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The Nuremberg Interviews: Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses
The Nuremberg Interviews reveals the chilling innermost thoughts of the former Nazi officials under indictment at the famous postwar trial. The architects of one of history's greatest atrocities speak out about their lives, their careers in the Nazi Party and their views on the Holocaust.
Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a U.S. Army psychiatrist. Dr Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defence and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years.
Here are interviews with some of the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernest Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with lesser-known officials who were, nonetheless, essential to the workings of the Third Reich.
Goldensohn was a particularly astute interviewer, his training as a psychiatrist leading him to probe the motives, the rationales, and the skewing of morality that allowed these men to enact an unfathomable evil. Candid and often shockingly truthful, these interviews are deeply disturbing in their illumination of an ideology gone mad.
Each interview is annotated with biographical information and footnotes that place the man and his actions in their historical context and are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.
Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a U.S. Army psychiatrist. Dr Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defence and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years.
Here are interviews with some of the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernest Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with lesser-known officials who were, nonetheless, essential to the workings of the Third Reich.
Goldensohn was a particularly astute interviewer, his training as a psychiatrist leading him to probe the motives, the rationales, and the skewing of morality that allowed these men to enact an unfathomable evil. Candid and often shockingly truthful, these interviews are deeply disturbing in their illumination of an ideology gone mad.
Each interview is annotated with biographical information and footnotes that place the man and his actions in their historical context and are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2004
About the author
Leon Goldensohn
9 books5 followersLeon Goldensohn was an American psychiatrist who monitored the mental health of the twenty-one Nazi defendants awaiting trial at Nuremberg in 1946.
Born on October 19, 1911, in New York City, Goldensohn was the son of Jews who had emigrated from Lithuania. He joined the United States Army in 1943 and was posted to France and Germany, where he served as a psychiatrist for the 63rd Division. He replaced another psychiatrist in January 1946, about six weeks into the trials, and spent more than six months visiting the prisoners nearly every day. He interviewed most of the defendants, including Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. Goldensohn conducted most his interviews in English with the aid of a translator to have the defendants and witnesses express themselves fully in their own language. Some of his subjects, notably foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, were partially or fully fluent in English, and conducted their interviews in that language.
Goldensohn served as prison psychiatrist until July 26, 1946. He had resolved to write a book about the experience but later contracted tuberculosis and died from a coronary heart attack in 1961. The detailed notes he took were later researched and collated by his brother Eli, a retired neurologist. Robert Gellately, a World War II scholar, edited and annotated the interviews in the book "The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses."
Born on October 19, 1911, in New York City, Goldensohn was the son of Jews who had emigrated from Lithuania. He joined the United States Army in 1943 and was posted to France and Germany, where he served as a psychiatrist for the 63rd Division. He replaced another psychiatrist in January 1946, about six weeks into the trials, and spent more than six months visiting the prisoners nearly every day. He interviewed most of the defendants, including Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. Goldensohn conducted most his interviews in English with the aid of a translator to have the defendants and witnesses express themselves fully in their own language. Some of his subjects, notably foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, were partially or fully fluent in English, and conducted their interviews in that language.
Goldensohn served as prison psychiatrist until July 26, 1946. He had resolved to write a book about the experience but later contracted tuberculosis and died from a coronary heart attack in 1961. The detailed notes he took were later researched and collated by his brother Eli, a retired neurologist. Robert Gellately, a World War II scholar, edited and annotated the interviews in the book "The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2024
This is a good resource for anyone who follows, or wants to follow the Nuremberg trials & defendants. It may help if you already know a certain amount about who they are, and what they were tried for at Nuremberg. It definitely rounds out these characters. It includes interviews with witnesses also - people who were part of the Third Reich, but objected to what was happening, and lived to tell the tales.
December 2, 2025
Extremely interesting interview with many of the Nazi War criminals at the end of World War Two. It’s interesting how many of them are already spinning a narrative that excuses them for the barbarity of the Nazi’s and tries to blame it entirely on one or two individuals like Hitler and Himmler.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews