Hans Bernd Gisevius - Post World War II

Post World War II

Gisevius served as a key witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials in the case against Hermann Göring, his former boss in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He also testified against Keitel and Kaltenbrunner. In the cases against Hjalmar Schacht and Wilhelm Frick, he served for the defence. His autobiography, Bis zum bitteren Ende, ("To the Bitter End"), published in 1946, offered a sharp indictment of the Nazi regime, many of whose leading members Gisevius knew personally, as well as of the German people, who, Gisevius claimed, pretended not to know about the atrocities being committed in its name. At the same time, it also offers an insider's account of the German resistance movement.

In 1946 Gisevius was charged and acquitted by the Swiss authorities in a trial for espionage. Gisevius was later criticized as he diminished the contributions of other members (i.e. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg) of the opposition to Hitler. In the early 1950s he moved to the United States, but soon returned, and lived in Switzerland. Gisevius died in Müllheim in Baden-Württemberg in 1974.

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