History of the SS / G. S. Graber - Hardcover

History of the SS

Hardcover. Zustand: Good. Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Fair. Book Club Edition. The format is approximately 5.625 inches by 8.5 inches. [12], 228 pages. Illustrations. Appendix. Index. The dust jacket has wear, tear, soiling, and a large chip/loss of material at the back. This history of the SS--the Nazi party's military arm--shows how various aspects of the SS live on, and are developing new forms, in today's world. Heinrich Himmler was a health food enthusiast, failed chicken farmer, filing-clerk par excellence. He was the founder of the SS and the most notorious mass-murdererof all time. In History of the SS, G S Graber plots the career of the second most powerful man in the Third Reich and the organization he established, first for the personal protection of Hitler, then for the efficient subjugation of Europe, the genocide of the Jews and the extermination of millions. From the social turmoil of Munich in the 20 s and the Night of the Long Knives to the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto and the operation of the concentration camps, History of the SS depicts brilliantly the nightmare reign of the dreaded political-military machine. It reveals facts about the SS never widely known before and chronicles its alarming continued influence since the end of the war. Derived from a Kirkus review: A compact, broadly aimed narrative of how the SS was transformed from a small internal party police for the 1920s Nazis into the enforcer of slave labor and genocide in the Greater Reich. Graber focuses on the character of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, "anxious, indecisive, and sycophantic," who detested the sight of violence. Himmler busied himself with "ideological claptrap" such as persuading SS members not to celebrate Christmas while deputies like Heydrich pursued bureaucratic empire-building, and--in Graber's view--he became number two man in the Reich (especially after the 1944 Army purges) sheerly through "unparelleled loyalty" to Hitler. The activities of the SS itself are shown in breadth if not full horror, including the "business enterprises" set up to profit from camp workers, and the shock-troop fervor of the often non-German Waffen SS military squads. Graber's concluding chapters center around the "Bettelheim syndrome" relationship between oppressor and oppressed, the "banality of evil" illustrated by Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, and what he considers the historically special aspect of SS monstrosity--its "attacks on industrial civilization" of a sort persisting today. Artikel-Nr. 7639

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