Architects of Annihilation

This paradigm-shattering book goes beyond Nazi anti-Semitism and racism as the sole explanations for German genocidal policies. The author is a German scholar. German economists, as elaborated by Aly, had studied Poland and come to the conclusion that her inefficiencies had been caused by a combination of Polish mismanagement and Jewish economic dominance. (pp. 53-59; see also p. 230). There was "overpopulation" (p. 43, 54, etc.), defined as follows: "Consequently, they would be consuming the theoretically possible surpluses that could otherwise have been invested in increasing the national income or promoting industrialization". (p. 60). "Useless eaters" (mentally handicapped, etc.) throughout the Reich were killed. In order to increase conquered Poland's productivity for Germany's benefit, the Germans lowered the living standards of the Poles still further through massive exploitation, and removed "surplus" workers by murder or deportation. Millions of "redundant" Polish farmers were sent to the Reich's factories for productive work. This paralleled the earlier forced collectivization and industrialization under Soviet Communism. (pp. 66-69). In order to increase the productivity of the remaining Poles (pp. 133-134, 138-139, 160-on), Jews were removed: first sent to ghettos, then to would-be Lublin-province or Madagascar, and, failing that, to death. Germans got rich off Jewish properties by keeping the best ones and reselling inferior ones at inflated prices to Aly-described needy [not greedy] Poles. (p. 121). The Auschwitz complex was not solely a concentration camp and death factory. It was part of the long-term German project to develop Silesia into the "second Ruhr" (p. 102), and was intended to be used for at least 10-20 years. (p. 112). Holocaust-uniqueness proponents have long contended that, whereas all the non-Jewish genocides in history had been rational acts intended to benefit the perpetrator, the Holocaust was a deeply irrational act that only harmed Germany economically and militarily. Aly soundly debunks this myth. He writes: "To put it another way: the railroad system in the East, already overstretched by the war in the Soviet Union, was placed under increasing strain with every day that the Warsaw Ghetto remained in existence. Even under a policy of total starvation, several hundred wagon-loads of goods had to be shipped in every day to keep the ghetto supplied, whereas the carriage costs involved in transporting those people to their death were much lower--and they were incurred only once." (p. 184). Nor did the extermination of the Jews create a labor shortage and hinder wartime production. Just the opposite: It was part of the 1942-1943 productivity-enhancing elimination/consolidation of 144,100 businesses in just the GG. (pp. 210-213). [Of course, some Jewish laborers, deemed productive throughout, were kept alive, and survived the war.] To increase productivity further, Germans replaced locals entirely, at ratios

Given that Hitler was a frustrated architect himself, the metaphoric title of this book is apt in more ways than just one. In fact, Hitler had all but adopted Albert Speer, a talented architect, as his alter ego, friend and surrogate son, eventually commissioning him to redesign the city of Munich so as to better reflect the grandeur of the thousand-year Reich -- that in the end actually lasted only twelve years. But the focus of this text is not just on the grandeur of the Third Reich, or only on key members of the upper echelon of the Nazi bureaucracy. It is primarily about the true architects of the Nazi Empire, the petite bourgeoisie: the civil servants, the policy wonks, the intellectuals, demographers, geographers, and other academics, who with cold-blooded, calculated and sterile logic and precision, conceived the models and the abstractions that became the intellectual basis for the machinery of death. It was bureaucrats that fleshed-out and put Hitler's plans on the drawing board, engineered the specifications for them, and helped implement Nazi aggressive war policy and hegemony in general, and the "final solution" in particular. In what is a surprisingly routine, almost linear (but nevertheless very robust) analysis and investigation of the organizational planning, the political structure and bureaucratic recordkeeping left by the "anal retentive" Teutonic working level bureaucrats, this book connects the dots between what the petite bureaucrats (behind the Nazi throne) were doing as they became intoxicated with prospects of an early Nazi victory, and the actions taken by Hitler's military and diplomats during the period from the first nationwide pogrom against the Jews (Crystal Nacht) to the full operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. It was during this period, roughly 1939 to the end of 1941, that Germany was fully flexing its military muscles, rapidly emerging as the dominant power of the world. Hitler, along with his Luftwaffe, U-boats and blitzkreig had completely over-run Europe and now had his petite bureaucrats drawing up plans to overtake the rest of the world. Among their grandiose plans were new models of world hegemony, plans for large-scale colonization, campaigns of annihilation, expansion to ease population pressures, especially Eastwards, involving the enslavement of the Russians and Slavs, but also for the complete subjugation of Europe. And of course the first item of priority on the new agenda was the clinical elimination of the Jews from German society and then from the rest of the world. What this book makes clear is that of all of the key components of the Nazi machinery (the personalities of Hitler and his key henchmen, the hysterical fervor of the German people, the self-perpetuating machinery of racist exclusion, the efficient totalitarian system, and the highly compartmentalized, efficient and secret way in which the Nazi regime operated), it still could not have succeed were it not also for the a

I am an avid student of WWII history and the Holocaust, and I must admit that I feel like I knew nothing before I read this book. It meticulously dissects the CULTURE of Germany and the role of the civil servant class in perpetuating the Holocaust (and the role of the citizen in ignoring it). Hitler did not rise to power in a vacuum and, in fact, this book proves that many of the atrocities that were committed were primarily discretionary decisions in the "middle management" levels of the bureaucracy. I also found much of the reconstruction of the German culture and mindset of the time to be frighteningly close to current American culture. Everything from the promotion of abortion as a convenience to the turning of a blind eye when "unprofitable" people are disposed of (Terri Schiavo, anyone?) can be seen in this evening's news. The social engineering aspect of all this is also getting eerily familiar. That aside, you must be prepared for a challenging read. This book is a translation from German, and the second book I have read that is so. The translation from German to English is difficult to achieve smoothly. Coupled with the sheer amount of documentation and the scope of the subject, this book does read like a densely packed textbook. But if you are prepared to invest the time and mental juice to apply yourself to it you will come away with an entirely different view of that particular event....and also possibly a different view of your current culture as well....

The value of this rather dry book is that it shows clearly how the idea of the Holocaust gradually developed, dispelling the theory that the Nazis came to power in 1933 with the ultimate aim of exterminating the Jews. Instead, the regime employed hundreds of economists, demographic experts and the like who studied every aspect of life in eastern and south-eastern Europe to see how these regions could be made more efficient under German rule. Whether it was central Poland or Bulgaria, the findings were the same -- there were too many unproductive people (or "dead ballast") around and something would have to be done to get rid of them. Once the Germans had come to this conclusion, the idea of exterminating the Jews gained ground irresistibly and you get the clear impression from the book that this had just as much to do with economic realities as it did with racist theories. What is also interesting is the fight between Berlin and the German rulers of the Government-General (the large chunk of central Poland), who took it into their heads to make their part of the world an economically productive unit rather than acting as a dumping ground for the unwanted from central Europe. And what is depressing is the fact that so many of these experts who produced reports about the need to eliminate "useless mouths" prospered after the war, many of them attaining important positions rather than being put up against a wall or slapped in prison for decades. For anyone really interested in exactly how the Holocaust came about, this is a crucial read.

This book will take sometime. It reads like a PhD dissertation. Perhaps it is because it is a translation of a German book. Whatever the reason, it is well worth your time and will give you a deeper understanding of the holocaust.This book focused on the people who planned and managed the holocaust - demographers, geographers, economists, civil servants, and academics. They saw population movement, control, and elimination as levers to modernize the German economy and manage its war economy. They blamed much of the economic problems of Europe on "excess" population and moved from birth control, sterilization, starvation, to the gas chambers to "manage" the social structures of Europe. They were not goose steeping cartoon Nazis or manic rascists. They just wrote reports and made analysis. The book shows that Nazi Germany was not just a nation of conquerors who just happened to hate Jews so they killed them, but that the killing was an integral logic of the state and its modernization program. If they had won the war and elminated every Jewish person from the face of the earth the gas chambers would still have kept running, because it was seen as a tool of social policy by the people who oversaw them in their offices. A pure picture of immorality and horror in which everything - life and death - is at the whim of the state.