Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers

by Guenter Lewy

Overview

"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." Primo Levi's words disclose a chilling truth: assigning blame to hideous political leaders, such as Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, is necessary but not sufficient to explain how the Holocaust could have happened. These leaders, in fact, relied on many thousands of ordinary men and women who made the Nazi machine work on a daily basis—members of the killing squads, guards accompanying the trains to the extermination camps, civilian employees of the SS, the drivers of gas trucks, and the personnel of death factories such as Auschwitz. Why did these ordinary people collaborate and willingly become mass murderers? In Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers, Guenter Lewy tries to answer one of history's most disturbing questions.

Lewy draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources, including letters and diaries of soldiers who served in Russia, the recollections of Jewish survivors, archival documents, and most importantly, the trial records of hundreds of Nazi functionaries. The result is a ghastly, extraordinarily detailed portrait of the Holocaust perpetrators, their mindset, and the motivations for their actions.

Combining a rigorous historical analysis with psychological insight, the book explores the dynamics of participation in large-scale atrocities, offering a thought-provoking and timely reflection on individual responsibility for collective crimes. Lewy concludes that the perpetrators acted out of a variety of motives—a sense of duty, obedience to authority, thirst for career, and a blind faith in anti-Semitic ideology, among others. A witness to the 1938 Kristallnacht himself and the son of a concentration camp survivor, Lewy has searched for the reasons of the Holocaust out of far more than theoretical interest: it is a passionate attempt to illuminate a dismal chapter of his life—and of human history—that cannot be forgotten.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190661137
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	649,830
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Guenter Lewy is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts. His books include The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, and Harmful and Undesirable: Book Censorship in Nazi Germany.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Jews in Concentration Camps
Chapter 2. Massacres by Shooting
Chapter 3. Portraits of Killers
Chapter 4. Serving in a Death Factory
Chapter 5. Evading Participation and Opposing the Killing
Chapter 6. The Perpetrators on Trial: Flawed Justice
Chapter 7. Explaining the Holocaust
Abbreviations and Glossary
Notes
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Lewy succeeds in compressing and thoughtfully analysing a huge amount of information in a slim volume." —Paul Hollander, The New Criterion

"[M]akes an important contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust....Perpetrators is organized clearly and logically....[T]he author makes a valuable contribution by providing detail on the perpetrators and by offering his views on what motivated the killers."—Mark Monesclaros, H-War

"[A]n insightful new work....His book, while a difficult read, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust....[R]eaders will benefit from Lewy's valuable insights on how the German justice system dealt with perpetrators, a subject still relevant seventy-two years after the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of World War II."—Mark Montesclaros, H-War

From the Publisher

2017-05-10
What converted ordinary people into murderous Nazis, and why did so few opt out when they could, without penalty?Lewy (Emeritus, History/Univ. of Massachusetts; Harmful and Undesirable: Book Censorship in Nazi Germany, 2016, etc.), the son of a concentration camp survivor, cites clinical studies disproving any pathological explanation and stating that the percentage of sadists involved was no larger than in any other population group. He lists the types who made up the various Nazi groups: the true sadists, those who murdered out of ideological conviction and obsession with the Nazi philosophy, and those who joined just to get ahead. The Nazis' totalitarian ethic contained everything: simple formulas, a Manichaean viewpoint, a hierarchy of standards oriented to military categories, and a Utopian ideal. Since Lewy had access only to German trial records, no Austrian perpetrators are included, but the author points out that it was not only Germans who volunteered, but also citizens of the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Romania. Though brief, the book makes for difficult reading, as Lewy includes long lists of names and the horrors inflicted and suffered as well as some horrific photos. The accounts of those who served in the death camps are especially disturbing. The outlooks of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, the men who implemented Hitler's will—there was never a specific written order for the Final Solution—are bone-chilling. Himmler was concerned with the methods of shooting victims and the effect it had on the executioners, as his men were having nightmares and nervous breakdowns. The widespread use of the gas chambers came about because the first mobile units, trucks outfitted to kill, were unwieldy, and the herding and removal of victims was upsetting. The author also examines the postwar trials in Germany, especially the less-than-impressive record of convictions and many light sentences. Lewy condemns the poor justice in this difficult book, which is decidedly and understandably one-sided; it will be of most use to scholars and serious students of the Holocaust.

Kirkus Reviews