The Trial of the Germans

The issues raised by the Nuremberg trials are dealt with in this book. These include: was it a necessary response to the crimes of the Third Reich?; how were Germany and the Germans capable of such extraordinary evil?; was the trial just, given the claims that the defendants were simply serving their country, doing as they had been told to do?; and if not just, was it nonetheless necessary as a warning to prevent future crimes against humanity? The author's approach to these and other questions of justice is made through examination of each of the defendants in the trial. His conclusion is: ""In a world of mixed human affairs where a rough justice is done that is better than lynching or being shot out of hand, Nuremberg may be defended as a political event if not as a court"". Some sentences may have seemed too severe, but none was harsher than the punishments meted out to innocent people by the regimes these men served. ""In a certain sense"", says Davidson, ""the trial succeeded in doing what judicial proceedings are supposed to do: it convinced even the guilty that the verdict against them was just"".