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In writing about Reserve Police Battalion 101, therefore, I have depended heavily upon the judicial interrogations of some 125 men conducted in the 1960s.
To read about the same events experienced by a single unit as filtered through the memories of 125 different men more than twenty years after the fact is disconcerting to a historian looking for certainties.
Each of these men played a different role. He saw and did different things. Each subsequently repressed or forgot certain aspects of the battalion’s experiences, or reshaped his memory of them in a different way.
Thus the interrogations inevitably present a confusing array of perspectives and memories.
Paradoxically, I would have had the illusion of being more certain about what happened to the battalion with one detailed recollection instead of 125.

As with any use of multiple sources, the many accounts and perspectives had to be sifted and weighed.
The reliability of each witness had to be assessed.
Much of the testimony had to be partially or totally dismissed in favor of conflicting testimony that was accepted.
Many of these judgments were both straightforward and obvious, but others were quite difficult.
And as self-conscious as I have tried to be, at times I undoubtedly made purely instinctive judgments without even being aware of it.
Other historians looking at the same materials would retell these events in somewhat different ways.

A number of people and institutions provided indispensable support during the research and writing of this study.
Oberstaatsanwalt (Senior Prosecutor) Alfred Streim made available to me the incomparable collection of German judicial records in Ludwigsburg.
Oberstaatsanwältin Helge Grabitz encouraged me to work with the court records in Hamburg, supported my application for access, and generously helped in every way during my stay there.
Pacific Lutheran University provided me with financial awards for the two trips to German archives that initiated and concluded my research on this project.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation likewise aided one research visit in Germany.
The bulk of the research and writing was completed during sabbatical leave from Pacific Lutheran University, and with the support of a Fulbright Research Grant to Israel.
Daniel Krauskopf, executive secretary of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, deserves special thanks for facilitating my research in both Israel and Germany.