Thomas Dodd didn’t arrive on the scene of the Nuremberg Trials with expectations of serving as one of the lead prosecutors. He was signing on, he thought, as one of the American legal team’s evidence compilers and interrogators. But as the slow-motion, cumbersome process moved forward—beset by difficulties of having France, Britain and Russia as co-prosecutors and blurred lines between military and civilian tribunal techniques—his ability to cross-examine and cut to the chase landed him the position of second in command to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. Distrustful of the Russians, despairing of the bureaucratic and limelight-seeking military, homesick to the core, Dodd writes home nightly over a 15-month period what his son points out is a "first draft of history."

The letters are bright with character sketches, from the major Nazis on trial to his bodyguard. His observations about the littered, ruined landscape of Germany are haunting; his arrival in Nuremberg follows so quickly on the heels of Germany’s surrender that the scent of rotting bodies in the rubble created by Allied bombing is still present in the streets. Incredible moments of historical hope are recounted too, such as the following description of a double-header played between two divisions of the American army:

But the sight and the significance of 40,000 Americans in baseball mood in the Nazi stadium was significant. There, where Hitler corrupted and misled the youth of Germany, I heard thousands of young American soldiers calling the umpire names, I heard players called "bums" and all the old chatter and ribaldry of every American ballpark. It made that arena sing.

Tucked between the grousing about the incredibly slow trial preparation, the "celebrities" drawn to the scene, the parties, the blow-ups over contract bridge games, are the shining, nuanced, philosophical passages reflecting on the meaning of justice, accountability and honor. He exudes the exhilaration of a lawyer well aware that the daunting process of trying the men responsible for the blood lost and the havoc wreaked during World War II is unprecedented, and that care must be taken as the world watches the proceedings.

"What a disordered period of history we live in," he writes in one letter. In another, "Wars bring changes—lasting changes for the worse. I know of nothing good from war. All that silly talk about the advance of science and such leaves me cold. Give me peace and retarded science." And as the evidence is compiled, he remarks, "It is a terrible page in the history of the human race." Frustrated at the questioning, day after day, he writes wearily to his wife: "Well—the same old song. It would be relieving to hear one of them admit some blame for something. They blame everything on the dead or missing."

The passages like the latter go to the heart of why his son and family felt it was time the world saw these letters. Chris Dodd explicitly draws the connection in his opening explanatory chapters between the Bush administration’s disregard for rule of law and current treatment of prisoners, and the monumental undertaking of his father’s generation to set up an international framework that would honor civilization over barbarity, and balance the understandable desire for vengeance with the painstaking weight of moral authority. "Of course we must give these defendants a fair hearing—a most fair hearing," he tells his wife, "otherwise this whole effort is a farce. No decent lawyer feels otherwise." Reading this, it’s impossible not to grieve for what has been lost for America under Gonzales and Bush.

Indeed, as his son points out:

On the morning of December 13, 1945, my father presented to the court an argument that has an eerie connection to the present. He charged the Nazis, among many other heinous crimes, with "the apprehension of victims and their confinement without trial, often without charges, generally with no indication of the length of their detention."

The senior Dodd also displayed a depth of understanding about human character that seems to be out of reach of the administration responsible for Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and "collateral damage." He writes, "Please do not think I am becoming soft about the Nazis—but in this mission, as in most realistic affairs, one knows that things are not all black and white. For nothing ever is. There are always shadings. I have learned such in these few months."

Dodd’s journeys around ravaged Europe and the growing alarm at the Russian territorial and political grabs—presaging the ensuing Cold War—are explored throughout. There are times when he despairs of America’s own ability to deal with, or pay attention to, what evil countries far from us are capable of. He writes, "...I am inclined to believe that our people are too selfish, too shallow, too greedy and too irresponsible. It is, I fear, something that must be changed if we are to prosper and play our proper part in the world."

Yet for all his frequent professions of impatience and despair, he manages to hold on to a belief in humankind’s—and America’s—ultimate ability to honor justice and live up to a higher moral standard than crude barbarity. His final sentences in the following passage are challenges we need to meet as a nation, and it is fitting to reflect upon them in our own dark time.