The Nuremberg Trials

by Alexander Zvyagintsev, Christopher Culver (Translator)

Postwar Nuremberg is set to host a historically unprecedented trial of the leaders of the defeated Third Reich. The whole world is awaiting a just verdict, but it is here where Soviet counterintelligence must wage a secret war against forces that seek to prevent that from happening at any cost. Nuremberg, having been nearly wiped from the face of the earth during the harsh fighting, becomes an arena for ruthless struggles in both hidden and overt operations. Nazis are still operating underground, spies weave their intrigues, politicians and diplomats make bargains, and movie stars dazzle the public. The enormous efforts led by the USSR's chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko to expose the Nazi atrocities are threatened.




It is here where counterintelligence officer Major Denis Rebrov must he has been tasked with a matter of special state importance. But in this old imperial city, the ruins of which are home to people who would do anything for a pack of cigarettes or a loaf of bread, where revelations about unimaginable crimes come out daily, Rebrov meets Princess Irina Kurakina, born to an aristocratic family of Russian emigres.




The pages of this novel abound with real historical figures. Besides the USSR chief prosecutor Rudenko and his American analogue Robert Jackson, readers will be introduced to Nazi bosses Goering, Ribbentrop, Hess and Kaltenbrunner, film stars Olga Chekhov (Hitler's favorite actress) and Marlene Dietrich, as well as the "great leader" Stalin and his closest companions Molotov, Beria and Vyshinsky.




The Nuremberg Trials is based upon real facts that were hitherto unknown and details that the author, who spent many years studying the trials, learned from participants and witnesses.

546 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Nuremberg Trials are about to begin and the victorious nations are determined that the Nazis will be brought to justice. The USSR’s chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko is as determined as anyone to expose German war crimes, but behind the scenes hidden forces are equally determined that the trials should not go ahead. Author Alexander Zvyagintsev, who has also written a biography of Rudenko, has delved into the archives and uncovered hitherto unknown intrigues and covert operations and the result is this pacy and compelling fictionalised retelling of the run-up to the Trials. The book is a suspenseful thriller and a real page-turner but not without its faults, including rather too large a cast of characters and a very complex plot. It’s often difficult to distinguish between the fact and the fiction and I had to resort to Wikipedia on many occasions. The extensive use of recreated dialogue also stretches the reader’s credulity at times and raises more questions of authenticity. My biggest problem, however, was with the translation, which contained an inexcusable number of grammatical mistakes, anachronisms and Americanisms. Even if we can explain away some of the mistakes as typos, there’s no excuse for “…they said it to an American psychologist THAT was assigned to them.” or again “…a letter from his dead wife THAT he drove to suicide.” Expressions such as “get out of here!” (to express surprise rather than as a command) and “It sure is!” and Russians saying “Geez!” and Germans calling each other “buddy” just jars. I was also intrigued by one of the characters being “wrapped up in a warm handkerchief” (I’ve never seen a handkerchief that big) and a cemetery “encircled in a wrought iron gate” (must have been a large gate.) And something else that became increasingly irksome was the use of the abbreviations Gen. or Maj. Instead of General or Major – I’ve never seen that done anywhere else. So although overall this is an enjoyable and unusual exploration of Nuremberg, for me it was spoilt by these errors of translation and judgement as I found them distracting. An interesting but flawed spy thriller.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Nuremberg Trials is a fascinating book: it's the story of a ground-breaking event from the Russian point-of-view.

I've written before about East West Street, on the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, by Philippe Sands. It's not a book about what happened in Nazi Germany but about the legal development of these crimes, which had not existed before Nuremberg. It's an important book, but it's long—and truth be told, you probably need to be interested in the legal and philosophical underpinnings of these laws before you take an interest in the human story behind the scenes.
Zvagintsev's novel is much more readable. It's a bit hard to sum up succinctly, but it fictionalises the competing interests of the Allies at a critical moment with the Iron Curtain coming down; it indulges in some intriguing conspiracies amongst the players; and there's a love story between a Soviet fix-it man and a beautiful Russian émigrée who's returned from Paris. (Their love seems doomed, because Stalin takes a dim view of those who fled the Revolution, but hey, the author has a Russian soul, and Irina and Rebrov are very keen on each other).
Along the way, the future is foreshadowed. One of the key issues that the Allies had to deal with was whether Germany could be rehabilitated or not, and this played out in competing agendas about how the prosecution was to be run. Was Nazism an aberration, for which the Nazi decision-makers could be held accountable? Or was the evil inherent in the German nation, in which case the defence could argue that they were not as individuals responsible for it? A feisty American journalist called Peggy Butcher tells Rebrov that one of the German defence lawyers is predicting that declaring the German nation inherently aggressive would weigh them down with a guilt complex for many years to come.
It was no mere academic argument. It was vitally important that the prosecution did not fail. There were plenty of significant figures (Churchill among them) who thought the Nazi leadership should just be taken out and shot. The Americans wanted to see penitence rather than vengeance, (and one of the characters mentions dryly that perhaps they would feel differently if their country had been trashed and occupied). The Soviets are very keen to get an admission that the Nazis had planned to attack the USSR all along, but all the defendants claim they were all against it. Everyone is very fed up with the constant refrain that nobody in the general population saw any of the atrocities, they knew nothing about the death camps and the slave labour, and none of them belonged to the Nazi party.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/10/22/t...