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The Perfect Nazi, Unmasking My SS Grandfather /anglais
In 1926, at the age of twenty, a trainee dentist called Bruno Langbehn joined the Nazi party. Growing up in a Germany that was impoverished and humiliated by the defeat of the First World War, and surrounded by a fiercely military environment, Bruno was one of the first young men to sign up. And as the party rose to power, he was there every step of the way. Eventually his loyalty was rewarded with a high-ranking position in Hitler's dreaded SS, the elite security service charged with sending Germany's 'racially impure' to the death camps. For fifty years after the end of the Second World War, his family kept this horrifying secret until his British grandson, Martin Davidson, uncovered the truth. Drawing on an astonishing cache of personal documents, Davidson retraces Bruno's journey from disillusioned adolescent to SS Officer to mysterious grandfather. In this extraordinary account he tries to understand how Langbehn and millions of others like him were seduced by Hitler's regime, and attempts to come to terms with this devastating revelation.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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January 20, 2011
23 Aug 2010
An Edinburgh writer discovers his grandfather’s past in Hitler’s SS.
This is at the same time a brave and repulsive work. It also provides a thorough and morbidly fascinating insight into the circumstances that led ordinary people to descend into Hitlerian madness and become monsters. The bravery in this particular story is borne by that fact that the monster is one Bruno Langbehn, the author’s grandfather. The courage it surely took to confront and reveal his own family’s Nazi past is commendable and noteworthy.
How shocking it must have been for Davidson, who grew up in Edinburgh with his Scottish father and German mother, to discover in 1993 that his charming, “benign” maternal grandfather, who seemingly spent the war as an unassuming dentist in Berlin, was in fact an unrepentant Nazi.
But the sympathy does not extend to Bruno himself – especially when it becomes clear what kind of man he actually was.
Subtitled “Uncovering My SS Grandfather’s Secret Past And How Hitler Seduced A Generation”, this is the tale of a fanatic steeped in Hitler’s fetid ideology of race hatred that spawned crimes of enormous proportion – not only in the death factories, but in the ghettos, the rear areas of the Eastern Front and in the hospitals for the disabled and the mentally ill. Though not the worst of Nazis – Davidson says his grandfather was “not an architect of the Holocaust, a Hess or an Eichmann” – he was a rabid anti-Semite by choice, a thug by choice and indeed a “perfect Nazi” by choice.
Thus The Perfect Nazi is an important and engrossing story that throws up many questions – even if we refuse to tolerate Davidson’s premise of national seduction, as I feel we must – and throws the spotlight on one of the Nazi’s middle-ranking, indispensable and busy minions.
He was, in Davidson’s own words, an “enabler of evil”, and it was men like Langbehn who “propelled the Nazi movement from the fringes into the mainstream”.
Nonetheless, it begs many questions. How do we explain the passivity of the German population as it watched the persecution of its Jewish neighbours? How do we explain the cruelty of the killers? How do we explain why the conscience of Christians did not compel them to think again as they took aim to shoot small children or send thousands of innocents at a time to their deaths in gas chambers?
Davidson attempts to provide an answer. Page by page, through painstaking research, the book follows the life of Langbehn in parallel with early 20th-century German history – the degradation of the First World War defeat, the humiliation of the Versaille Treaty, mass unemployment and hyperinflation, through to the rise of the Nazi movement.
Amid all this, Langbehn joined the Bund as a child, graduated to the beer halls of the brownshirted Sturmabteilung, and signed up for the Nazi party as soon as it became legal, seven years before Hitler came to power. Before long he was a fully fledged SS member, by which time it has become clear that Bruno was something more than a Nazi by default.
On the contrary, Langbehn, essentially a mediocre man with a nasty streak, a penchant for marching music and a ruthless eye for self-preservation, was also a zealot. There are hints that he may also have been torturer of political opponents of the Nazis in the orgy of revenge that followed Hitler’s seizure of power.
While in the SS, he was taken in by the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the Reich’s intelligence service, which was headed by Reinhard Heydrich. This was the Nazi who in 1942 devised the plan for the gassing of almost two million Jews in the death camps of Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka.
But Langbehn was not the kind of man to have nightmares or suffer pangs of conscience – either for his part in torture or for his part in a system that brutalised and sent millions of innocent people to their death. Essential mediocrity ensured that he spent much of the war oiling the wheels of the Nazi machine. Nonetheless, we are left in little doubt if he had been appointed kommandant at a Nazi death factory, he would have performed his duty with gusto.
As Davidson trawls through war-time archives and personal documents, he comes closer and closer to the disturbing possibility that his grandfather may have worked with Adolf Eichmann sending 700,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. In Edinburgh, Langbehn dropped a bombshell: “I knew Eichmann ... he even offered me a job.”
In Prague, during the final days of the war, he was saved by luck he did not deserve. In the chaos of revenge that followed German capitulation, Langbehn was one of a dozen or so Germans dragged from a cellar and into the street for execution. All but two of them received bullets in the head. Langbehn survived only after a Red Army officer called a halt to the bloodshed. In the chaos of post-war Europe, he evaded arrest. He should have been jailed.
Was Langbehn and the rest of the German population really duped by Hitler? A better word would be manipulated. If nothing else, this book demonstrates how the inherent racism of the herd can be manipulated into acts of unspeakable evil. Moreover, the greatest excesses of this evil could not have been carried out without the cowardice to which the German population had been reduced by Hitler’s terror machine, enforced by men precisely like Langbehn.
In the end, all rationalisations aside, the worst atrocities originate with – and are then propelled by – the conscious decisions of followers as much as leaders. Not only were Heydrich and Eichmann very conscious and proud exterminators, but those who carry out the legwork of the atrocities, whether German civilians or Rwandan Hutus, do not function as unthinking robots.
Ironically, with the publication of this book, Langbehn’s grandson has now become one of the geheimnisfrager, a bearer of secrets, who in the end the Nazis had tried so hard to eliminate.
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An Edinburgh writer discovers his grandfather’s past in Hitler’s SS.
This is at the same time a brave and repulsive work. It also provides a thorough and morbidly fascinating insight into the circumstances that led ordinary people to descend into Hitlerian madness and become monsters. The bravery in this particular story is borne by that fact that the monster is one Bruno Langbehn, the author’s grandfather. The courage it surely took to confront and reveal his own family’s Nazi past is commendable and noteworthy.
How shocking it must have been for Davidson, who grew up in Edinburgh with his Scottish father and German mother, to discover in 1993 that his charming, “benign” maternal grandfather, who seemingly spent the war as an unassuming dentist in Berlin, was in fact an unrepentant Nazi.
