Leon Goldensohn, an American physician and psychiatrist, joined the U.S. Army in 1943. When World War II ended, he found himself in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials of major Nazi war criminals would take place

 Six weeks into the proceedings, he was given the responsibility of mon-itoring the mental health of the accused and defence and prosecution witnesses who had been Nazi officials themselves. For the next seven months, he spoke to them on a regular basis, recording his conversations on a tape recorder.

These interviews were soon forgotten and, for the next 50 years, gathered dust. When the historian Robert Gellately, a specialist in the Nazi period, discovered the tapes, he was amazed. Goldensohn’s interlocutors, ranging from Hermann Goering to Julius Streicher, had apparently been quite frank, and Gellately quickly realized that their testimonies represented an important addition to the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Gellately, a professor of history at Florida State University and the author of Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Ger-many, transcribed, edited and annotated the interviews. Now they can be read in Nuremberg Interviews (Alfred A. Knopf), a valuable addition to the historiography of that frightful era.

Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe and the president of the Reichstag, was one of Hitler’s closest associates. Goering claims that “race politics” in Nazi Germany became important due to the views of officials such as Heinrich Himmler, the SSchieftain, and Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda. Goebbels, he observes, hardened Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and used it as a means to achieve power.

Goering reveals himself as a true anti-Semite, despite his assertions that anti-Semitism “played no part in my life” and that it was not the element that persuaded him to join the Nazi party. Goering believed that Jews had too much influence in business and the arts, and that Jews and Germans could not coexist. However, despite his role in the Holocaust, he describes the extermination of Jews as “unjustifiable.” He adds, “I would never have made this policy.”

Goldensohn assesses Julius Streicher, the founder and editor of the newspaper Der Sturmer, as a par-agon of anti-Jewish animus whose favourite topic is anti-Semitism. Describing himself as a student of Jews, Streicher boasts, “I know more about the Jews than the Jews do themselves.”

He denies any personal animosity toward Jews, saying that he knew nothing about anti-Jewish riots in Nuremberg – his hometown – in 1938, and claiming that the resettlement of Jews in Madagascar or Palestine would have been preferable to mass murder. “It’s perfectly understandable and proper for one to be an anti-Semite,” he says, “but to exterminate women and children is so extraordinary… No defendant here wanted that.”

Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Ausch-witz from 1940 to 1943, estimates that 2.5 million Jews were murdered there. He says that he was only following Himmler’s orders. “Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated… then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

When Hoess’ wife learned of the murders, she protested. “She was very upset and thought it cruel and terrible. I explained it to her the same way Himmler explained it to me. Because of this explanation, she was satisfied and we didn’t talk about it anymore.” Nevertheless, she urged Hoess to leave Auschwitz and find another position.

Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer and the governor-general of occupied Poland, admits that his father was strongly opposed to Nazism and had many Jewish friends. He claims that anti-Semitism was not the reason he joined the party and says that “the criminal step of exterminating the Jews physically was taken by Hitler” at the urging of Martin Bormann (his aide), Goebbels and Himmler. Frank says that the party program “merely” called for the removal of Jewish influence in Germany.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister from 1938 to 1945, says that he opposed “the anti-Jewish attitude of the party.” As he puts it, “I myself was always of the opinion that the Jewish question was a temporary political one that would find its own solution. I never conceived of the Jew as the great danger, such as Hitler later claimed, and which led to Himmler’s atrocities. If I had known about them, even at the end of the war, I would have committed suicide. The first I ever heard of extermination was late in 1944, when the Russians recaptured the region in which Camp Majdanek was installed.”

To Von Ribbentrop, the Holocaust would always be a blot on Germany. In his estimation, Hitler initiated a genocidal policy be-cause he had “lost his sense of proportion” and went “wild” on the subject of Jews.

Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s designated successor and the admiral of the navy, says he knew nothing about the Holocaust because he was so preoccupied by the war. But he acknowledges that he was aware of Kristallnacht. Goldensohn’s verdict is that he deliberately blocked out the crimes perpetrated by the regime. “He rejects the atrocities, the killing of millions of Jews, the barbarism of the SS, the entire criminal modus operandi of the Nazi party. He sees only that he was innocent of any crime, past or present…”

Alfred Rosenberg, the minister of the occupied territories and the editor of the Volkischer Beobachter, effectively blames Jews for their misfortunes. “The Jews are a nation… and should be in their own homeland.” He accuses German Jews of having “spat” at German culture by virtue of having “controlled” theatres, publishing companies, stores “and so on.”

Walther Funk, the minister of economics from 1937 to 1945, claims that he had many Jewish friends and “never adhered to racial theory.” But in the next breath, he argues that “there was too high a percentage of Jews” in Germany’s cultural and economic sectors. “But I was not a radical,” he notes. “I did not foresee the mass murders or the extermination programs.”

Wilhelm Frick, the minister of interior from 1933 to 1943, criticizes Hitler for his “lack of moderation” and faults him for having listened to “criminals of the worst kind” such as Himmler and Bormann.

Hans Fritzche, a senior official in the ministry of propaganda, condemns the “criminal extermination of innocent millions of men, women and children.” He distances himself from the crude anti-Semitism of Streicher, but admits he “resisted the Jewish influence in the press and theatre” and says he would have been in favour of “bringing Jewish influence to a percentage… in accord with their relative numbers.” Fritz Saukel, the minister of labour, basically concurs with this view.

Otto Ohlendorf, the commander of an Einsatzgruppen killing unit on the eastern front, describes Nazi racial laws as “correct,” but excuses himself from guilt by saying that he was under strict orders to carry out his orders. He feels no remorse and claims that since Jews were shot in “true military fashion,” no atrocities or brutalities actually occurred.

These testimonies ring true, and what they reveal, in essence, is the ease with which normal, well-adjusted individuals can commit crimes against humanity without even batting an eyelash or recoiling in horror. The depths to which hu-man beings can descend seems bottomless, and this by far is the saddest aspect of Nuremberg Interviews.