Reviews
"A magnificent study of one the most important but forgotten trials of the Holocaust. Hilary Earl adds valuable insight to our understanding of how Nazi perpetrators were dealt with by the law." - Michael Bazyler, Chapman University School of Law and author of Holocaust Justice, Review of the hardback: '… illuminating … Earl has undertaken original and extensive archival research and safely takes her place with other major scholars working on Nazism's historical and legal legacy. … convincing and … devastating.' Edinburgh Law Review, "This is a compelling, well-written, and well-researched book. In this imaginative and important study, Hilary Earl both tells the story of the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial, the 'biggest murder trial in history,' and paints a fascinating collective portrait of some of history's biggest killers. In the Einsatzgruppen Trial, the Americans prosecuted twenty-four members of the leadership corps of the SS-Einsatzgruppen, the mobil killing squads that initiated the Final Solution in the Soviet Union. In a world where the concept of genocide was as yet ill defined, prosecuting racialized mass murder proved a daunting challenge. Earl provides a compelling account of how both the prosecution and the defense responded to this challenge in the course of the trial. At the same time, she tells us a great deal about the men who perpetrated some of the most brutal crimes of the Holocaust: who they were, what their backgrounds were, and what their motives might have been. Along the way, she sheds new light on the question of whether and when Hitler might have issued a formal order to initiate the Final Solution." - Devin O. Pendas, Boston College, 'Earl's conclusions augment the … scholarly examinations of the necessary but imperfect judicial reckoning with Nazism.' The Journal of Central European History, "Hilary Earl has produced an important and compelling study that deserves a wide readership among scholars and students interested in German history, the Holocaust, comparative genocide, and transitional justice." -Alan E. Steinweis, H-German, "At last we have a serious, thoughtful, and well-written account of the one trial at Nuremberg in which aspects of the Holocaust were central. Based on an extraordinary command of the relevant published and archival materials - with some of the latter only recently declassified - this impressive study provides new insights into the way individuals became mass murderers and how a court could deal with this phenomenon." - Gerhard L. Weinberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "Earl has written a highly readable, impeccably researched, and richly informative book about an important and insufficiently studied trial. A timely and valuable contribution." - Lawrence Douglas, Amherst College and author of The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust, Review of the hardback: '... illuminating ... Earl has undertaken original and extensive archival research and safely takes her place with other major scholars working on Nazism's historical and legal legacy. ... convincing and ... devastating.' Edinburgh Law Review, "Scholars in Holocaust studies have long understood more about the broad mechanics of mass murder than about the men who carried it out. Hilary Earl's groundbreaking work is a corrective to that understanding in directly focusing our attention on the actions of the leaders of the SS-Einsatzgruppen and thoroughly tracing their subsequent arrest, trial, and punishment. Moreover, she does so in a uniquely interdisciplinary way, drawing - accurately and insightfully - on perspectives from a wide range of historical, social scientific, legal, and humanistic sources to offer a mature and nuanced comprehension of what all too often is passed off as incomprehensible." -James Waller, Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
