Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

by Edward B. Westermann

Overview

In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe.

Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated "performative masculinity," expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself.

Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination.

Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501754197
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2021
Series:	Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	668,092
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward B. Westermann is Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University—San Antonio, a Commissioner on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, and author, most recently, of Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Alcohol and the Masculine Ideal
2. Rituals of Humiliation
3. Taking Trophies and Hunting Jews
4. Alcohol and Sexual Violence
5. Celebrating Murder
6. Alcohol, Auxiliaries, and Mass Murder
7. Alcohol and the German Army
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Dagmar Herzog

Drunk on Genocide exposes the corporeal and emotional effects of alcohol in the Nazi Judeocide, documenting its stunning pervasiveness. The evidence is devastating, and Westermann plumbs its complexities with enormous sensitivity, considering victims' and perpetrators' experiences anew. Our understanding of the Holocaust will be forever changed.

Wendy Lower

From its founding in the Munich beer halls, the Nazi Party flourished in a masculine environment of rowdyism, revelry, and arrogance. Drunk on Genocide shines a glaring light on Nazi perpetrators of violence, drunk with the blood of Holocaust victims. A brilliant and unsettling study.

Steve Clemons

The horrors of the Holocaust rattle one's soul. Socially demeaning and murderous behavior, fueled by alcohol and bloodlust, of powerful Germans toward fellow citizens revealed a subterranean intoxication. Drunk on Genocide shows the need to keep the worst of social impulses locked away.

Thomas Kühne

"That many Nazi thugs were prone to booze was never a secret. But only Drunk on Genocide shows how often alcohol consumption helped neutralize moral restraint before, and guilty feelings after, their horrible crimes. A must-read to understand how ordinary men could become mass murderers."

Thomas Kühne

That many Nazi thugs were prone to booze was never a secret. But only Drunk on Genocide shows how often alcohol consumption helped neutralize moral restraint before, and guilty feelings after, their horrible crimes. A must-read to understand how ordinary men could become mass murderers.

Norman Ohler

The role of alcohol abuse in Nazi Germany deserves a book in its own right. Here it is.

Editorial Reviews

Westermann uses a wide variety of primary sources ranging from photos to diaries to interviews to understand the behaviors and beliefs of perpetrators. It is a remarkably challenging book to read. But a necessary one.

New Books Network

Westermann's work is incredibly thoroughly researched with a rich amount of survivor testimony that gives voice to the victims. Drunk on Genocide is a compelling work with a well-researched argument.

The Middle Ground Journal

[Ed Westermann's work provides an invaluable insight into the mindset and mentality of the everyday executioners of the racial war in the east.

German History

"[Ed Westermann's] work provides an invaluable insight into the mindset and mentality of the everyday executioners of the racial war in the east."

GERMAN HISTORY

Edward B. Westermann has now produced a book that pays tribute to all strands of research while, at the same time, highlighting an element that will need to be included in all future considerations: the stimulation of the murderers through alcohol.

American Historical Review

Drunk on Genocide is an essential read, and one that offers considerable insights into the intimate relationship between ritualized intoxication, cults of masculinity, ideological antisemitism, and the mass murders in the bloodlands of the east.

EuropeNow

Drunk on Genocide is a important and terryfing book that tackles a persistent question in the study of the Holocaust and World War II: how was it possible that the Germans killed so many people and behaved so brutally in the Soviet territory they invaded and occupied?

Slavic Review

Drawing on several decades of research into Nazi police battalions and comparative genocide, Westermann employs social, anthropological, and gender theories to create a framework that effectively analyzes the relationship between alcohol and mass murder.

Journal of Military History

Edward B. Westermann has now produced a book that pays tribute to all strands of research while, at the same time, highlighting an element that will need to be included in all future considerations: the stimulation of the murderers through alcohol.

-- "American Historical Review"

[Ed Westermann's work provides an invaluable insight into the mindset and mentality of the everyday executioners of the racial war in the east.

-- "German History"

Drawing on several decades of research into Nazi police battalions and comparative genocide, Westermann employs social, anthropological, and gender theories to create a framework that effectively analyzes the relationship between alcohol and mass murder.

-- "Journal of Military History"

Westermann's work is incredibly thoroughly researched with a rich amount of survivor testimony that gives voice to the victims. Drunk on Genocide is a compelling work with a well-researched argument.

-- "The Middle Ground Journal"

Drunk on Genocide is a important and terryfing book that tackles a persistent question in the study of the Holocaust and World War II: how was it possible that the Germans killed so many people and behaved so brutally in the Soviet territory they invaded and occupied?

-- "Slavic Review"

Drunk on Genocide is an essential read, and one that offers considerable insights into the intimate relationship between ritualized intoxication, cults of masculinity, ideological antisemitism, and the mass murders in the bloodlands of the east.

-- "EuropeNow"

Westermann uses a wide variety of primary sources ranging from photos to diaries to interviews to understand the behaviors and beliefs of perpetrators. It is a remarkably challenging book to read. But a necessary one.

-- "New Books Network"

From the Publisher