Book Reviews List of Topics Holocaust Denial General Holocaust History Writings From Survivors Meta-History Auschwitz-Birkenau History Political Theory Other Government Sponsored Mass Murder Other Books by Topic Holocaust Denial Deborah Lipstadt Denying the Holocaust. This book is a must for anyone interested in the phenomenon of Holocaust denial. Lipstadt discusses the history of the denial movement, its implications, and the motivations of those who would lie about mass murder. ASIN 0452272742 Writings From Survivors Primo Levi The Drowned and the Saved. This book is the most profound book I have read on life in the camps. It was Levi's last book before his death and contains a new depth of thought beyond his earlier classics ASIN 067972186X Primo Levi Reawakening. Primo Levi's memoir of being rescued by the Russians and his trip home that starts in the wrong direction, i.e., into Russia and finally his arrival in Italy. It also tells of the inner journey of one who is confronted again with the prospect of life. ASIN 0020223706 Primo Levi Survival in Auschwitz. Primo Levi's first and classic memoir of his imprisonment in the Monowitz camp. Also published as If This is a Man ASIN 0020343108 General Holocaust History Martin BroszatHitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany. This book traces the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP to power starting from the aftermath of world war one. It examines the incompetence of the centrist parties to take a stand against the extremes and the culpability of Pappen and Hindenberg in allowing NSDAP to take power. It examines in some detail the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the growth of the NSDAP, the propaganda victories of the NSDAP, the place of the Nazis with in the "Folkish" movement, the growth of the extra-legal militia movement in Germany, the attitudes of big business and the people, and the roles of the SA, the treaty of Versailles, the "stab-in-the- back" theory, international indifference, and Hitler's personal magnetism in bringing about one of the most radical revolutions in history. ASIN 0854965173 Christopher Browning Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Why did ordinary citizens participate in the process of mass murder? Christopher Browning examines the history of a battalion of the Order Police who participated in mass shootings an deportations. He debunks the idea that these ordinary men were simply coerced to kill but stops short of Goldhagen's simplistic thesis. Browning uncovers the fact that Major Trapp offered at one time to excuse anyone from the task of killing who was "not up to it." Despite this offer most of the men chose to kill anyway. Browning's traces how these murderers gradually became less "squeamish" about the killing process and delves into explanations of how and why people could behave in such a manner. ASIN 0060995068 Raul Hilberg The Destruction of the European Jews. Here is the 1985 edition of Hilberg's classic. The publisher calls it the "Revised and Definitive Edition," although Hilberg only intended for it to be called the Second Edition. This book documents in painstaking detail how the bureaucracy of National Socialist Germany murdered the Jews of Europe. Hilberg identifies three important phases in that process: definition, concentration, and extermination and shows how virtually every institution in the bureaucracy played its role in the process. When first published this book was quite controversial because of Hilberg's thesis that the Jews, for the most part, cooperated with the destruction process. ASIN 084190832X Meta-History Raul Hilberg's The Politics of Memory. This book traces how a war refugee eventually became the pre-eminent historian of the Final Solution. Hilberg recounts his struggle to get his work published against all odds and the controversy surrounding its publication. This book is an inside view of some of the conflicts between historians and institutions dedicated to preserving history. ASIN 1566631165 Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.. This book is an examination of Goldhagen's "methodology" in his controversial book Hitler's Willing Executioners it contains two essays, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "Crazy" Thesis: A Critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners by Norman G. Finkelstein and Revising the Holocaust, by Ruth Bettina Birn. The Second essay is by far the better and I discuss that one first. Birn writes: Goldhagen's book is not a revision of everything that has been written on the holocaust in the last fifty years. A solidly researched work on any of the topics Goldhagen touches- for instance, on the involvement of the Order Police in the Holocaust- would have been most welcome. As it stands, this book caters to those who want simplistic answers to difficult questions, to those who seek the security of prejudices. Birn's essay is incisive. She demonstrates that Goldhagen at best cites his sources selectively and at worst distorts them. Small incidents that confirm Goldhagen's thesis are generalized whereas incidents that create problems for his thesis are either outright ignored or handwaved away. The opinions of real historians such as Hilberg or Browning are taken out of context, erected as strawmen and then attacked. Goldhagen engages in polemic, selective citing, and over generalization, yet scrupulously avoids the kind of comparative analysis that would be useful were he actually interested in supporting his thesis. For example, he could have analyzed groups of ordinary non-Germans such as the Latvian Auxiliary Police. Instead he is content to cite the well-known resistance of the Danes and Italians to exonerate non-Germans. Finkelstein begins with a decent exposition and criticism of Goldhagen's thesis and then destroys it all with a polemic that could have come straight from the mouths of Holocaust deniers. Finkelstein is not a denier, but deniers are happy with his arguments. Finkelstein writes: The subtitle of Goldhagen's book is "Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," but the subtext is "Ordinary Gentiles and the Holocaust." Finkelstein's coauthor Birn argues just the opposite, viz., that Goldhagen sees German antisemitism as singular. In fact, Goldhagen's play on Brownings title "Ordinary Men" ought to have made that abundantly clear. Not content to stop there Finkelstein attacks Holocaust literature which he distinguishes from holocaust scholarship. The subtext of Finkelstein's argument is that anyone who dares to argue that the Holocaust was unique is a Zionist puppet who approves of Israeli foreign policy. Personally, I believe that the Holocaust was unique but not exclusive. I also believe that the Armenian genocide was unique but not exclusive. I am also no defender of Israeli foreign policy; I think that they have a lot to answer for in the human rights department. I have no idea what Goldhagen thinks about Israel and I do not think it is especially relevant to his thesis. Holocaust deniers often claim that the purpose of the "Holocaust hoax" was to create Israel and extort money from Germany and the US. Finkelstein's attacks on Wiesel and Katz could be published in the Spotlight, and in fact, this book is advertised on the deniers' CODOH website. I am no fan of Katz either, but why doesn't Finkelstein address his argument rather than imputing base motives and ignoring it. Perhaps, Finkelstein ignores the plea of his coauthor, Birn: The discourse among scholars, as it has evolved over the centuries, respects certain rules: arguments count, not the people pushing them. One discusses the factual value of arguments and does not defame their authors. These rules are well worth defending. ASIN 0805058710 Auschwitz-Birkenau History Political Theory Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt traces the origins of Europe's two Totalitarian movements, the one based on race-thinking and the other based on class-thinking that led eventually to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. The book is divided into three parts: 1) Antisemitism, 2) Imperialism, and 3) Totalitarianism. In the first part Arendt traces the relationships between Europe's Jews, other political-economic classes and the nation-state. She argues that Jews being outside of other classes depended on the nation-state for protection from the other classes, and conversely that nation-states depended on Jewish bankers for their financial dealings with other nation-states. She shows how this dual dependence spawned an exaggerated notion of Jewish power that in part led to modern antisemitism. Arendt distinguishes between this modern political antisemitism and traditional religious antisemitism. She discusses in some detail how this antisemitism came to the surface in the Dreyfuss affair. In the second part Arendt discusses the growth of imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. She argues that belief in the "laws of economics" caused previously apolitical capital to expand for expansions sake and use the machineries of the state in order to guarantee its investments outside of the borders of the nation states. She shows how liberal democracies imposed illiberal government on their colonies. She explores the history of the Afrikaaner movement, as well as the atrocities of King Leopold of Belgium. She begins to explore the theme that human rights do not exist without national rights and that national rights are guaranteed by a nation state. She next turns her attention to the continent and argues that the two major pan-movements, pan-Germanism, and pan-Slavism were predecessor to the totalitarian movements. She shows the the lack of a stable nation-state in the "zone of mixed populations," i.e., Austria-Hungary is likely to spell trouble. In the third part Arendt shows the origins of the totalitarian movements themselves, their unprecedented character and their aims not to take over the machinery of the state, but rather to destroy state as it was known and replace it with institutions of the Party. She distinguished between totalitarian movements and actual totalitarian government by pointing out that Mussolini's government was merely a dictatorship and not totalitarian despite the fact that his Fascist movement had the characteristics of a totalitarian movement. She argues that totalitarian governments by their very nature must commit mass murder, expand until they control everything, continually change their ideology, and seek to control every aspect of human life. ASIN 0156701537 Barbara B. GreenThe Dynamics of Russian Politics: A Short History.. This book argues that despite the tumultuous changes in Russia that those who have ruled it have faced common problems and interests. Whether, ruled by the Czars, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, or Yeltsin, Russia has had the same strains between the center and the periphery as well as similar problems in foreign policy. It traces the evolution of Russian politics from the eve of the revolution to the 1990 and how these common factors have evolved as well. ASIN 0313288860 Other Government Sponsored Mass Murder Haing NgorA Cambodian Odyssey. Haing Ngor played the part of Dith Pran in the movie The Killing Fields. Like Dith Pran, Ngor was a survivor of the Khmer Rouge's murderous rule over Cambodia in the 1970's in which millions were killed. Ngor was a doctor in Pnom Penn before the Khmer Rouge came to power. When the Khmer Rouge came to power they forced Ngor out of the city into the countryside where he became a "war slave" in various agricultural projects of the Khmer Rouge. He recounts the story of suffering, starvation, and pointless and unimaginably terrible acts of torture. This book affected me profoundly; I think that it was after reading this book that I took seriously the notion that totalitarian regimes are a whole lot worse than government as usual. I recommend this book to anyone who is cynical enough to believe that there is not a significant difference between different forms of government. ASIN 0025893300 Franz WerfelThe Forty Days of Musa Dagh. This historical novel traces a fictional Gabriel Bagradian. An Armenian born in Syria, Bagradian goes to France for his education where he marries and has a son. In search of Gabriel's brother, the Bagradian family travels to Syria just as World War I breaks out. On the mountain of Musa Dagh, Bagradian finds himself reconnected to his endangered people. The Turkish Government under Enver Pasha embarks on a systematic campaign to annihilate its Armenian citizens. Bagradian and comrades vow not to be killed without a fight. This novel traces their struggle to survive amidst a genocidal campaign. The rich character development is reminiscent of Tolstoy. ASIN 0881846686 Other
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