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.
