The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565845250 ISBN 13: 9781565845251

Publisher: The New Press, 1999

Synopsis

For the better part of fifty years, the powerful German army of World War II has been seen as an organization of consummate skill and honor, one that had little in common with the criminal policies and ideology of the Nazi regime. Fascinating and unforgettable, The German Army and Genocide explodes that myth. Through newly discovered documents and hundreds of astonishing photographs culled from archives all across Europe, The German Army and Genocide reveals that the nearly twenty million soldiers who passed through the feared Wehrmacht (the German army) were subjected to a massive ideological indoctrination, and that many were involved in widespread crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, acting both on orders by their superiors and—in many instances—on their own initiative. Based on a three-year German exhibit that sparked riots and heated controversy throughout the country, The German Army and Genocide features harrowing photographs taken by the soldiers themselves (often gleeful) of massacres, hangings, and torture; official army documents directing military units to murder Jewish communities; private letters written home, such as one from a young soldier who boasts that his unit had killed 1,000 Jews, adding, “and that was not enough” and military directives that definitively prove close collaboration between the SS and the regular army throughout the war.

About this title

About the Author:

The Hamburg Institute for Social Research is an independent private foundation devoted to scholarship in contemporary history and the social sciences. Through research projects, conferences, lectures, and other academic and public events conducted by the Institute, staff members promote intellectual exchange across geographical and disciplinary borders and beyond academia. The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians, 1939–1944 (The New Press) is based on a three-year exhibit at the Institute of newly discovered documents and photographs culled from archives across Europe.

Review:

Devastating. -- Neal Ascherson, author of Black Sea

German soldiers, it turns out, were engaged in a war against civilians and prisoners of war. -- Martin Jay, author of About the American Exhibition

Shocking.... The honorable German soldier coerced and corrupted by the Nazis has become one of the century's most powerful icons, an Everyman for an age mired in moral ambivalence.... The German Army and the Holocaust completely shatters that image. -- The Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1565845250
• ISBN 13: 9781565845251
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224