But the sympathy does not extend to Bruno himself – especially when it becomes clear what kind of man he actually was.
Subtitled “Uncovering My SS Grandfather’s Secret Past And How Hitler Seduced A Generation”, this is the tale of a fanatic steeped in Hitler’s fetid ideology of race hatred that spawned crimes of enormous proportion – not only in the death factories, but in the ghettos, the rear areas of the Eastern Front and in the hospitals for the disabled and the mentally ill. Though not the worst of Nazis – Davidson says his grandfather was “not an architect of the Holocaust, a Hess or an Eichmann” – he was a rabid anti-Semite by choice, a thug by choice and indeed a “perfect Nazi” by choice.
Thus The Perfect Nazi is an important and engrossing story that throws up many questions – even if we refuse to tolerate Davidson’s premise of national seduction, as I feel we must – and throws the spotlight on one of the Nazi’s middle-ranking, indispensable and busy minions.
He was, in Davidson’s own words, an “enabler of evil”, and it was men like Langbehn who “propelled the Nazi movement from the fringes into the mainstream”.
Nonetheless, it begs many questions. How do we explain the passivity of the German population as it watched the persecution of its Jewish neighbours? How do we explain the cruelty of the killers? How do we explain why the conscience of Christians did not compel them to think again as they took aim to shoot small children or send thousands of innocents at a time to their deaths in gas chambers?
Davidson attempts to provide an answer. Page by page, through painstaking research, the book follows the life of Langbehn in parallel with early 20th-century German history – the degradation of the First World War defeat, the humiliation of the Versaille Treaty, mass unemployment and hyperinflation, through to the rise of the Nazi movement.
Amid all this, Langbehn joined the Bund as a child, graduated to the beer halls of the brownshirted Sturmabteilung, and signed up for the Nazi party as soon as it became legal, seven years before Hitler came to power. Before long he was a fully fledged SS member, by which time it has become clear that Bruno was something more than a Nazi by default.
On the contrary, Langbehn, essentially a mediocre man with a nasty streak, a penchant for marching music and a ruthless eye for self-preservation, was also a zealot. There are hints that he may also have been torturer of political opponents of the Nazis in the orgy of revenge that followed Hitler’s seizure of power.
While in the SS, he was taken in by the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the Reich’s intelligence service, which was headed by Reinhard Heydrich. This was the Nazi who in 1942 devised the plan for the gassing of almost two million Jews in the death camps of Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka.
But Langbehn was not the kind of man to have nightmares or suffer pangs of conscience – either for his part in torture or for his part in a system that brutalised and sent millions of innocent people to their death. Essential mediocrity ensured that he spent much of the war oiling the wheels of the Nazi machine. Nonetheless, we are left in little doubt if he had been appointed kommandant at a Nazi death factory, he would have performed his duty with gusto.
As Davidson trawls through war-time archives and personal documents, he comes closer and closer to the disturbing possibility that his grandfather may have worked with Adolf Eichmann sending 700,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. In Edinburgh, Langbehn dropped a bombshell: “I knew Eichmann ... he even offered me a job.”
In Prague, during the final days of the war, he was saved by luck he did not deserve. In the chaos of revenge that followed German capitulation, Langbehn was one of a dozen or so Germans dragged from a cellar and into the street for execution. All but two of them received bullets in the head. Langbehn survived only after a Red Army officer called a halt to the bloodshed. In the chaos of post-war Europe, he evaded arrest. He should have been jailed.
Was Langbehn and the rest of the German population really duped by Hitler? A better word would be manipulated. If nothing else, this book demonstrates how the inherent racism of the herd can be manipulated into acts of unspeakable evil. Moreover, the greatest excesses of this evil could not have been carried out without the cowardice to which the German population had been reduced by Hitler’s terror machine, enforced by men precisely like Langbehn.
In the end, all rationalisations aside, the worst atrocities originate with – and are then propelled by – the conscious decisions of followers as much as leaders. Not only were Heydrich and Eichmann very conscious and proud exterminators, but those who carry out the legwork of the atrocities, whether German civilians or Rwandan Hutus, do not function as unthinking robots.
Ironically, with the publication of this book, Langbehn’s grandson has now become one of the geheimnisfrager, a bearer of secrets, who in the end the Nazis had tried so hard to eliminate.
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July 13, 2012
This had to be a terribly stressful book to research and then to write, hence the five stars.
We are taught to respect, love, and revere our grandparents. But what if one learns that a grandparent had been party to one of the greatest atrocities in history? The reaction of many would be, I can only assume, to bury that knowledge and avoid it at all costs.
After Davidson's grandfather's death in 1992 did Davidson feel comfortable delving into what he had long suspected, that his larger-than-life grandfather in Berlin had a past that either begged to be researched or ignored. Fortunately for us Davidson chose not to look away.
Using archival material in Germany, the United States, and the Czech Republic, Davidson reconstructed as best he could the facts of his grandfather's life, but went farther, and using contemporary materials, paints a portrait of a generation of Germans who enabled the rise of Hitler and embraced his ideology.
What would you do if you learned your grandfather had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1926 (and the proud possessor of a relatively low Member Number in the 26,000s), had been a member of the SA and after the decline of the SA had become a member of the SS, and then of the SD (the State Security apparatus)?
Writing biography is a very difficult business, for it is all too easy to reconstruct a person and his/her times from a comfortable distance. Davidson did not shrink from the task, but was often brutally stark in detail.
In the end Davidson had to conclude that his grandfather was hardly in the same league as Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, or the second tier of Nazi leaders such as Eichmann (whom Opa claimed to have known) of Bormann, but was lower down - yet one of those faceless anonymous thousands who enabled, applauded, and ultimately benefited from the Third Reich, at the expense of untold millions of victims.
A final note: Five stars because I read Davidson's book in two sittings. I was so drawn into a world for which I feel utter revulsion that a macabre fascination set in. I dare say that some may have given the book two or three stars because of the readers' own discomfort with the subject matter. Still and all, how does one go on living knowing that in his DNA are the genes of a monster?
We are taught to respect, love, and revere our grandparents. But what if one learns that a grandparent had been party to one of the greatest atrocities in history? The reaction of many would be, I can only assume, to bury that knowledge and avoid it at all costs.
After Davidson's grandfather's death in 1992 did Davidson feel comfortable delving into what he had long suspected, that his larger-than-life grandfather in Berlin had a past that either begged to be researched or ignored. Fortunately for us Davidson chose not to look away.
Using archival material in Germany, the United States, and the Czech Republic, Davidson reconstructed as best he could the facts of his grandfather's life, but went farther, and using contemporary materials, paints a portrait of a generation of Germans who enabled the rise of Hitler and embraced his ideology.
