The Scourge of the Swastika

"Lord Russell rises above the well-known abuses of the Holocaust to highlight Nazi abuses on a broader and more savage scale." —Military Review

This factual account of German war crimes of World War II is a formidable indictment of Nazi brutality and of the monstrous organization which so terrorized occupied Europe and murdered at least 12 million civilians.


Along with The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes, by the same author, it was a phenomenal bestseller when first published. Drawing on documentary evidence submitted to the Nuremberg Trials and brilliantly written by an expert intimately connected to the prosecution of war criminals, this searing condemnation of the Third Reich's crimes is factual, objective and unstinting in its efforts to expose the truth behind real or alleged atrocities.


It examines Hitler's instruments of tyranny and repression the SS, Gestapo and Army; German crimes against prisoners of war; outrages committed on the high seas; crimes against civilian populations; the mass use of slave labor; the concentration camps; and the "Final Solution."

"An authoritative and evidential source of the horrors of the Holocaust . . . A benchmark classic that deals effectively with Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil.'"—The Times Higher Education
"This is not an easy read—the subject material means that it never could be, but it is a very valuable, legally informed account of some of the most appalling atrocities ever committed, and a valuable reminder of why the Second World War had to be fought." —History of War