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Title: The Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans by Eric A. Johnson, Edward Lewis ISBN: 0-7861-1859-8 Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks Pub. Date: November, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 13 List Price(USD): $85.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent bibliography!
Comment: Johnson did an excellent job researching the Gestapo archives. Further, he strengthens the scope of the book by addressing questions one may not even consider (e.g., why church leaders, at the end of the war, actually testified in favor of Nazi/Gestapo functionaries; the petty nature of denunciations). Unfortunately, I found the book too much of a micro study of life around Krefeld and Cologne. The book's title implied (i.e., NAZI Terror) a study to include aspects of life all over Germany and even the occupied territories. To assert and suggest that what occurred in the Krefeld-Cologne area was a manifestation of the overall Nazi apparatus seems to overstretch the limits of the research provided.
Of course, Johnson's intuitive and probing translation of facts, as presented in the Gestapo files, elucidates the nature of life in Hitler's Germany. Several case studies provide glimpses into the existence of the several groups Johnson investigates (including "ordinary Germans"). Here also, I found myself keeping my mind open to the possibility that Gestapo members were only police officers. That was a feat very difficult for me to overcome having previously (a view I still hold even after having read the book) perceived that the Gestapo were simply armed thugs meting out terror at every turn. In acknowledging the "ordinary German" theory, Johnson illustrates the societal roles of people in Krefeld and Cologne, from lowly factory workers to the Cardinal and those of wives and husbands. In this sense, the vertical examination was fruitful to see how the terror operated at various levels of society. Very informative! To further complement Johnson's book, the scope of works cited in the bibliographic section should be enough to satiate any minds enquiring about any aspect of Nazi Germany.
Rating: 2
Summary: Holocaust Sensationalism
Comment: Johnson's principle purpose in writing this book is to examine the day-to-day functioning, the progression over time, and the general effectiveness of the Nazi terror apparatus. The discussion is focused on the central instrument of that apparatus - the Gestapo. Johnson carries out this discussion on a personal level, examining the individuals involved: how powerful and pervasive was the Gestapo in the life of the ordinary German citizen?; and how did his experience differ from that of a Jew, Jehovah's Witness or Communist? The last chapters of the book focus on the deportation and destruction of the Jews and examine the participation in the Holocaust on the part of the Gestapo and the domestic German population.
At first sight, Johnson's book seems to be of epic proportions, however his simplistic writing style and the generous type-face means that this book can be read reasonably swiftly. 'Readability' is further facilitated by his narrative style: Johnson frequently describes (often at length) cases which the Gestapo investigated; his use of coded names like Herr R., Hermann K., or Anna P., and the way he attempts to bring suspense into his story-telling sometimes makes his book read more like a detective novel that an academic historiographical work (see for example pp.179-84). Johnson appears to want to bring his accounts to life by intimately describing the characters involved, and while it is welcoming to be able to take more than a cursory glance at the main actors and the way they behaved or were treated, sometimes it seems as though Johnson indulges rather too liberally in amateur psycho-analysis. For example, when describing the men who made up the rank-and-file officers of the Gestapo, Johnson suggests that a commonality between these men was that, "many [had] suffered from the early loss of an important female figure, whether a wife, a mother, or even a grandmother." (pp.67-8) To suggest that men's violent urges and wish to join the Gestapo had roots in the death of 'Oma' seems to me to be well beyond the bounds of historical interpretation.
The inner jacket of the book boasts that 'Nazi Terror,' "deals in flesh and blood narratives - sometimes quite graphically - as well as in facts and statistics to tell the story of how the terror... was imposed by the Gestapo and tolerated by ordinary Germans. These gripping, shocking and powerful first-hand accounts take the reader into the very heart of darkness: inside the Gestapo headquarters where the victims of Nazi terror were tortured and interrogated." This is clearly a commerical attempt to sell copies of the book, but I find something greatly distasteful in a book about the Holocaust promising to "grip" and "shock" with "flesh and blood narratives." This sort of advertising would surely not appeal to serious academics, but more to a (American?) readership wanting, in a perverse way, to be entertained and provoked by violent and explicit material. Those who do buy the book in the hope of reading a sensationalistic account will not be disappointed: Johnson provides plenty of provocative material, especially where matters of sex are concerned. One could argue that Johnson offers an element of what historian Tim Cole has referred to as "peepshow Holocaust" - that is, the unnecessarily graphic description of events in order to satisfy a modern audience's tendency towards violence and the grotesque. To cite just one example, Johnson makes the point that Jewish women in Gestapo custody were forced to endure a more humiliating ordeal than Aryan women interrogated regarding the 1936 Race Defilement Laws which outlawed sexual relations between Germans and Jews. As if to prove this, Johnson then goes on to quote at length the testimony of a Jewish girl regarding her illicit relationship with an Aryan youth, in which she intimately details their sexual encounters. Johnson condemns the Gestapo officers for "delving into sexual cases at far greater length than was needed for a mere conviction" in order to "satisfy [their] perverse voyeuristic urges." (pp.111-2) However, in my opinion, Johnson's aim here with this quotation, arguably of far greater length than is needed for mere historiographical interpretation, is purely to satisfy the perverse voyeuristic urges of his target audience.
