Europe in early 1945 was a vast physical and moral wasteland. It was now that the weary Allied armies, fighting their way through the devastated Reich, truly came to understand the horror the Nazi's had unleashed. As the Nazi leaders were killed, committed suicide or were captured and the regime fell to pieces, it was through the interrogation of the survivors that the Allies began to find out the true nature of their enemy. In hour after hour of questioning the truth (and of course many lies)about Nazi Europe came spilling out. Richard Overy brings the reader comes face to face with a regime in its death throes and with a world struggling to understand what had really been perpetrated within the gigantic fortress of Hitler's Reich.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Interrogations - an introduction: outlaw country; the criminals; the charges; asking the questions; the absentees -Hitler, Himmler, Bormann; selective amnesia? the case of Hess; the helpful Speer; the unrepentant Goering; the limits of responsibility - strategies of denial; confessing to genocide; "I hope they hang 'all'" - final retribution. Part 2 Interrogations -the transcripts: notes on the transcripts; perspectives on the Fuehrer - "the driving force", Albert Speer, Hitler's women, Karl Brandt, the new feudalism, Hans Lammers, Hitler the warlord, Alfred Jodl; "the world's worst criminal" - Goering in the Third Reich - a souvenir from Monte Cassino, Hermann Goering, the commander-in-chief, Hermann Goering, conquest by telephone, Hermann Goering, vote "no" if you dare Albert Goering; waging war - Ribbentrop, Hitler and war, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's "chess game of power politics", Albert Speer, OKW at war, Wilhelm Keitel; genocide - the Fuehrer order, Dieter Wisliceny, a morbid accounting, Dieter Wisliceny, "incredible things at Auschwitz", Ernst von Gottstein and Eugen Horak, a doctor at Dachau, Franz Blaha, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rudolf Hoess, demarcation dispute, Otto Moll and Rudolf Hoess; the Hess case - "I have lost my memory", Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goering, the young ladies, Rudolf Hess et al, "the science of psychiatry is sound", Rudolf Hess; the von Papen case - resistance and compliance - "a way out of the mess" -von Papen and Hitler in 1933, Franz von Papen, "this problem of responsibility", Franz von Papen; Albert Speer - true confessions? - Speer the expert, Albert Speer, sixty acts of treason, Albert Speer, Speer the assassin, Dietrich Stahl, special pleading, Albert Speer, "not a concern of mine", Albert Speer; Robert Ley -profile of a suicide - the testament of Robert Ley, Robert Ley, Ley's dialogue with the dead, Robert Ley, confessions of an anti-semite, Robert Ley; obeying orders - complicity and denial - "not a dangerous person", Wilhelm Frick, "talking in a dream", Joachim von Ribbentrop, "very undesirable activities", Heinz Gudrian; Germany's future - rebuilding the Reich, Robert Ley, Schact's new Germany, Hjalmar Schact.