What do you think?
Rate this book
The Field Men: The SS Officers Who Led the Einsatzkommandos - the Nazi Mobile Killing Units
Two thousand nine hundred forty-five men lined up in four motorized columns immediately behind the German Army on June 22, 1941 as it prepared to launch Operation Barbarossa the German attack on the Soviet Union an attack designed to win the war. The
- GenresWorld War II
232 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1999
44 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 19, 2023
A detailed examination of over three hundred SS officers who served in the mobile execution units, the EINSATZGRUPPEN and their subordinate units. MacLean provides as much detail on these individuals as possible, analyses various facts such as SS and Party membership, military service, awards, fate and other details though brief. The organisation and history of the Einsatzgruppen is explained in its own right and within the overall SS structure. He doesn't focus on the on the individual, per se, in lengthy biographies, as the purpose was to primarily to identify those involved as a whole.
Each SS has an entry, easy to read and later possibly a photo. The appendices provide useful information such rank progressions and combat experience compared to those in the concentration camp system, post war justice (very little), police units involved and more. Also included are numerous photographs of the Einsatzgruppen carrying out various activities, including executions - some of which had not been published previously but all are shocking.
Hannah Arendt was once criticized for describing Eichmann as the 'banality of evil' but if you look at the perpetrators in MacLean's photographs, this could easily be said of the SS depicted - the plain and utter indifference to those they are killing or about to kill. The photograph of blindfolded Jews being 'escorted' by their individual executioner past an SS senior NCO who is indifferently smoking a cigarette as he looks at the camera is particularly disturbing.
It isn't possible to really grasp the size and scale of the Holocaust but volumes such as this do help. MacLean provides another valuable study to the Holocaust. His purpose was partially to expose those responsible - the major criminals such as Blobel and Ohlendorf are fairly well known, but we know even more about the 'minor' perpetrators without whom genocide on such a scale wasn't possible. Whether or not they were "ordinary men" or Hitler's "willing executioners", they made the Holocaust by Bullets a sickening reality.
Each SS has an entry, easy to read and later possibly a photo. The appendices provide useful information such rank progressions and combat experience compared to those in the concentration camp system, post war justice (very little), police units involved and more. Also included are numerous photographs of the Einsatzgruppen carrying out various activities, including executions - some of which had not been published previously but all are shocking.
Hannah Arendt was once criticized for describing Eichmann as the 'banality of evil' but if you look at the perpetrators in MacLean's photographs, this could easily be said of the SS depicted - the plain and utter indifference to those they are killing or about to kill. The photograph of blindfolded Jews being 'escorted' by their individual executioner past an SS senior NCO who is indifferently smoking a cigarette as he looks at the camera is particularly disturbing.
It isn't possible to really grasp the size and scale of the Holocaust but volumes such as this do help. MacLean provides another valuable study to the Holocaust. His purpose was partially to expose those responsible - the major criminals such as Blobel and Ohlendorf are fairly well known, but we know even more about the 'minor' perpetrators without whom genocide on such a scale wasn't possible. Whether or not they were "ordinary men" or Hitler's "willing executioners", they made the Holocaust by Bullets a sickening reality.
Displaying 1 of 1 review