Witness to Barbarism

About this book

Horace R. Hansen writes his firsthand experiences during and after World War II. He serves in the army as lieutenant in a U.S. replacement troop traveling across Germany. At the end of the war he is assigned to the Third Army Judge Advocate General Department as chief prosecutor during the Nazi war crimes trials at the Dachau Concentration Camp. Hansen used his legal expertise to present this firsthand view of his experience of crimes against Jews gypsies political and military prisoners and others that did no fit the Nazi idea of a master race. On his staff at Dachau are five of Hitlers military-situation conference stenographers or recorders who tell Hansen how Hitler made his wartime decisions. These recorders gave Hansen background on Hitler that hasnt been published until now. Primary sources for this book include his interviews with Hitlers recorders and his frequent letters home during the war as well as personal photographs taken as he moved through Europe with U.S. troops during World War II. Witness to Barbarism is a unique and powerful story including eyewitness material on Hitler and his obsession written in the hope that what happened then will never happen again.