Nuremberg: A personal record of the trial of the major Nazi war criminals: 2021

Description

On 18 October 1945, a day that would haunt him for ever, Airey Neave personally served the official indictments on the twenty-one top Nazis currently awaiting trial in Nuremberg - including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher and Albert Speer. With his visit to their gloomy prison cells, the tragedy of an entire generation reached its final act. Neave, a wartime organiser of MI9 and the first Englishman to escape from Colditz Castle, watched and listened over the months as the momentous events of the trials unfolded. He describes the cowardice, calumny and, in some cases, bravado of the defendants - men he would come to know and who in turn would become known as some the most evil men in history. Was the trial victors' justice? Or was it civilisation's infinitely painful verdict on the worst crimes ever committed? These questions, and many others, are answered in this definitive eyewitness record of the Nuremberg trials.

Airey Neave worked as an intelligence officer for MI9 in World War Two before serving with the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. After the war he became Member of Parliament for Abingdon. The author of several highly acclaimed books on the Second World War, he was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army in a car bomb attack at the House of Commons in 1979.

"A classic eyewitness account of the most famous trial in history: an authentic, elegant and exceptional read, one that draws you back in time and place." - Philippe Sands "With the postwar international order under increasing strain, Airey Neave's haunting account of the Nuremberg trial is more relevant than ever. The extraordinary access he had to those accused of monstrous evil gives added power to his timeless message: that if the rule of law is to mean anything, there must be no impunity for those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity." - Lord Ricketts, former head of the Diplomatic Service and National Security Adviser