AN illuminating insight into the minds of Hitler's henchmen is provided in this collection of interviews conducted by American prison psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn.

He enjoyed unfettered access to witnesses and defendants at Nuremberg. Far from the evil archetypes of fiction, what we meet is a motley collection of mainly boring and poorly educated filing clerks of tyranny and murder.

A common thread is their refusal to accept personal responsibility and blind self-justification.

If anything, the book confirms the banality of evil. Each interview is annotated with biographical information and footnotes that place the man and his actions in their historical context.