Free The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski

home in October 1947 to return to civilian life, The New York Times lauded his record: “Colonel Denson has been outstanding for his intensive work on the prosecution staff of the War Crimes Commission at Dachau. Frequently taking one major case during the daytime and working far into the night on the preparation of another, he had become over a period of two years a symbol of justice among the SS men and women administrators in Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps.”
    But the strain of that pace—and of the unremittingly gruesome factsthat he had to reconstruct on a daily basis—took its toll on Denson.His weight had dropped from 160 to less than 120 pounds. “They said I looked more like an exhibit out of the concentration camp than anybody I put on the stand,” he recalled later. In January 1947, he collapsed and spent two weeks in bed. Nonetheless, it seemed as if each new case made him more determined to carry on.
    Denson’s wife, Robina, who had stayed in the United States, filed for divorce. According to his biographer, she had thought “that she was gaining a social partner from an aristocratic family, not a legal missionary who would run off to prosecute Nazis.”
    Heidenberger, who had become increasingly friendly with Denson and the other Americans at Dachau, claims this was not the only catalyst for his wife’s decision. “Hell, what ruined his marriage were all those German fräuleins,” he said. “Americans had it all, they had the nylons and got the women. We were a bit schockiert about the honorable German fräuleins. Bill told me about the parties he went to in Munich. It must have been very wild.” Robina Denson found out about such escapades, Heidenberger maintained, prompting her to end what was already a largely defunct and childless marriage.
    Soon, Denson found himself particularly attracted to a young German woman who was also in a loveless marriage.A genuine countess, Huschi, as she was called by her friends, had fled her family’s Silesian estate on a horse-drawn cart with her six-month-old daughter before the Red Army arrived, and then survived the bombing of Dresden. At the end of the war, she was in a Bavarian village, and greeted the first American tank to show up there with the announcement, delivered in perfect English: “We surrender this village to you!” Hearing such stories, Denson was charmed and intrigued. But it wasn’t until much later, when he discovered that Huschi had also divorced and moved to the United States, that they reconnected—and married on December 31, 1949. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage in every way.
    Later in life, Denson looked back at his time in Germany as “the highlight of my career.” But it wasn’t without controversy. After the Dachau camp trial, he found himself prosecuting cases that triggered both themost sensational headlines and the most heated debate. This was particularly true of the trial of the Buchenwald defendants in the spring of 1947.
    The record of that camp, Denson told the tribunal, was “a chapter of infamy and sadism unparalleled in recorded history.” And no case was as lurid as the one against Ilse Koch, the widow of Buchenwald’s first commandant. Even before the trial started, Heidenberger recalled, some of those eager to testify spread “the wildest stories about her as a sex monster.” Under questioning from Denson, former inmates testified that she had delighted in provoking the prisoners with her sexuality—and then had them beaten or killed.
    Digging ditches for cables one day, ex-prisoner Kurt Froboess recalled looking up to see Koch. “She was wearing a short skirt, standing with her legs straddled over the ditch without any underwear,” he said. Then she demanded to know what the prisoners were looking at and beat them with her riding crop, he added.
    Others testified that she possessed lamp shades, a knife sheath, and book covers made of human skin. “It was common knowledge also that tattooed