One other famous figure was not present, though he was still on trial in absentia. Martin Bormann, the crass, crude, calculating chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery. In the last days of the war, Bormann had disappeared in the shell-torn horror of wrecked Berlin. He was dead, some men said, but others were not so sure. Without positive proof of his death, he remained a defendant, the "Brown Eminence" still, a shadow at the back of the prisoners’ dock.

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But most of the other old familiar names were there. There was Rudolph Hess, the demented longtime deputy party leader, who had flown to Scotland in May 1941 on a half-baked "peace mission." Much to his surprise and anger, he had languished in a British prison ever since.

Next to Hess sat Der Dicke ("The Fat One"), Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, chief of the Luftwaffe and once Hitler’s heir apparent. A legitimate ace fighter pilot in World War I, Göring had gone on to sybaritic luxury, almost unbounded power, and a host of Wagnerian illusions. Now he was simply a somewhat deflated fat man in a plain, baggy uniform.

In the back row sat Albert Speer, architect and engineer. Speer was a remarkable man, always something of a loner in Nazi Party circles, creator of the phenomenal surge in German war production even under the shower of Allied bombs. Highly intelligent, basically decent, in the last days of the war Speer saved Germany’s future at the risk of his own life. He had countermanded Hitler’s Götterdämmerung order to burn and destroy all that remained of German resources. Nevertheless, Speer had used slave laborers by the millions to supply Germany’s war machine. For that he would be tried as a major war criminal.

Sitting together at the other end of the back row were the senior officers of the vanquished German navy. A dedicated Nazi, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder had commanded the Kriegsmarine until January 1943, when he resigned in protest of a decree by Hitler to scrap the surface fleet. As the author of unrestricted submarine warfare, Raeder faced charges of war crimes. Raeder’s companion, Admiral Karl Dönitz, had succeeded Raeder as chief of the German navy. Also a convinced party member, Dönitz was appointed Hitler’s successor in the Führer’s will. As Germany fell apart around him, he spent his few days in office trying to negotiate a peace, largely with the Western Allies alone. Dönitz was the U-boat master, the single commander who came closest to winning the war for Germany; his boats sank some 15 million tons of Allied shipping. Had Hitler listened to his urgings to build up the U-boat fleet at all costs, who knows how the war might have ended?

Joachim von Ribbentrop was there, too, the ex-champagne salesman who had risen to be Hitler’s closest adviser on foreign policy and foreign minister of Germany. Unctuous and fawning to Hitler, he was obsessed with power and social standing. He had no claim to nobility, but fraudulently added the aristocratic von to his name. Propaganda Minister Paul Josef Goebbels, who had a way with words, summed up Ribbentrop pretty well: "He bought his name, he married his money, and he swindled his way into office."

Next to Ribbentrop in the front row sat one of the two professional soldiers on trial. Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, then 64, had risen to be chief of the armed forces under Hitler. A servile flatterer, he once called Hitler "the greatest commander of all times." His fawning attitude to Hitler earned him the contemptuous nickname of Lakeitel (lackey) throughout the German army. One story says that stenographers at the Führer’s conferences never bothered to record Keitel’s first remarks. They were always the same as Hitler’s last ones.

Keitel abetted the systematic murders carried out by the SS in the East, and he promulgated the infamous Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decrees, allowing seizure without warrant or trial of people "endangering German security."

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