Johnson attempts, in Chapter 12 of his book, to answer the question as to how much the Germans knew about the Holocaust. He asserts that information was easy to come by, and that indeed "millions" (p.452) had knowledge of the mass murder of the Jews. He uses the evidence provided in the Victor Klemperer Diaries, as well as transcripts of the BBC's German language broadcasts to the German people during the war, and a 1993 survey (and follow-up interviews) of ordinary German citizens who were old enough before the end of the Third Reich to receive information about the Holocaust. I find Johnson's emphasis on his survey results to be most troublesome. While clearly worthwhile, conducting surveys fifty years after the events leaves ample room for incorrect recollections, confusion and distortion in memory over the years. Equally, it is impossible to prove that people who did know about the Holocaust were representative of the population as a whole. While Johnson realises this dilemma, I feel he is not able to solve it with any more certainty than, for example, David Bankier, author of "The Germans and the Final Solution" (1992). Johnson strongly criticies Bankier for not being able to demonstrate with certainty that masses of Germans knew about the Holocaust; however, Johnson goes little way in doing this himself.
If though, millions of Germans knew about the Holocaust, how does Johnson explain that they did not speak out against the killing? Johnson asserts that it was not due to the fact that people lived under a regime of terror; equally, according to Johnson, the silence did not result from a Goldhagian eliminationsit anti-Semitism (although Johnson does assert on p.381 with unsubstantiated dogmatism that "virulent anti-Semitism was certainly prevalent in Nazi Germany"). For Johnson, the silence was a result of "a mixture of cowardice, apathy, and a slavish obedience to authority" (p.21). Is this then an accusation that the German people, through their passivity, condemned the Jews to death? At times it seems as if this is what Johnson wishes to assert: he writes, "Had the silence been broken and the pretence of the secret been shattered, millions of Jews might not have died" (p.381). Most categorically of all, "it took the entire German population to carry out the Holocaust" (p.381). Elsewhere however Johnson tempers this judgement by writing, "most Germans did not want the Jews to be killed" (p.484).
One finishes this book not really certain of Johnson's overall argument - the varying aspects of the book do not always seem to harmonise together: had Johnson restricted himself to an analysis of the Gestapo, then the book may have been more convincing; yet, with the Goldhagen Debate still fresh in memory, Johnson appears to have felt obliged to address issues of culpability for the Holocaust - I would have thought that the Goldhagen Debate had taught us, if nothing else, that this is a futile and irresponsible method of historiography.
Rating: 4
Summary: Can you see yourself in this picture?
Comment: I read "Nazi Terror" and "Hitler's Willing Executioners" for the same reason -- and while my thesis was validated in both, it was never addressed in either. To me, it doesn't matter why ordinary German citizens either participated in the oppression of the holocaust or looked the other way for anti-Semite reasons or not. It does not matter that they were German, even. Because they were alive at a time and place in history when one of the most horrific examples of mankind's cruelty to man took place, they are important to study -- not to place blame or find fault, but in terms of finding out how much like them we are. They weren't from another planet, after all, but this one -- and now, more than ever, we need to understand what happened then so we can recognize it when -- not if, but when -- it happens again. "Sure and the Patriot Act is not a threat to anyone if they've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide" is no different than the thinking of those who looked the other way as long as the Gestapo weren't coming after them. If you don't think so...read this book. Too many of us, particularly as Americans, do not look too closely at our complicity in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no less horrendous. Too many of us do not look too carefully at the treatment of slaves brought to America, or the continued attempted genocide of the American Indian. It's not that different. And it's time we started asking the questions that were not asked in Germany, that were not brought to the podium by those who had the obligation and the power to do so. Those who were not the targets of the Hitlerian Eugenics Mission -- but those who had been part of the science of Eugenics all along. People are disappearing in this country today in the name of terrorism, which no civil rights to determine whether they are guilty or not -- and no one dares to speak out. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. We should be better than this in the 21st century. Have we learned nothing from the spilled blood of so many?
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Title: Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen ISBN: 0679772685 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany by Robert Gellately ISBN: 0192802917 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning ISBN: 0060995068 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 17 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's Ss (Classic Military History) by Heinz Hohne, Heinze Hohne, Richard Barry ISBN: 0141390123 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Architects of Annihilation : Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction by Gotz Aly, Susanne Heim, A. G. Blunden ISBN: 0691089388 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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