What would you do if you learned your grandfather had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1926 (and the proud possessor of a relatively low Member Number in the 26,000s), had been a member of the SA and after the decline of the SA had become a member of the SS, and then of the SD (the State Security apparatus)?
Writing biography is a very difficult business, for it is all too easy to reconstruct a person and his/her times from a comfortable distance. Davidson did not shrink from the task, but was often brutally stark in detail.
In the end Davidson had to conclude that his grandfather was hardly in the same league as Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, or the second tier of Nazi leaders such as Eichmann (whom Opa claimed to have known) of Bormann, but was lower down - yet one of those faceless anonymous thousands who enabled, applauded, and ultimately benefited from the Third Reich, at the expense of untold millions of victims.
A final note: Five stars because I read Davidson's book in two sittings. I was so drawn into a world for which I feel utter revulsion that a macabre fascination set in. I dare say that some may have given the book two or three stars because of the readers' own discomfort with the subject matter. Still and all, how does one go on living knowing that in his DNA are the genes of a monster?
September 14, 2022
This is an incredible story. Davidson investigated the story of his German grandfather, only to discover that he had been in the SS and a devoted follower of Hitler. As he uncovers more of the story,we also get a good history of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Davidson tries to understand why such men as his grandfather could give their complete loyalty to such a loathsome regime. Moreover, he shows that his grandfather was unrepentant to the end. It's a deeply personal story and fascinating as well as important...
November 9, 2018
First of all: this is a great book for people who don't know a lot about the rise and fall of the Nazi party/regime. For that it gets 5 stars. But I know all that stuff and the title says that it's also about uncovering his grandfather's secret past and that is where it falls short in my opinion. When his grandfather was still alive, Davidson didn't really ask him about his past even though his grandfather hinted on wanting to tell him. I can understand that Davidson was disgusted about the fact that his granddad still seemed to be proud of his past but he missed an opportunity to hear about that time first-hand. So after his grandfather died, he started digging but found only little information like a CV that he wrote to get into the SS and a few entries in administrative books and that was about all. So all the diary quotes in the book are actually from different Nazis with the added line that his grandfather would have had the same experience.
I read a lot about the general history of WW II but I'm particularly interested in personal stories because my parents lived through it in the Netherlands, my father was forced to work in Germany and had a horrible time there. They hardly spoke about it, even when asked, but Davidson uses the fact that his grandfather was a Nazi to tell the broader story of the rise and fall of the Nazi party and not a whole lot more because he simply doesn't have anything to go by. For that he gets 2 stars, which brings the average to 3 stars. I would also have liked to see more of the search for information, the discussions within the family, the talks he had with people he met when he was digging and his experiences during the search, including emotions. Not a whole lot of that in it either, simply because the emphasis is mostly on the general story of the Nazi party.
So like I said at the start of this review: this is a great book for people who want to know how it all started and also what the mindset was of the people joining the Nazi party but the grandfather/grandson part is only small so it isn't a detailed personal account.
I read a lot about the general history of WW II but I'm particularly interested in personal stories because my parents lived through it in the Netherlands, my father was forced to work in Germany and had a horrible time there. They hardly spoke about it, even when asked, but Davidson uses the fact that his grandfather was a Nazi to tell the broader story of the rise and fall of the Nazi party and not a whole lot more because he simply doesn't have anything to go by. For that he gets 2 stars, which brings the average to 3 stars. I would also have liked to see more of the search for information, the discussions within the family, the talks he had with people he met when he was digging and his experiences during the search, including emotions. Not a whole lot of that in it either, simply because the emphasis is mostly on the general story of the Nazi party.
So like I said at the start of this review: this is a great book for people who want to know how it all started and also what the mindset was of the people joining the Nazi party but the grandfather/grandson part is only small so it isn't a detailed personal account.
January 24, 2017
Brave book to write. Well worth reading.
February 11, 2016
This is an interesting social/political history told with a personal twist. Growing up, Davidson and his sister had always been aware that there were secrets in his mother's family. She was German and had married a Scot. Her children were raised in Britain but spend holidays visiting relatives in post-WWII Germany. Although various interactions with Bruno Langbehn led Davidson to conclude that his grandfather had sympathized Nazi beliefs Davidson did not pursue the matter, did not question any of his German relations about their history. Soon after Bruno died, his daughter revealed that he had not only sympathized with the Nazis but had been a member of the SS. That revelation pushed Davidson to reconstruct his grandfather's history within the context of the rise and fall of the Nazi party. This book is not really a biography of Bruno Langbehn who left little direct documentary evidence behind him. Instead, Davidson tries to understand why his grandfather joined the Nazi party early in its history, why he participated in the one of the most violent SA (Brownshirt) Sturms, and what propelled him into the SS (and the more elite SD). The second half of the subtitle (How Hitler Seduced a Generation) is a bit misleading. I don't see that Hitler so much seduced a generation as he reflected the anger, frustration, and bitterness of that generation and focused it. Germans who came of age during and just after WWI were angry and confused over the sudden end of a war they thought they were winning. Hitler provided the explanation for the sudden reversal of fortune: they had been betrayed. And he identified the betrayers: Jews and Communists. Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy provided both a balm for wounded German pride and 'proved' that Aryans were through historical and biological necessity the future masters of humanity. He provided a project people like Langbehn could lose themselves in. It is clear from Davidson's account that his grandfather never abandoned his loyalty to that world view.
May 24, 2012
I found this at Costco earlier this year and just reading the title I knew I had to read this. I was on a self-imposed book buying ban but it was put on hold and I took this home.
I've wanted to read a book like this for a long time. Mostly because of my own questions and curiosity surrounding my grandparents from Germany. Part of me wishes I had enough info to start a search like Davidson did. The other part doesn't really want to know.
The Oma and Opa I know couldn't have been like the others I've read so many times about. But then I think about how those people had granddaughters too that thought the world of them. Could my grandfather have been like Davidson's? My heart tells me no so I go with that.
The author did a fantastic job with his research here, he was nothing if not thorough. And I appreciate it because this isn't the sort of subject you want to go into halfway. I would want facts and nothing less and apparently Davidson felt the same exact way.
Davidson covers so much ground in 350 pages, give or take. And there are certainly times when he didn't have facts to rely on. Instead of using his own opinion to make up what he though should be inserted he used his grandfather's past, precisely what he should have done IMO.
The reader can see the build up so it's easy to see how Davidson himself came to this or that conclusion and ___ or ____.
I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before honestly. The Perfect Nazi is well written, extremely interesting and one of those books that are hard to put down. I could have kept reading for quite awhile.
I had a few notes but I didn't take them well enough to know now what I wanted to say. I'd recommend to anyone interested in reading it to read it and read it soon. It's that good.
