As with every other of David Irving’s histories which I have read, this was a compelling, thoroughly documented, balanced, and extremely well written piece. It reads like a novel. I knew only the standard narrative of the first Nuremburg trial before I read this book. Reading Irving’s account of the trial altered my perceptions considerably. Some “flawed heroes” in the standard narrative, e.g. Albert Speer, are revealed as among the most guilty and self-serving of the defendants. Others, like Hess and Rosenberg, are guilty of relatively minor crimes, certainly not deserving a life sentence or execution. I’d always known that many of these trials were nothing more than show trials, dispensing “victors’ justice”, but I’d never realized the degree to which this was true. Irving also covers the physical and mental mistreatment of the prisoners, amounting to deliberate degradation and sometimes outright torture, a practice run for Abu Ghraib (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse) and Guantanamo Bay ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp). Irving makes clear that that almost all the defendants were guilty of horrendous crimes and deserved severe punishment. But the trials themselves were a travesty and justice would better have been served by some other means. As US Senator Robert Taft noted, the Nuremburg show trials did not meet traditional English and Anglo-American standards of law and justice and, as a result, ultimately reduced the moral distance between the defendants and their judges and prosecutors.
