Final Verdict

**One of The Guardian's Nonfiction to Look Out For in 2024**

"Final Verdict is a thrilling read. It is a book that raises a myriad of fascinating questions and human dramas, beautifully constructed and enticingly written."
 

"Timely and deeply thought-provoking--The Last Verdict examines how German courts let hundreds of thousands of Holocaust perpetrators off the hook until only a few low-level concentration camp guards remained alive to prosecute. Tobias Buck navigates the thicket of thorny questions surrounding this vexed and vexing history with great scope and sensitivity."
 

"When [Buck] writes of the detractors of some memorials, his point comes through elegantly: We contest not only what we remember, but how we remember....Excellent reporting."

“The author provides a powerful guide to the proceedings and their context….Final Verdict provide[s] a fresh perspective on how Germans have negotiated their sense of historical and individual responsibility.”

"Through a riveting account of the trial of ninety-three-year-old Bruno Dey, a guard at Stutthof concentration camp...'the smallest of small cogs' in the SS hierarchy, Buck compellingly shows how history is always present, never past."

“Once I started it, I really couldn’t stop. There was so much food for thought about morality, responsibility, crime, victimhood, and agency, all tied beautifully to one single case.”

“[A] lucid, timely study of Germany’s fraught reckoning with its past….This is a narrative that wrestles—calmly and very elegantly—with huge questions….This is a brilliant book…I was glad of Buck’s unshowy, measured style: on the page, he makes complicated things (the law, especially) straightforward…his prose is in the service of ideas and other human beings who have more to say than him….Above all, I found it…to be important….Books such as Final Verdict have never been more necessary.”

“Gripping and fascinating…[an] absorbing book.”

“In this informed, thoughtful work [Buck] skillfully weaves together his investigation into his own family’s Nazi past — and their attempts to disguise it — with broader themes of historical justice and culpability…. Buck is strong on untangling the legal chicanery that allowed so many
murderers to escape with the lightest of sentences…. [A] masterly account.”

“Final Verdict is a gripping read from first to last.  Using the Bruno Dey trial as its central core, Tobias Buck provides a wide-ranging survey of how German jurisprudence came to terms with the magnitude of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime in the name of the German people, but also with the degree of guilt involved in simply ‘obeying orders.’ Buck’s deep research into his subject makes his book highly informative and thought-provoking…. Final Verdict is an important contribution to understanding the impact of the Holocaust on the nation from which it emanated.  Buck explains how Germany has come to terms with its guilt and responsibility, and how the Holocaust has assumed a centrality in the national consciousness.  This is a book that deserves to be read.”

“Absorbing...[Buck's] insightful book examines questions of guilt, complicity and collaboration."

“A compelling courtroom drama… raising deep questions of history, collective memory, justice and complicity.”

“[A] lucid account….Buck crisply explains the legal hurdles that thwarted prosecution of alleged German perpetrators in West German courts."

"Compelling... enticing prose... While the book includes a wealth of high­ly orga­nized infor­ma­tion that will appeal to seri­ous schol­ars and stu­dents of his­to­ry and cul­ture, Buck’s live­ly writ­ing will also invite any­one with an inter­est in Ger­many, the Nazi era, or the com­plex prob­lems of today’s polit­i­cal sys­tems to lis­ten and learn."