I've wanted to read a book like this for a long time. Mostly because of my own questions and curiosity surrounding my grandparents from Germany. Part of me wishes I had enough info to start a search like Davidson did. The other part doesn't really want to know.
The Oma and Opa I know couldn't have been like the others I've read so many times about. But then I think about how those people had granddaughters too that thought the world of them. Could my grandfather have been like Davidson's? My heart tells me no so I go with that.
The author did a fantastic job with his research here, he was nothing if not thorough. And I appreciate it because this isn't the sort of subject you want to go into halfway. I would want facts and nothing less and apparently Davidson felt the same exact way.
Davidson covers so much ground in 350 pages, give or take. And there are certainly times when he didn't have facts to rely on. Instead of using his own opinion to make up what he though should be inserted he used his grandfather's past, precisely what he should have done IMO.
The reader can see the build up so it's easy to see how Davidson himself came to this or that conclusion and ___ or ____.
I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before honestly. The Perfect Nazi is well written, extremely interesting and one of those books that are hard to put down. I could have kept reading for quite awhile.
I had a few notes but I didn't take them well enough to know now what I wanted to say. I'd recommend to anyone interested in reading it to read it and read it soon. It's that good.
December 8, 2011
I hadn't planned on reading any more books about Nazi Germany, but after Eric Larsen's "In the Garden of Beasts...," I was left unsatisfied. Larsen didn't seem to deal adequately with the horrors of that time at all. Perhaps that was because his subjects, the American Ambassador to Germany in 1933-34 and his gad-about daughter, hadn't.
Martin Davidson does a better job on this score. His account is more personal; yet, as with Larsen, there is so much recitation of facts that the reader gets lost and wants to just skim for long periods in the book.
Davidson is a respected producer of history documentaries at the BBC. He's a natural for research, although it's usually not this personal. Davidson's father is Scottish, his mother German. He grew up in Scotland. Occasionally his German grandfather came to visit, but not often. Davidson knew his grandfather grew up in Nazi Germany and served in the German army. He assumed he had been conscripted, but he also knew there were family secrets that no one wanted to talk about or uncover. His grandfather had a swagger and an arrogance that Davidson didn't like and he didn't want to satisfy his grandfather by asking him anything about what he obviously wanted to tell him.
When his grandfather died, Davidson was older and felt it was time to know more about his grandfather's past. His search to discover the family secrets, especially those of his grandfather, is the story of this book. He discovers that not only was his grandfather not conscripted but that he was one of the earliest recruits to the Nazi Party and that he rose steadily through the ranks of storm trooper to the secret service to an elite unit within the secret service. Davidson is stunned and is rather angry at his mother for refusing to discuss her father's past.
Davidson takes us from the beginning build up of Nazism to the war through to the post war defeat. Although the family was captured by the Allies and separated from their father before finally coming together again in post-war Berlin, Bruno, his grandfather, never renounced his Nazi past or regreted it. Never thought that either he or Nazi Germany had done anything to apologize for. All could be rationalized.
Davidson is horrified. His research into his family's past and his uncovering many details that even Bruno's immediate family did not know was painful to his family. Yet Davidson felt it was important, and rightly so I think, to tell the story of how a fairly ordinary man, like thousands of others, became enthralled with Nazi ideology and so helped perpetuate evil. In the end, Davidson says he understood his mother's silence. What he once thought was a simple lack of curiosity, he came to see their way of refusing to let Bruno glorify his past in their presence.
Maybe I should have given this book 4 stars. It is a brave and important book, very well researched; it gives much more context than Larsen's book did. Yet there was just too much detail from time-to-time to make this a compelling read.
Martin Davidson does a better job on this score. His account is more personal; yet, as with Larsen, there is so much recitation of facts that the reader gets lost and wants to just skim for long periods in the book.
Davidson is a respected producer of history documentaries at the BBC. He's a natural for research, although it's usually not this personal. Davidson's father is Scottish, his mother German. He grew up in Scotland. Occasionally his German grandfather came to visit, but not often. Davidson knew his grandfather grew up in Nazi Germany and served in the German army. He assumed he had been conscripted, but he also knew there were family secrets that no one wanted to talk about or uncover. His grandfather had a swagger and an arrogance that Davidson didn't like and he didn't want to satisfy his grandfather by asking him anything about what he obviously wanted to tell him.
When his grandfather died, Davidson was older and felt it was time to know more about his grandfather's past. His search to discover the family secrets, especially those of his grandfather, is the story of this book. He discovers that not only was his grandfather not conscripted but that he was one of the earliest recruits to the Nazi Party and that he rose steadily through the ranks of storm trooper to the secret service to an elite unit within the secret service. Davidson is stunned and is rather angry at his mother for refusing to discuss her father's past.
Davidson takes us from the beginning build up of Nazism to the war through to the post war defeat. Although the family was captured by the Allies and separated from their father before finally coming together again in post-war Berlin, Bruno, his grandfather, never renounced his Nazi past or regreted it. Never thought that either he or Nazi Germany had done anything to apologize for. All could be rationalized.
Davidson is horrified. His research into his family's past and his uncovering many details that even Bruno's immediate family did not know was painful to his family. Yet Davidson felt it was important, and rightly so I think, to tell the story of how a fairly ordinary man, like thousands of others, became enthralled with Nazi ideology and so helped perpetuate evil. In the end, Davidson says he understood his mother's silence. What he once thought was a simple lack of curiosity, he came to see their way of refusing to let Bruno glorify his past in their presence.
Maybe I should have given this book 4 stars. It is a brave and important book, very well researched; it gives much more context than Larsen's book did. Yet there was just too much detail from time-to-time to make this a compelling read.
June 6, 2021
It seems like everyone is digging into their family trees these days, hoping to uncover something fascinating, something strange or novel, or even someone famous. I can't imagine what it must feel like to go back and find out that a member of your family, not even an ancestor, but someone as close and as memorable as a grandfather, was a Nazi and participated in the most horrific genocide of our time. And not only that, but didn't seem to repent, didn't consider what he had participated in as wrong. I can't imagine how you could reconcile your repulsion and horror at what your grandfather had done, with the love and affection you would bear him as a grandson growing up ignorant of such facts.
This is a brave book, on a difficult subject, and it's fascinating to read it from such a close perspective. Whilst it isn't 'classic' history and doesn't pretend to be, it somehow makes it all more immediate, and more horrifying for that, to read about such an ordinary man, from the perspective of his grandson. Definitely worth the read.
