The Writers’ Castle: Reporting History at Nuremberg

Biographer Neumahr makes his English-language debut with an immersive account of the 1945 Nuremberg trial focused on those who covered it: a throng of reporters from as far away as China, chosen by their countries to “serve as a window into a sealed enclave.” Those sent included famous figures like John Dos Passos and Rebecca West; they were fittingly housed in a castle built by the pen and pencil dynasty Faber-Castell. During the day, they took stabs at describing the nature of the evil before them (was Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring pathetic, sadistic, charismatic?) and struggled with the unspeakable horror of what they saw (groundbreakingly, much of the evidence was given on film; one American writer sent a telegram home that read, “I can’t take it. I have no words any more”). At night, they carried on illicit affairs—Rebecca West with a judge!—and drank heavily. Because all the written evidence was read aloud, the trial ended up being extremely tedious, which led some writers to make embellishments in their reporting. Others, Neumahr perceptively notes, were pushed to turn their sights outward, toward the everyday Germans around them, and to ask probing questions about the general population’s complicity. It adds up to a fresh, at times dishy, behind-the-scenes look at the landmark trial. (Nov.)