A cogent, well-written contribution to legal and military history, and fitting tribute to a principled man.
A “remarkable man” is honored, half a century after the fact, for his role in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.
By the end of 1948, William Denson “had prosecuted more Nazis than any other lawyer in the entire postwar period”: 177 prison guards and officers in all, every one of whom was found guilty, nearly a hundred of whom were sentenced to death. Yet his legal successes at proving the guilt of the butchers of Dachau, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald were overshadowed even at the time by the more widely publicized prosecutions of the German political leadership at Nuremburg. Greene (Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, 2000) revisits the prosecution, sharply noting how the overwhelming evidence of Nazi crimes converted Denson from a detached, scholarly student of the conflict who believed that “even the most decent human being, subjected to the right pressures, is capable of doing things he could never imagine himself doing” to a committed avenger of the wrongs the Nazis inflicted. To effect that legal retribution, Greene writes, Denson had the formidable task of proving that the Nazi regime was by definition a criminal enterprise; he also “made damn sure there was independent evidence corroborating what the defendant had done” rather than rely solely on the testimony of former concentration-camp inmates. Denson’s legal prowess was overcome, not by the defense—his German opponent, sounding much like Maximilian Schell in Judgment at Nuremburg, was surely brilliant—but by the politics of the Cold War, by which the American government exerted pressure on the military to sweep aside Nazi crimes in the interest of lining West Germany squarely on its side against the Soviet Union. One result, Greene writes, was the early freeing of the so-called “bitch of Buchenwald,” a female guard whom Buckner characterized as “a sadistic pervert of monumental proportions, unmatched in history.” Buckner lost the argument against commutation and wound up as “the Army’s principal critic,” a stand that cost him much in those early days of McCarthyism.
A cogent, well-written contribution to legal and military history, and fitting tribute to a principled man.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0879-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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