This is a brave book, on a difficult subject, and it's fascinating to read it from such a close perspective. Whilst it isn't 'classic' history and doesn't pretend to be, it somehow makes it all more immediate, and more horrifying for that, to read about such an ordinary man, from the perspective of his grandson. Definitely worth the read.
September 9, 2015
This is an interesting book and intriguing insight into his grandfather's Nazi life. However, I don't like the fact that the author fills the book with what "could" have happened. This circumstantial evidence takes away from the overall power of finding the truth in a man's dark past.
September 7, 2018
Fascinating recounting of a family history discovered by the English grandson of a very active National Socialist member. This spends a decent amount of time explaining what happened in the 30 as the National Socialist party (Nazis) rose to power in Germany. The author's grandfather was an early member of the party and involved in winning people over to the party through rallies and violence. He went on to join the SS but never bothered to get the tattoo (which may of saved his life later) and spent most of the war in a desk job after being wounded early on. This book is valuable for focusing on the political rise to power in Germany of the National Socialist party through the story of one member and his family. This subject often glossed over in many other historical works for more exciting topics like the war, the holocaust, and the specifics of how Hitler was elected to his position rather than how the party won acceptance from the people. With that in mind, there are other books that would be needed to supplement this one to gain a full understanding of the rise and public triumph of the National Socialist party in Germany.
May 3, 2011
“The Perfect Nazi:Uncovering My Grandfather's Secret Past” by Martin Davidson, a non-fiction book which follows the authors research about his grandfather, an SS officer. Mr. Davidson hit it on the nose when he wrote that this book “is a cautionary tale, a living example of the harm even little men can achieve in times of historical madness”.f
Growing up in Scotland, Martin Davidson knew his grandfather is a man who likes to tell jokes and stories. After his grandfather died Mr. Davidson discovered that his grandfather had many skeletons in his closet, not the least are a membership in the Nazi party (one of the first to join) and wore with pride his SS uniform.
Mr. Davidson goes on to investigate his grandfather’s role in the Third Reich and the atrocities committed under that banner. The story is written about Bruno Langbehn, but is paralleled to the rise and fall of the Third Reich.
I have been working on the genealogy of my family for many years now. I boast about 2,500 in my family tree going back to around 1,550. I have discovered lost cousins, opera singers, concert musicians but never, to my knowledge, anyone as notorious as Martin Davidson discovered in “The Perfect Nazi”.
Mr. Davidson is a television producer for the BBC but as a child growing up in Scotland he thought his grandfather was simply a retired German dentist. However, Bruno Langbehn was no mere dentist, but a proud member of the Nazi party wearing his Gold Party Badge (given to those who joined early and hence can claim low party ID numbers) with pride till his last day.
In the book, Davidson is forced to confront reality. His grandfather wasn’t a German jumping on the bandwagon, but a thug committed to the ideals of the National Socialist Party. While Davidson didn’t find out if his grandfather committed any atrocities, he was certainly one of the enables which helped Hitler’s rise.
As a young man Bruno Langbehn devoured literature which glorifies war and truly believed the anti-Semitic propaganda which inspired many to join the National Socialism movement.
The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
Bruno later joined Ernst Röhm’s SA, the street thugs known for their brown shirts and brutality. Suffering an injured arm which happened during a riding accident, Langbehn later ran teams of SS agents and proudly wore the SS uniform.
Bruno Langbehn is of no-note to history, which is why this book is so compelling. Mr. Davidson tries to give an insight into the mindset of a thug, one of thousands on which the rise to power of the Third Reich was based upon. This insight is unsettling but makes a forceful tale.
For me, the most disturbing part of the book was the last chapter – Bruno’s after war years. Never been brought up on war crimes (due to his law rank), Langbehn was allowed to continue practice dentistry and, amazingly, kept his own name while reaping the fruits of the economic boom West Germany was privileged to enjoy. All the while keeping to his ideological roots, never wavering from his lifelong beliefs of the National Socialist Party.
Having several family members whose life were made miserable by thugs like Langbehn, I found that aspect extremely disturbing.
This is an important book which shows the harm each and every one of us can create when the world goes nuts!
For book reviews and bookish posts please visit http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
Growing up in Scotland, Martin Davidson knew his grandfather is a man who likes to tell jokes and stories. After his grandfather died Mr. Davidson discovered that his grandfather had many skeletons in his closet, not the least are a membership in the Nazi party (one of the first to join) and wore with pride his SS uniform.
Mr. Davidson goes on to investigate his grandfather’s role in the Third Reich and the atrocities committed under that banner. The story is written about Bruno Langbehn, but is paralleled to the rise and fall of the Third Reich.
I have been working on the genealogy of my family for many years now. I boast about 2,500 in my family tree going back to around 1,550. I have discovered lost cousins, opera singers, concert musicians but never, to my knowledge, anyone as notorious as Martin Davidson discovered in “The Perfect Nazi”.
Mr. Davidson is a television producer for the BBC but as a child growing up in Scotland he thought his grandfather was simply a retired German dentist. However, Bruno Langbehn was no mere dentist, but a proud member of the Nazi party wearing his Gold Party Badge (given to those who joined early and hence can claim low party ID numbers) with pride till his last day.
In the book, Davidson is forced to confront reality. His grandfather wasn’t a German jumping on the bandwagon, but a thug committed to the ideals of the National Socialist Party. While Davidson didn’t find out if his grandfather committed any atrocities, he was certainly one of the enables which helped Hitler’s rise.
As a young man Bruno Langbehn devoured literature which glorifies war and truly believed the anti-Semitic propaganda which inspired many to join the National Socialism movement.
The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
Bruno later joined Ernst Röhm’s SA, the street thugs known for their brown shirts and brutality. Suffering an injured arm which happened during a riding accident, Langbehn later ran teams of SS agents and proudly wore the SS uniform.
Bruno Langbehn is of no-note to history, which is why this book is so compelling. Mr. Davidson tries to give an insight into the mindset of a thug, one of thousands on which the rise to power of the Third Reich was based upon. This insight is unsettling but makes a forceful tale.
For me, the most disturbing part of the book was the last chapter – Bruno’s after war years. Never been brought up on war crimes (due to his law rank), Langbehn was allowed to continue practice dentistry and, amazingly, kept his own name while reaping the fruits of the economic boom West Germany was privileged to enjoy. All the while keeping to his ideological roots, never wavering from his lifelong beliefs of the National Socialist Party.
Having several family members whose life were made miserable by thugs like Langbehn, I found that aspect extremely disturbing.
This is an important book which shows the harm each and every one of us can create when the world goes nuts!
