Looking for advice on books about the Holocaust

[Allan F]

Inspired by a former member on this board, I have read and read and read online about the people who perpetrated the crime. Note that I'm not looking for evidence of any kind. I wish to learn about the mindset of the people. The psychological mechanisms which allowed them to do what they did.

Do you know of any books I should read?

Lunar Orbit: If this is an inappropriate topic, please delete it.

[BertieSlack]

Do you know of any books I should read?

'Into that Darkness' by Gitta Sereny - about Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka extermination camp.

[Allan F]

Thank you. Ordered from Amazon.

[gillianren]

I keep meaning to read Hitler's Willing Executioners but have not yet gotten around to it.

[onebigmonkey]

It's a fascinating subject - like you I've read many books covering the 'How', not so much on the 'How come?'. 

I've been to Auschwitz, and it was a sobering experience, although personally I found the scale of the Birkenau complex far more disturbing, even though much less of it is intact.

Apart from the odd psychopath, I imagine it's like any serious deviation from what we would regard as a moral norm: a series of small incremental steps to the side that in themselves represent a perfectly logical or 'rationalisable' decision that cumulatively end up with the person deviating a long way from the path on which they started.

I'll keep an eye out for those books - sounds interesting.

[BertieSlack]

Apart from the odd psychopath, I imagine it's like any serious deviation from what we would regard as a moral norm: a series of small incremental steps to the side that in themselves represent a perfectly logical or 'rationalisable' decision that cumulatively end up with the person deviating a long way from the path on which they started.

The memoirs of Rudolf Hoess (camp commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau) are very revealing in that context. They have been published under the title 'Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz'.

[Andromeda]

Gitta Sereny also wrote a book about Albert Speer.

[Allan F]

The subject is disturbing. I have started laying plans for a roadtrip next summer to Poland. I'd like to see the museums myself. It's only a days drive from here.

The books you mention are on my list, thank you.

[ka9q]

I've not been to Auschwitz, but I did visit Dachau (the very first concentration camp) in 1984. It was also a sobering place even though it was not a death camp. My understanding is that the death camps were intentionally established outside Germany in the occupied territories (mainly Poland) to make it harder for ordinary Germans to know what was happening there.

Sort of like, you know, Gitmo. (oops, Godwin...)

[Luke Pemberton]

The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution - Chilling in the sense that the fate and suffering of millions was decided in opulent surroundings with such systematic bureaucracy.

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Lipstadt).

[Ishkabibble]

From the perspective of the psychology of why, and how, I would suggest the following:

The Lucifer Effect
by Philip G. Zimbardo

Obedience to Authority: an Experimental View
by Stanley Milgram

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini



 

[smartcooky]

The persecution of the Jews was not just based on the contemporaneous idea that they dominated business and financial situations in the Weimar Republic, although that was very much how it was sold to a German public that was only too willing to blame them for their own woes. It was a LOT more deep-seated than that and based in the fanatical obsession that Himmler and other elite Nazis had with German archaeological and cultural history.

To that end, in 1935, Himmler et al founded an institute called the Ahnenerbe (pron: arn-en-erba). He pulled together a large number of scholars from all over Germany, who were given the task of researching to find evidence to prove that the Germans were a master race and descended from Aryans. They even tried to "prove" that Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan. Of course, they were trying to prove something that wasn't true, so the scholars working in the Ahnenerbe, in order to keep their cushy jobs and not enrage Himmler, systematically falsified evidence and their conclusions.

It would be a mistake to write their works off has harmless, because it was those very same conclusions that became the basis of Nazi thinking regarding Jews, Gypsies and the handicapped, and its an near direct line from there to Wannesee and the Final Solution.

There is a really good book about the Ahnenerbe....

The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust by Heather Pringle

Its well worth reading if you have any interest in Holocaust history

Review here...

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/heather-pringle/the-master-plan/

[ajv]

It's not a book but the 2001 TV film Conspiracy (Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, ...) is a recreation of the Wannsee Conference. Excellent acting, chilling content.

[Allan F]

It's not a book but the 2001 TV film Conspiracy (Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, ...) is a recreation of the Wannsee Conference. Excellent acting, chilling content.

I think I saw some of it long ago - didn't have the time then to follow it. It's on the list.

[Zakalwe]

Not a book, but this interview with Benjamin Ferencz (the last surviving judge who presided at the Nuremberg Trials) gives a chilling insight into the people that committed the Holocaust.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038mc2s


Here's a longer interview with the same gentleman: