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The Third Reich #18
The Apparatus of Death
Essays and photographs trace the history of the Holocaust
190 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 22, 2024
One of the more chilling moments in reading this book is when you get to the point about how we know some of what we know and that in a couple of cases you can name all the survivors of a famous camp because the number that made it through was that few. The fact that there are any pictures at all is something of a miracle given how tight the security was.
This is an important read in terms of contextualizing the genocide and looking at how it was organized so if takes you from the first rudimentary experiments with camps and detention to the focus on mass murders in the conquests of 1939-41 into the Wannsee Conference that outlined the logistics of the genocide and then into the rival murder industries that developed.
As other volumes in this Time-Life series demonstrate, the mythology of fascism as a well-oiled machine (which is part of its continuing appeal to some people) is in fact a myth. Even when it came to genocide, the Germans had a system that was inefficient. The "Operation Reinhardt" death camps, for instance, were rivals to the work/death camps like the Auschwitz system. The Reinhardt camps never switched to Zyklon B because they were obstinately conservative about using carbon monoxide. Not that this inefficiency really made that much of a difference. Being murdered by inefficient people doesn't make it better or worse than being murdered on time. I just think it's important to clear up some of the lingering mythology that seeps even into things like Barbie where when she's called a fascist she cries and says that she "doesn't control" infrastructure etc. and the truth is that neither did the fascists.
You'll notice that in the above I used the word Germans and not Nazis. That's because this is one of those books that makes it clear that when speaking of this mass murder and genocide it was committed by thousands of willing participants who were at the very least indifferent to the people they were killing. I'm looking around the room at some of y'all who are able to show the same indifference in this very time as Babi Yar is recreated over and over again and the complicity piles up with the bodies. The genocide of old was also at the least shrugged off and often enthusiastically joined by ordinary folks--not just obvious villains. People from the Baltics and Ukraine in particular may get defensive in the sections that mention the enthusiastic way in which large numbers of them (and Poles too) joined in the killing both during the ad hoc killings and later as part of the concentration camp system.
Of special note in terms of contemporary relevance are the acts of resistance like the risings in Sobibor, and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The original plan was to "liquidate" the ghetto as a birthday gift for Hitler.
"Untrained and outnumbered three to one, the ghetto fighters knew they were doomed to fail, but they were determined to make the Nazis bleed for every inch of ground. The uprising was undertaken 'solely for death with dignity, and without the slightest hope of victory in life,' wrote Alexander Donat, one of the survivors."
If you can read these stories of planned genocide, resistance, reprisals, collective punishment and not draw parallels and conclusions, then you either don't know how to read and need some remedial work in reading/interpretation or need to get comfortable with knowing who you really are.
This is an important read in terms of contextualizing the genocide and looking at how it was organized so if takes you from the first rudimentary experiments with camps and detention to the focus on mass murders in the conquests of 1939-41 into the Wannsee Conference that outlined the logistics of the genocide and then into the rival murder industries that developed.
As other volumes in this Time-Life series demonstrate, the mythology of fascism as a well-oiled machine (which is part of its continuing appeal to some people) is in fact a myth. Even when it came to genocide, the Germans had a system that was inefficient. The "Operation Reinhardt" death camps, for instance, were rivals to the work/death camps like the Auschwitz system. The Reinhardt camps never switched to Zyklon B because they were obstinately conservative about using carbon monoxide. Not that this inefficiency really made that much of a difference. Being murdered by inefficient people doesn't make it better or worse than being murdered on time. I just think it's important to clear up some of the lingering mythology that seeps even into things like Barbie where when she's called a fascist she cries and says that she "doesn't control" infrastructure etc. and the truth is that neither did the fascists.
You'll notice that in the above I used the word Germans and not Nazis. That's because this is one of those books that makes it clear that when speaking of this mass murder and genocide it was committed by thousands of willing participants who were at the very least indifferent to the people they were killing. I'm looking around the room at some of y'all who are able to show the same indifference in this very time as Babi Yar is recreated over and over again and the complicity piles up with the bodies. The genocide of old was also at the least shrugged off and often enthusiastically joined by ordinary folks--not just obvious villains. People from the Baltics and Ukraine in particular may get defensive in the sections that mention the enthusiastic way in which large numbers of them (and Poles too) joined in the killing both during the ad hoc killings and later as part of the concentration camp system.