For book reviews and bookish posts please visit http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
June 15, 2012
A very interesting story about the rise of National Socialism in Germany following World War II and its impacts on one particular family. The author (a citizen of the UK) is a child of a Scottish father and German mother. His maternal grandfather was on the wrong side during the War and no one wanted to discuss in detail what his role was in the Third Reich. The author's curiosity led him through some detailed research in the US, UK, Germany, The Czech Republic, among other places where he was able to piece together his grandfather's war history. Originally, I believe it was his hope that his grandfather was just one of the many Germans who got caught up in Hitler's rise to power and fought simply for their country. However that was not the case. His grandfather was an early member of the Nazi Party and participated in the violence and para-military activity of the SA (Nazi Storm Troopers). Eventually he became an SS Intelligence Officer and at the end of the War, was posted in Prague and worked in the same Division as Adolph Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich.
Although he was a card-carrying Nazi, the author's grandfather took advantage of the benefits of capitalism, democracy, and the justice system at War's end in order to save his own skin. Although the author could find no direct evidence that his grandfather had actually participated in the actvities of "The Final Solution" he was certainly complicit in what happened, believed that it was the right thing to do, and never apologized for what he had done.
Although he was a card-carrying Nazi, the author's grandfather took advantage of the benefits of capitalism, democracy, and the justice system at War's end in order to save his own skin. Although the author could find no direct evidence that his grandfather had actually participated in the actvities of "The Final Solution" he was certainly complicit in what happened, believed that it was the right thing to do, and never apologized for what he had done.
November 3, 2012
Davidson examines the rise and fall of the Third Reich using traces of his maternal grandfather Bruno Langbehn's role as a member of the SA then the SS to guide him. He has some records that help him to situate his grandfather as a participant in events important to understanding the ideology and activities of the Nazi movement from its post-WWI origins to its demise and afterlife. Aside from some limited and unsystematic exchanges with family members, most of whom only recall details with varying degrees of clarity, he lacks any extensive personal interviews and a wider, deeper set of sources that would allow him to give his grandfather more substance and dimension as the central figure of his book. As a result, he retells a conventional account of Nazism's history that most often relies on other sources that give his grandfather an indirect presence - explaining the beliefs and actions of Nazi activists "like" his grandfather from accounts those others left behind or making circumstantial cases that his grandfather must have been involved in or present at one event or another, but unable to provide direct testimony from Langbehn himself. Since the main interest in a book like this is to experience the unique perspective of someone like Langbehn directly and, of even greater interest, to know more about Davidson's own personal process of researching, discovering, and reacting to what he learns, this book turned out to be disappointing.
May 14, 2016
The painstaking and painful task of researching then writing this remarkable book was probably cathartic. The shock of discovering after his death that his ebullient, scary, German grandfather was a convinced Nazi from the 1920s comes through clearly. But the writing avoids hysteria and gains in effectiveness as a result. Davidson cites the evidence of what organizations Bruno was a member of then describes the mostly atrocious things these organizations did. Only at the end does the pain of acknowledging what is in his genes and family history come through. But throughout the book, Bruno remains centre stage, committed to an evil ideology, a bully, not unintelligent but oddly ineffectual. It was people like him who made Hitler's rise to power possible, and it was his ineffectuality that enabled him to keep under the radar at the end of the war, saving him for an undeserved old age, hating Jews till the end.
July 6, 2016
Incredible biographical and detective story - the author, a Scot, recounts his quest of finding out the story of his late maternal grandfather, a middle ranking Nazi who died unrepentant and a mystery for most of the family.
He was one of the many dedicated supporters, without whom of the Nazi regime wouldn't had been possible and his journey way up through the ranks of SA and later SS is presented in the context of the social life in Germany before and during the second world war.
The book is an accomplishment both in portraying the individual and in illuminating a less tackled aspect of the regime - the life of the foot soldiers.
He was one of the many dedicated supporters, without whom of the Nazi regime wouldn't had been possible and his journey way up through the ranks of SA and later SS is presented in the context of the social life in Germany before and during the second world war.
The book is an accomplishment both in portraying the individual and in illuminating a less tackled aspect of the regime - the life of the foot soldiers.
January 15, 2020
Whilst I can see the motivations in writing this book, to me there was nothing of interest at all.
Essentially it reads like a long university-level history essay, going through through the rise of Nazism in a very pedestrian manner with the author inserting his great uncle into the narrative where he could. There are many better books on the subject than this which are structured and written far better than this.
The writing style ended up annoying me so much that I gave up with it.
Essentially it reads like a long university-level history essay, going through through the rise of Nazism in a very pedestrian manner with the author inserting his great uncle into the narrative where he could. There are many better books on the subject than this which are structured and written far better than this.
The writing style ended up annoying me so much that I gave up with it.
August 14, 2011
A fascinating account of the rise and fall of National Socialism and a parallel story of how the author's grandfather joined the Nazi Party and was unrepentant until the end of his life.
I thought the writing was terrific. Martin Davidson seamlessly weaves together all of the facts from World War I to the end of World War II.
I thought the writing was terrific. Martin Davidson seamlessly weaves together all of the facts from World War I to the end of World War II.
June 16, 2011
What if you found out that your grandfather had been a Nazi SS officer? That is what happened to the author, and he tries to put together what his grandfather did during WWII. The grandfather is dead, so the facts are bare-boned, but this is very interesting.
May 18, 2011
Wow!
October 13, 2019
I first heard about Martin Davidson's book, 'The Perfect Nazi', when someone, knowing we had been English students in the same college 40 years ago, pointed it out to me. Since those days Martin and I have waved at each other across the Twitter oceans from time to time, but otherwise followed divergent paths, he in television, me in writing. Thinking back to our three years of university friendship, I could not recall Martin ever once mentioning having a grandfather who fought for ‘the other side’ in the Second World War, or even the fact of being half German. I was intrigued.
There is always an extra frisson in reading a book written by someone you know, or once knew. If that book is autobiographical as opposed to fictional, then that extra curiosity is all the more intense, sometimes to the point of blurring the ability to be objective. One paragraph into Davidson’s extraordinary quest to discover the truth about his German grandfather however, and any question of knowing the author or not became irrelevant. The prose – lucid, intelligent, candid – sweeps you along with its power; and the journey it pursues is riveting.
The background and starting point for the story is that Martin and his sister grew up in the shadows of not-knowing the full story of the German side of their family. Any questions about what their maternal grandfather, a dentist called Bruno Langbehn, did in the Second World War were always side-stepped and stone-walled, creating the sense of forbidden territory which children are so good at accepting. It was after university, entering fully into his own adulthood, that Davidson first began to want more answers about his still living, assertive, charismatic grandparent. It wasn’t until the death of Bruno however, by which time Davidson’s own television work had started to involve research into subjects related to the Third Reich, that his quest for the truth began in earnest. What had Bruno, a dentist, twice married, a robust survivor, really done in the war, and why?
