The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir

Book Synopsis: “A masterly work of military and judicial history.” —New York Times. Telford Taylor’s book is a defining piece of World War II literature, an engrossing and reflective eyewitness account of one of the most significant events of our century.

In 1945, the Allied nations agreed on a judicial process, rather than summary execution, to determine the fate of the Nazis following the end of World War II. Held in Nuremberg, the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi Party, the British, American, French, and Soviet leaders contributed both judges and prosecutors to the series of trials that would prosecute some of the most prominent politicians, military leaders and businessmen in Nazi Germany.

This is the definitive history of the Nuremberg crimes trials by one of the key participants, Telford Taylor, the distinguished lawyer who was a member of the American prosecution staff and eventually became chief counsel. In vivid detail, Taylor portrays the unfolding events as he “saw, heard, and otherwise sensed them at the time, and not as a detached historian working from the documents might picture them.”

Table of Contents:

1. Nuremberg and the Laws of War
2. The Nuremberg Ideas
3. Justice Jackson Takes Over
4. Establishing the Court: The London Charter
5. The Defendants and the Charges: Krupp and the German General Staff
6. Berlin to Nuremberg
7. Nuremberg: Pretrial Pains and Problems
8. On Trial
9. The Nuremberg War Crimes Community
10. The SS and the General Staff—High Command
11. Individual Defendants, Future Trials, and Criminal Organizations
12. The French and Soviet Prosecutions
13. The Defendants: Goering and Hess
14. The Defendants: “Murderers’ Row”
15. The Defendants: Bankers and Admirals
16. The Defendants: The Last Nine
17. The Closing Arguments
18. The Indicted Organizations
19. The Defendants’ Last Words
20. The Judgments of Solomons
21. Judgment: Law, Crime, and Punishment

Taylor describes personal vendettas among the Allied representatives and the negotiations that preceded the handing down of sentences. The revelations have not lost their power over the decades: The chamber is reduced to silence when an SS officer recounts impassively that his troops rounded up and killed 90,000 Jews, and panic overcomes the head of the German State Bank as it becomes clear that he knew his institution was receiving jewels and other valuables taken from the bodies of concentration camp inmates.