Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis
In 1945, as the Allies readied the complicated plans for the Nuremberg trials, religion was a consideration, per the Geneva Convention’s regulations. As award-winning religion reporter and first-time book author Townsend puts it, they had to determine “whether to supply the architects of the Holocaust with a Christian minister to comfort their spirits as they explained to the world the murder of six million Jews.” The Lutheran minister the Allies provided was Henry Gerecke, a middle-aged U.S. Army chaplain from south St. Louis. Along with Father Sixtus O’Connor, a Catholic, Chaplain Gerecke spent months ministering to the top tier of Nazi criminals. In a clear, gripping, and extensively researched narrative, Townsend raises the hard questions of good and evil, forgiveness and retribution; and, also, whether these killers, obeying orders and ignoring morality, deserved spiritual succor in what were, for many of them, their final days. There is much to ponder and bemoan in this detailed report of the trials and of a brave, kindly pastor moving through the “most frightening experience of his life.” --Eloise Kinney