It is not a comfortable journey. Davidson is brutally honest, both about his unsettling discoveries and his growing personal unease at what he is unearthing. My heart went out to him as I read, although Davidson himself is not out for compassion. His quest is to unearth the truth in all its ugliness. With the help of his sister, he digs tirelessly into the past, unravelling details about Bruno’s upbringing, plucking forgotten scraps from archives and placing it all in the geo-political context of the times. The picture he finally pieces together offers a difficult, and utterly credible, explanation both of his grandfather’s forceful personality and the choices he made.
I will let the book speak for itself in terms of Davidson’s ultimate findings. Suffice it to say, they are shocking. They also constitute the most cogent and compelling analysis of the forces at play in the build-up of the Nazi party and the outbreak of war that I have ever come across. For Davidson’s objective is not just to unearth the truth, but to make sense of it. And it seems to me that this is a deeply redeeming element both of the book and of any attempt to confront evil. For it is only by daring to understand our capacity for darkness, picking apart its origins and motives, that we can ever hope to win the fight to prevent its re-emergence.
There is always an extra frisson in reading a book written by someone you know, or once knew. If that book is autobiographical as opposed to fictional, then that extra curiosity is all the more intense, sometimes to the point of blurring the ability to be objective. One paragraph into Davidson’s extraordinary quest to discover the truth about his German grandfather however, and any question of knowing the author or not became irrelevant. The prose – lucid, intelligent, candid – sweeps you along with its power; and the journey it pursues is riveting.
The background and starting point for the story is that Martin and his sister grew up in the shadows of not-knowing the full story of the German side of their family. Any questions about what their maternal grandfather, a dentist called Bruno Langbehn, did in the Second World War were always side-stepped and stone-walled, creating the sense of forbidden territory which children are so good at accepting. It was after university, entering fully into his own adulthood, that Davidson first began to want more answers about his still living, assertive, charismatic grandparent. It wasn’t until the death of Bruno however, by which time Davidson’s own television work had started to involve research into subjects related to the Third Reich, that his quest for the truth began in earnest. What had Bruno, a dentist, twice married, a robust survivor, really done in the war, and why?
It is not a comfortable journey. Davidson is brutally honest, both about his unsettling discoveries and his growing personal unease at what he is unearthing. My heart went out to him as I read, although Davidson himself is not out for compassion. His quest is to unearth the truth in all its ugliness. With the help of his sister, he digs tirelessly into the past, unravelling details about Bruno’s upbringing, plucking forgotten scraps from archives and placing it all in the geo-political context of the times. The picture he finally pieces together offers a difficult, and utterly credible, explanation both of his grandfather’s forceful personality and the choices he made.
I will let the book speak for itself in terms of Davidson’s ultimate findings. Suffice it to say, they are shocking. They also constitute the most cogent and compelling analysis of the forces at play in the build-up of the Nazi party and the outbreak of war that I have ever come across. For Davidson’s objective is not just to unearth the truth, but to make sense of it. And it seems to me that this is a deeply redeeming element both of the book and of any attempt to confront evil. For it is only by daring to understand our capacity for darkness, picking apart its origins and motives, that we can ever hope to win the fight to prevent its re-emergence.
January 6, 2018
A 29 year old Bruno Langbehn, a young German dentist, swayed by a movement sweeping the country, makes a ground shaking decision that will impact his family for years to come.
He joins the Nazis.
Bruno Langbehn was supposed to just be a normal dentist, eking out a decent living filling cavities and doing dental operations. But that life was not enough for him. Instead, he seems to want something more. And he finds that something more in joining the Nazis, rising through their ranks from an early fanatic to an SA officer, all the way until he becomes an SS officer, a division associated with the committing of many acts of the most unimaginable cruelty.
Martin Davidson is his grandson, plagued with a history of a fanatic Nazi grandfather, who he suspects of being actively involved in the Holocaust, one the world’s most infamous acts of ethnic cleansing. But he does not, unlike the rest of his family, choose to hide away this fact.
Instead, he opens up to us, the audience for whom he writes, exposing and laying bare the German half of him for all to see, even delving deeper and wanting to answer the central question of the book: how was Hitler able to sway so many of the German people to support, even join, the Nazis, in their quest to exterminate innocent people whose only crime was having a Jewish faith?
Through the research done, Davidson does not only show us another side of what most people think of as one of the best examples of what happens when tyranny takes over, but how it relates to him and how it wasn’t just Hitler who deserves the “credit” for turning millions of Germans to his cause, but his whole team and army of supporters and officers who helped him along his way.
“The Perfect Nazi” does not seek to justify or defend the extreme ways that the Nazis took to force their vision of a perfect world onto the current one, but it slightly humanises them, understands why they would give up their lives, their jobs and their hearts to their one and only Fuhrer.
Especially a German dentist named Bruno Langbehn.
He joins the Nazis.
Bruno Langbehn was supposed to just be a normal dentist, eking out a decent living filling cavities and doing dental operations. But that life was not enough for him. Instead, he seems to want something more. And he finds that something more in joining the Nazis, rising through their ranks from an early fanatic to an SA officer, all the way until he becomes an SS officer, a division associated with the committing of many acts of the most unimaginable cruelty.
Martin Davidson is his grandson, plagued with a history of a fanatic Nazi grandfather, who he suspects of being actively involved in the Holocaust, one the world’s most infamous acts of ethnic cleansing. But he does not, unlike the rest of his family, choose to hide away this fact.
Instead, he opens up to us, the audience for whom he writes, exposing and laying bare the German half of him for all to see, even delving deeper and wanting to answer the central question of the book: how was Hitler able to sway so many of the German people to support, even join, the Nazis, in their quest to exterminate innocent people whose only crime was having a Jewish faith?
Through the research done, Davidson does not only show us another side of what most people think of as one of the best examples of what happens when tyranny takes over, but how it relates to him and how it wasn’t just Hitler who deserves the “credit” for turning millions of Germans to his cause, but his whole team and army of supporters and officers who helped him along his way.
“The Perfect Nazi” does not seek to justify or defend the extreme ways that the Nazis took to force their vision of a perfect world onto the current one, but it slightly humanises them, understands why they would give up their lives, their jobs and their hearts to their one and only Fuhrer.
Especially a German dentist named Bruno Langbehn.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 17, 2020
I encourage you to read this book if you are interested in history, especially the genesis of World War II. Many people do not know how World War II was spawned as a result of the devastating effects of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Fewer still are likely aware of how so many in Germany viewed that Treaty as a humiliation and how it gave Adolph Hitler and the Nazis a perfect "excuse" to use to justify his rise to power. His rhetoric and the beliefs of many in Germany was that it was not overwhelming military force and strategy of the Allies along with military weakness of Germany that resulted in Germany losing WW I - it was caused by others, in large part claiming it was the Jews.
