Dos Passos Reports at Nuremberg

Research for my speech has sharpened my appreciation for my grandfather’s prestigious reporting career. For example, Dos Passos’ observations of the Nuremberg trials in fall 1945. “Except for Hess, who slumps as if in a coma, the accused have an easy expectant look as if they had come to see the play rather than to act in it. Goering is very much the master of ceremonies. He looks around with appreciate interest at every detail in the courtroom. Sometimes his face wears the naughty-boy expression of a repentant drunkard. He is determined to be himself. He bows to an American lady he knows in the press seats. It’s a spoiled, genial, outgoing, shrewdly self-satisfied kind of face, an actor’s face. Not without charm. Nero must have had a face like that.”