The initial epigraph, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21), establishes the thesis of Tim Townsend’s 2014 book, “Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis.”
We learn in the book’s first sentence that modernity’s epitome of evil, Adolf Hitler, is the reason why Wilhelm Keitel will soon be “hanging by his neck from a rope.” Readers do not have to wait long to understand the visceral nature of the setting; it’s described in the very first paragraph in the book: “Outside the prison, no moon marked the sky above the destroyed city of Nuremberg.”
