Dr Leon Goldensohn was an American physician and psychiatrist who joined the U.S. Army in 1943 and was posted to France and Germany. He died in 1961. Robert Gellately is the Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University and the author of The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 and Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. He is currently writing a book about Hitler and Stalin for Cape/Pimlico. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
A gripping work of history, a series of oral narratives that drag the reader, almost by force, into the nightmarish mental landscape of the Third Reich -- William Grimes New York Times A rare document...striking proof of the banality of evil Kirkus Reviews Goldensohn serves as a down-to-earth Dante in these anterooms to hell, getting one damned soul after another to reveal himself in his own words...as Goldensohn made his rounds, he mostly kept his astonishment and dismay under control. It's more than readers will be able to do Newsweek Goldensohn's conversations with these men are perturbing because most of the them seem like many of us except for the circumstances that lured them into opportunistic deviance. Goldensohn may not have left a headline-making legacy of belated revelations, but he has complicated further the tapestry of evil Publishers Weekly Virtually all the top Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg are interviewed here, and their responses make for fascinating yet chilling reading... Without necessarily intending to do so, these men reveal how easily totalitarian systems can induce acquiescence to or even enthusiastic participation in evil Booklist