In 1946, Alfred Rosenberg was sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, for his role as the top civilian administrator on Nazi-occupied Soviet soil during World War II. As Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories, Rosenberg carried out a brutal policy of terror against the conquered Russians and Ukrainians and was also responsible for the organized plunder of artistic and cultural treasures throughout all of Nazi-occupied Europe.

A Baltic German, born in Estonia in 1893, Rosenberg studied architecture in Moscow. He arrived in Germany in 1918 and began writing anti-Semitic articles for newspapers. His first book,The Tracks of Jewry through the Ages, was published in 1919. He met future German chancellor Adolf Hitler through their membership in the German Workers' Party, but Rosenberg soon joined Hitler's fledgling National Socialist (Nazi) Party. He became editor of the party organ, the Voelkischer Beobachter, in 1921. He took part in...