Five best books about the prosecution of Nazi war criminals

William Shawcross is a widely renowned writer and broadcaster. His books include Dubcek (1970), Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (1979), The Shah’s Last Ride (1989), Deliver Us From Evil: Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict (2001), and Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (2012).

One of his five best books about the Nuremberg trials and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials
by Telford Taylor (1992)

Telford Taylor was not intimately involved in the prosecutions of all the major German defendants that began the Nuremberg trials. But this U.S. Army intelligence officer and member of the prosecution team ultimately succeeded the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, for the subsequent trials of lesser war criminals. Taylor went on to became a prominent lawyer and a fierce critic of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and of the war in Vietnam. Late in life (he died in 1998), Taylor published this book, subtitled "A Personal Memoir." It indeed provides an insider's view of the whole extraordinary process. He is particularly strong on the charges against the German military, but he also exposes many of the problems the prosecution encountered in bringing the defendants to justice.

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--Marshal Zeringue