hess, the deliberately evasive Ribbentrop, the courteous Speer and the suicidal Ley. For the first time, they were forced to examine their actions and speak about the unspeakable. The result is an unprecedented and shocking insight into Hitler's henchmen.

'A chilling glimpse into the minds of Hitler's chief lieutenants'
  J.G. Ballard, New Statesman Books of the Year

'Enthralling ... I know of no better book to explain what really motivated the elite of the Third Reich'
  Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday

'Remarkable and gripping ... the interrogations, along with Overy's incisive commentary, throw light on the dejected cast who had once happily danced to Hitler's tune'
  David Stafford, The Times

'Fascinating ... reveals the mindset of Hitler's inner circle'
  Ian Kershaw, Sunday Telegraph

Richard Overy has spent much of his distinguished career studying the intellectual, social and military ideas that shaped the cataclysm of the Second World War, particularly in his books 1939 - Countdown to War, Why the Allies Won, Russia's War and The Morbid Age. Overy's The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia won the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hessell Tiltman Prize.

About this title

Review:

Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 is the latest book from Richard Overy, the acclaimed author of The Battle. Interrogations is a massive account of those senior Nazis who were captured and interrogated by the Allies through the grim days of the European war's aftermath. Overy first considers the general issues, such as "Strategies of Denial" and "Final Retribution" before going on to produce what are essentially transcripts of some of the most memorable and chilling of the interrogations. Not all Allied leaders wanted to go through with the due process of interrogation, trial and punishment. Churchill, above all, pressed strongly for the prompt shooting of any senior Nazis within six hours of positive identification. "Shot to death" was his precise phase, just in case his meaning was still unclear. The Americans agreed, the Attorney General calling for "what we in Texas call 'law west of the Pecos'--fast justice". By one of those fine ironies, it was the Soviet Union that insisted on proper trial over such lynch law. The resulting interrogations provide such things as weird close-ups of the Fuhrer's personal life from his doctor, Karl Brandt. Hitler chose to remain a bachelor, we are told, so that "there was always the chance that any out of the millions of German women might possibly attain the high distinction of being at Hitler's side". They provide plenty of instances of doublethink and denial, as with Robert Ley, one minute babbling self-justifyingly that "Christ himself was anti-Semitic" and the next, "I never persecuted, tortured or imprisoned a single Jew." Finally, inevitably, one gets the Final Solution. Two old comrades chuckle over the "incredible things at Auschwitz" that they witnessed. At last one of them concludes, "The only really good thing about the whole affair is that a few million Jews no longer exist." The interrogations are fascinating, horrifying, sometimes depressing. But what they never suggest is any sense of regret or remorse on the part of the detainees. Not once in 500 pages. Instead, it confirms what we had already learned from the writings of Albert Speer and Hannah Arendt: in the latter's own phrase, from Eichmann in Jerusalem, we are faced again with "the banality of evil".--Christopher Hart

Review:

"Profoundly unsettling....a chilling glimpse of Hitler's chief lieutenants." --J. G. Ballard, in The New Statesman

"Gripping, horrifying, absorbing and dismaying by turns." --Richard J. Evans, in The Times Literary Supplement

"Riveting...an essential contribution to our understanding of the Nazi Era." --Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0140284540
• ISBN 13: 9780140284546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672