Detailed scholarly look into dark past
This book is one of the best accounts of the Holocaust to date, writes
It is always gruelling to read a book about the Holocaust because no other subject gives so much evidence of human depravity and cruelty on such a vast scale.
Industrialised mass murder, gassing by Zyklon B or carbon monoxide, machine-gunning of men, women and children by ‘‘Special Purpose’’ units, consistent sadism by camp guards and SS officers, inhumane medical experiments and millions of deaths all justified by an insane racial theory.
To read the 400-plus closely-printed pages of Laurence Rees’ The Holocaust is to read about all this and it is inevitably very, very depressing.
But the questions arise: Haven’t we heard this all before in numerous books and TV documentaries? And is there really a place for this ‘‘new history’’?
I think there is a place for this book for a number of reasons.
First, Rees is not only a bona fide historian, but he is also an excellent communicator. For years he was in charge of BBC TV’s history unit. He produced such series as The Nazis: A Warning from History and World War
II: Behind Closed Doors. He does not simplify or talk down to readers, but his style is clear, fluent and easy to read, as well as scholarly.
Second, his methodical, chronological approach allows him to follow the whole course of the disaster from Hitler’s first years of wide influence in the 1920s to the end of the war. In the process he is able to show how the attempted genocide of Jews (and Roma and Slavs) grew gradually from theory to practice. There was no one moment – not even the muchpublicised Wannsee Conference – at which the Holocaust ‘‘began’’.
In his postscript, Rees agrees with the historian Ian Kershaw’s statement ‘‘No Hitler, No Holocaust’’. Holocaustdeniers sometimes pretend that Hitler had no hand in ordering atrocities, but that is complete nonsense as the record shows. Even so, genocide was often carried out according to initiatives of local Nazi Gauleiters and camp commandants.
Third, Rees shows in detail how nonJewish populations reacted to the Jews’ plight. There was much collaboration with the Nazis. There was also much heroism. Basically Italians (even Fascists) refused to co-operate with Hitler’s plan to destroy Italian Jews, and most Italian Jews survived the war. Many church people showed sympathy. Some even practised it, although the highest church authorities remained hesitant to do anything and the silence of the Vatican still causes debate.
At the other end of the moral scale, it is almost funny, in a grotesque way, to learn how leading Nazis tried to dissociate themselves from the Holocaust at the last moment, when they knew Germany faced defeat and retribution would follow. The worst monster, making pathetic attempts to do this, was Heinrich Himmler himself.
Of course detailed accounts of what happened in each facility are sheer horror, but they are a necessary part of the story. This could well be the best single-volume history of the Holocaust to date.
It is almost funny, in a grotesque way, to learn how leading Nazis tried to dissociate themselves from the Holocaust at the last moment ...