Interrogations

From award-winning historian Richard Overy, Interrogations: Inside the Minds of the Nazi Elite is the harrowing true story of the interviews with Nazi masterminds in the aftermath of the Second World War.

How can we ever understand why those in the Third Reich acted the way they did? What could have led them to commit such atrocities in the name of the Fuhrer?

In 1945, as the Nazi regime collapsed, its remaining leaders were imprisoned and interrogated for months before the Nuremberg Trials. In this searing work Richard Overy reveals the original transcripts of these little-known interviews with key Nazis: the brutal and unrepentant Goering, the selective amnesiac Hess, the deliberately evasive Ribbentrop, the courteous Speer and the suicidal Ley. For the first time, they were forced to examine their actions and speak about the unspeakable. The result is an unprecedented and shocking insight into Hitler's henchmen.

'A chilling glimpse into the minds of Hitler's chief lieutenants'

  J.G. Ballard, New Statesman Books of the Year

'Enthralling ... I know of no better book to explain what really motivated the elite of the Third Reich'

  Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday

'Remarkable and gripping ... the interrogations, along with Overy's incisive commentary, throw light on the dejected cast who had once happily danced to Hitler's tune'

  David Stafford, The Times

'Fascinating ... reveals the mindset of Hitler's inner circle'

  Ian Kershaw, Sunday Telegraph

Richard Overy has spent much of his distinguished career studying the intellectual, social and military ideas that shaped the cataclysm of the Second World War, particularly in his books 1939 - Countdown to War, Why the Allies Won, Russia's War and The Morbid Age. Overy's The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia won the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hessell Tiltman Prize.