Hitler and the Final Solution

by Gerald Fleming, Saul Friedländer (Illustrator)

Fleming is the only scholar given access to the interrogations of the German civilian crematoria engineers lying inaccessible, until a few months ago, in Moscow. This historically important information finally places the last stone in the mosaic of Auschwitz-Berkenau.

Genres: Holocaust, History, Nonfiction

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Q: Although you knew about the mass liquidation of innocent human beings in the crematoria, you devoted yourself to designing and creating high-capacity incineration furnaces for crematoria - and on your own initiative?

A: I was a German engineer and a key member of the Topf works, and I saw it as my duty to apply my specialist knowledge in this way to help Germany win the war, just as in wartime an aircraft construction engineer builds airplanes, which also kill human beings.

(from a 1946 interrogation)

Despite all his Jew-hating rhetoric, writings, and speeches, Hitler was careful never to issue a written order for the extermination of European Jewry. This led revisionist historians like David Irving to pretend Hitler was unaware of his own Final Solution until 1943. But there's still much evidence, written and oral, that that was his intention. Fleming ferreted some of it out, through interviews with former Nazi officials, and hidden archives.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and persuasive refutation of the 'functionalist' position on the Holocause, and a defense of the 'intentionalist' position.

[Molly Carswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in the study of Anti-Semitic Nazi policies, this is a good read. It discusses the intentionalist and functionalist arguments, as well as looking at the war as the most significant factor for the radicalisation of such policies. There are plenty of sources, and does not take all of them at face value!

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painstaking and exhaustive refutation of David Irving's thesis in Hitler's War that the Final Solution was all Himmler's doing.

[Carl Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novelists need to know the final solution.