I've done a lot of reading about World War II and how events led up to it. But many of the books I've read deal more with events of the War and strategies, military campaigns, etc., but none of them gave a really good understanding of how why the main character in this nonfiction work became a full-fledged member of the Nazi Party, the SA, SS, and the SD.
Part investigation and much the recap of events, the author puts a very strong effort into explaining how his grandfather's activities affected hos family. A very good book overall.
I've done a lot of reading about World War II and how events led up to it. But many of the books I've read deal more with events of the War and strategies, military campaigns, etc., but none of them gave a really good understanding of how why the main character in this nonfiction work became a full-fledged member of the Nazi Party, the SA, SS, and the SD.
Part investigation and much the recap of events, the author puts a very strong effort into explaining how his grandfather's activities affected hos family. A very good book overall.
August 10, 2021
The first 2/3 of the book is a pretty good history of the rise of Nazi-ism in Germany. How the Nazi party started with the ending of WWI and the return of the German soldiers along with the young German boys seeing the seeing the defeated soldiers and the humiliation of the German state. It follows one of the young boys and his journey to following Hitler and thrill of joining the military when Hitler makes the call. He joins the SS because of his early joining of the Nazi party. It ends with him in Prague with his family as the Soviets take the city and how miraculously he is saved but sent to a camp along with his wife and children. Eventually back in Berlin and hiding so the Allies do not find out he was a SS officer. The book ends with how his children and grandchildren feel about his past life. It is a cautionary tale as to how people can get caught up in something and never really give it up.
June 21, 2025
The story of Martin Davidson finding out and writing about his grandfather being in the Nazi Party as an SS officer. He joined as one of the Hitler youth and got totally absorbed in the life of Hitler's Germany. His grandfather, Bruno Langbehn, was a dentist by trade and even led the most important office of the Reich Guild of German Dentists. He was never directly involved in the atrocities they are known for (other than participating in the Night of Long Knives) but being in this movement and approving everything they did and was all for it, was horrible enough. His mother, Thusnelda, never spoke of her father's life. By clearing out his grandfather's belongings after he died, Martin and his sister found papers about his grandfather's past and decided to write a memoir. It was so horrible how they treated those not like them, "Hitler's perfect race". No wonder it was the family's dark secret past.
July 24, 2022
A brave and searching book by historian and television producer Martin Davidson. A thorough investigation into a particular account of what drew his grandfather to Nizi ideology. You get the sense that he has tried hard to be as honest and frank as possible, despite the practical and emotional difficulties of researching such a subject. It's a reminder of lots of things about the rise of the Third Reich, but in particular how relatively easy it was for most high level Nazis to escape both detected and justice, and how the German state was happy to forget and reintegrate such Nazis after the fall of world Communism in the late 1980s. Davidson's grandfather and his ilk were the Nazi 'enablers', the ones that allowed and facilitated the development and maintenance of a pernicious and evil regime.
© Koplowitz 2022
© Koplowitz 2022
June 8, 2017
This is a unique take (for me) on WWII. The author traces his deceased grandfather's rise & fall through the Nazi party and into the late 20th century.
It's unique in that he uses his grandfather's history to also walk through a lot of WWII events. The perspective of watching it through the eyes of a family in the heart of Germany really offers so much more than we often get from the Allied point of view. But it's not sympathetic to Nazi Germany. It's morbid & sobering for the author (& us).
The drawback is it had to assume a lot as the grandfather was alienated from the family early in the author's life and the rest of the family doesn't talk about who he was until after he's dead. So there's lots of guess work and generalizing. It's also a bit dull as he wanders into the weeds some.
It's unique in that he uses his grandfather's history to also walk through a lot of WWII events. The perspective of watching it through the eyes of a family in the heart of Germany really offers so much more than we often get from the Allied point of view. But it's not sympathetic to Nazi Germany. It's morbid & sobering for the author (& us).
The drawback is it had to assume a lot as the grandfather was alienated from the family early in the author's life and the rest of the family doesn't talk about who he was until after he's dead. So there's lots of guess work and generalizing. It's also a bit dull as he wanders into the weeds some.
September 13, 2018
I have loved the honesty and candor of the author about his grandfather, a member of the SS and the SD. He was not an ordinary German joining the Nazi party out of need or sheer opportunism but a convinced Nazionalsocialist who started as a street fighter long before 1933. It must have been really difficult to research and write about him, thinking that he was the epitome of evil and, at the same time, your mother's father.
The book has made me think about my own grandfather, a soldier in the Francoist army during the Civil War who later on went to fight alongside the Wehrmacht at the División Azul. One day I have to find out more about him and his military career...
The book has made me think about my own grandfather, a soldier in the Francoist army during the Civil War who later on went to fight alongside the Wehrmacht at the División Azul. One day I have to find out more about him and his military career...
July 28, 2020
Martin Davidson makes a good point in that without men like his grandfather the Nazis could not have come to power and their "system" could not have worked. These men remained in the shadows after the war as they were never prosecuted for their crimes. His father was an officer in the SD and he most certainly knew about the Final Solution. He was lucky in that he could have been killed in Prague at the end of the war and also he was lucky in escaping prosecution. However, he remained proud of his roles in the Nazi system until the day he died. This is chilling! And it reminds me that anti-Semitism is still around in Germany and other countries. It never completely went away but was hidden while it was expedient to do so.
October 24, 2024
My edition was only 370 pages, but this was the closest one I could find.
Martin Davidson did an excellent job of using both primary and secondary sources to outline the Nazi history and his grandfather's involvement in it. I found that telling his family's story alongside the rise and fall of the Nazis effective and the fact that he knew the man made for a compelling and very interesting story. Davidson lays everything out, speculating where reasonable and hiding nothing.
Overall, as a student of history who spent a lot of time in university reading in this area, I found the book interesting and a great read. I recommend it to anyone who is seeking to understand how the Nazis coordinated professions (gleichschaltung) and created their own world view.
Martin Davidson did an excellent job of using both primary and secondary sources to outline the Nazi history and his grandfather's involvement in it. I found that telling his family's story alongside the rise and fall of the Nazis effective and the fact that he knew the man made for a compelling and very interesting story. Davidson lays everything out, speculating where reasonable and hiding nothing.
Overall, as a student of history who spent a lot of time in university reading in this area, I found the book interesting and a great read. I recommend it to anyone who is seeking to understand how the Nazis coordinated professions (gleichschaltung) and created their own world view.
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