Nuremberg Diary Book

Nuremberg Diary is an absolutely fascinating, albeit shocking, book. Written by Dr. Gilbert, a psychologist who - mostly out of professional curiosity - interrogated the most infamous Nazi war criminals, it reveals their innermost thoughts and motivations.

Dr. Gilbert's principal duty was to maintain close daily contact with the prisoners in order to keep the prison commandant, Colonel B. C. Andrus, aware of the state of their morale, and to help in any way possible to assure their standing trial with orderly discipline. Fortunately, he was allowed free access to the prisoners at all times, so his diary has become a Nazi criminals' "testimony" - a brilliant analysis of their day-by-day reactions to the trial proceedings.

Dr. Gilbert's approach was that of a casual conversation - he never took notes in front of the defendants. Yet, he wrote everything down as soon as he left the cells, the court room, or the lunchroom, and used his records to examine the Nazi system and the men who made it.
What makes this work especially powerful is his decision to let the defendants freely talk for themselves and to present most of their words as a mass of quotations, intruding himself into the picture rarely, only to ask a question or two. This viewpoint creates the sinister but, at the same time, captivating feeling of having an actual conversation with Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, and the rest of the most notorious Nazi; (only an interrogation of Hitler or Goebbels could have proved more fascinating).

Except for the Führer, the Minister of Propaganda, and Himmler, they are all here - Herman Goering, Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe Chief, with his cynical formula ("The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused."), Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, pale like a ghost and convinced that "the indictment is directed against the wrong people", anxiously writing his defense in his cell, Chief of Sadist Number 1 Heinrich Himmler's Security Headquarters, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who didn't feel guilty "of any war crimes", and many, many others.

A good deal of the Nazis' conversation is consumed in rationalization, self-justification and recrimination, but it is still interesting to observe, through Dr. Gilbert's eyes, the gradual transformation occurring in prison. While in the beginning most of the defendants cling to Goering, the self-proclaimed ringleader of the defense, who was allegedly determined to uphold his, Hitler's and Nazi Germany's honor to the end (as if any of them had any), soon Dr. Gilbert witness the birth of a resistance against the Luftwaffe Chief, prompted by the Nazis' desire to save their own skins. For example, Reichminister of Armaments Albert Speer bewildered the prosecution with his bombshell revelation that he had attempted to assassinate Hitler in February 1945 and deliver Himmler to the enemy. Most of the others began to insist that everything was, of course, Hitler and Himmler's fault and that they knew nothing or "suspected Hitler was a madman from the very beginning." When Dr. Gilbert asked von Papen why he didn't remain out of Nazi politics if he (allegedly) realized the Führer's aggressive intentions after the Munich Pact, von Papen replied: "What could I do? Leave the country and live as a foreigner? I didn't want that. Go to the front as an officer? I was too old, and anyway shooting isn't in my line. To denounce Hitler would course simply have meant being stood against the wall and shot, and it would not have altered anything." Yeah, indeed, what could he really do? Voluntarily give up the money and the power offered to him? No chance.

Even more revealing were the defendants' different reactions to the evidence of Nazi brutalities in concentration camps. The "thick-skinned pig", Goering, wouldn't even listen, while Hans Fritzsche, Radio Propaganda Chief, cried in his cell afterwards. Dr. Gilbert listened to Admiral Doenitz of the German Navy say that nobody knew about the atrocities and to General Jodl snap that "of course, somebody knew about them." Jodl was right. If nobody had known about "these things," they would not have happened.

While reading, I felt many different emotions rise inside myself - disgust, shock, pity. Yes, pity. I pitied those men for their cowardice, for their refusal to come to terms with the reality of the regime they'd helped to build, for their boundless craving for power, which led them to appalling crimes. And I felt that - despite his rightful indignation - Dr. Gilbert pitied them too.

This book is unimaginably hard to read - you couldn't help but think of those men as of monsters and psychopaths. But it's an important book, shocking, raw and honest, reaching to the most sinister corners of a human mind.