The Holocaust

Product Description from Amazon: "An astute observer of the Nuremberg trial, Eugene Davidson has struggled with the issues it raised: Was it a necessary response to the heinous crimes of the Third Reich? How were Germany and the Germans capable of such extraordinary evil? Was the trial just, given the claims that the defendants were simply serving their country, doing as they had been told to do? And if not just, was it nonetheless necessary as a warning to prevent future crimes against humanity? Davidson's approach to these and other large questions of justice is made through examination of each of the defendants in the trial. His reluctant, but firm, conclusion is: 'In a world of mixed human affairs where a rough justice is done that is better than lynching or being shot out of hand, Nuremberg may be defended as a political event if not as a court.' Some sentences may have seemed too severe, but none was harsher than the punishments meted out to innocent people by the regime these men served. 'In a certain sense,' says Davidson, 'the trial succeeded in doing what judicial proceedings are supposed to do: it convinced even the guilty that the verdict against them was just.'

Faulty as the trial was from the legal point of view, a catharsis of the pent-up emotions of millions of people had to be provided and a record of what had taken place duly preserved for whatever use later generations would make of it."

From IMDB: "It has been three years since the most important Nazi leaders had already been tried. This trial is about 4 judges who used their offices to conduct Nazi sterilization and cleansing policies. Retired American judge, Dan Haywood has a daunting task ahead of him. The Cold War is heating up and no one wants any more trials as Germany, and Allied governments, want to forget the past. But is that the right thing to do is the question that the tribunal must decide."

From Goodreads.com: "The Nuremburg trials remain, after nearly a half a century, the benchmark for judging international crimes. Using new sources--ground-breaking research in the papers of the Nuremburg prison psychiatrist and commandant, the letters and journals of the prisoners, and accounts of the judges and prosecutors as they struggled through each day making compromises and steeling their convictions--Joseph Persico retells the story of Nuremburg, combining sweeping history with psychological insight. Here are brilliant, chilling portraits of the Nazi warlords and riveting descriptions of the tensions between law and vengeance, between East and West, and of the friction already present in the early stages of the Cold War."

Gaddis Smith in Foreign Affairs: "An excellent, well-documented monograph on the clash of ideas, personalities and bureaucracies which produced the eventual Anglo-American agreement on the principles governing the trial of Nazi leaders. Although most of the book deals with the American side, the author makes good use of the British sources."

From WorldCat.org: "Drawing on an extensive range of sources including the minutes of the British prosecution team and the minutes of the tribunal's closed deliberations, this study tracesthe trail's legal, political, and logistical problems andvividly recreates the courtroom drama."