Of special note in terms of contemporary relevance are the acts of resistance like the risings in Sobibor, and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The original plan was to "liquidate" the ghetto as a birthday gift for Hitler.
"Untrained and outnumbered three to one, the ghetto fighters knew they were doomed to fail, but they were determined to make the Nazis bleed for every inch of ground. The uprising was undertaken 'solely for death with dignity, and without the slightest hope of victory in life,' wrote Alexander Donat, one of the survivors."
If you can read these stories of planned genocide, resistance, reprisals, collective punishment and not draw parallels and conclusions, then you either don't know how to read and need some remedial work in reading/interpretation or need to get comfortable with knowing who you really are.
February 12, 2016
It feels strange and uncomfortable to give a five star rating to a book about the most cruel and gruesome events of modern times. But if I could, I would make this book about the Nazi extermination of the third reich's (not capitalized on purpose) victims mandatory reading for every school age child in America age fourteen and up. Seriously. And their teachers.
This book's unsanitized exposure of the so-called 'final solution' leaves out none of the details vital to understanding what it took me so long as an adult to come to grips with. The Holocaust did not 'just happen.' It was not a 'consequence of WWI sanctions designed to 'punish' the former Weimar Republic.' (These are some of the things adults lied to me about in school and in real life that it took me decades to unravel.) The effort to exterminate all of European Jewish life and culture was a cold, calculated and totally planned genocide. (While this book takes care to document what also happened to non-Jewish victims of the Nazi death camps, it does not deny that Jews were the true targets of the final solution's ugly trajectory.)
I will also give the book points for not regurgitating equally common lies spread about Adolph Hitler himself, including the misnomer he was 'simply crazy,' a drug addict high on amphetamines, or a tool or puppet of some other menacing force. Apparatus of Death shows Hitler's bloodless nature in all of its indefensible reality ('just a 'crazy despot' is maybe the most offensive recent rumor I've heard particularly media circulate about him).
Despite its brevity, this is probably the best book on the Holocaust I've encountered--because of its refusal to gloss over any facts, to dare to include color photos of the conditions of both Ghetto and concentration camp indignities and murder, and because its focus never strays from the tragic (and still utterly relevant) truth: the German government sat down and deliberately thought out how best to carry out these horrific crimes. 'Evil' may have been the result, but humankind and its base prejudices were the instigators.
This book's unsanitized exposure of the so-called 'final solution' leaves out none of the details vital to understanding what it took me so long as an adult to come to grips with. The Holocaust did not 'just happen.' It was not a 'consequence of WWI sanctions designed to 'punish' the former Weimar Republic.' (These are some of the things adults lied to me about in school and in real life that it took me decades to unravel.) The effort to exterminate all of European Jewish life and culture was a cold, calculated and totally planned genocide. (While this book takes care to document what also happened to non-Jewish victims of the Nazi death camps, it does not deny that Jews were the true targets of the final solution's ugly trajectory.)
I will also give the book points for not regurgitating equally common lies spread about Adolph Hitler himself, including the misnomer he was 'simply crazy,' a drug addict high on amphetamines, or a tool or puppet of some other menacing force. Apparatus of Death shows Hitler's bloodless nature in all of its indefensible reality ('just a 'crazy despot' is maybe the most offensive recent rumor I've heard particularly media circulate about him).
Despite its brevity, this is probably the best book on the Holocaust I've encountered--because of its refusal to gloss over any facts, to dare to include color photos of the conditions of both Ghetto and concentration camp indignities and murder, and because its focus never strays from the tragic (and still utterly relevant) truth: the German government sat down and deliberately thought out how best to carry out these horrific crimes. 'Evil' may have been the result, but humankind and its base prejudices were the instigators.
September 5, 2011
I read this for a book project I'm working on. It went into far more detail than I had previously known about the death camps and the Nazis systematic approach to eliminating every single Jew in their realm of power. The fact that the Nazis devoted untold time, money and energy to applying mass production principles to the destruction of a segment of the human population was perhaps what shook me most to the core. The complete irreverence for human life, especially small helpless children, made me feel physically sick. A bit dense at times, but mostly well-written.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews