DOC Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoss in History

Review

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. credible account of incredible inhumanityBy AlMy main concern reading Rudolf Hoess' memoirs was how credible I would find them. I knew he wrote them while in Polish custody; and I was afraid some Marxist official had written them and just put Hoess' name on them.Having finished the book; I can report that I find it believable that Hoess wrote them. There are enough descriptions of things that don't incriminate Hoess or the Third Reich and would serve no propaganda value from a Marxist or Polish perspective; that I do find the book credible.For example; Hoess compares the Allied treatment of German POWs with German treatment of Soviet POWs:"The army was not prepared for the masses of prisoners captured in 1941. The entire bureaucracy handling POWs was much too rigid and immovable and could not improvise quickly to meet the situation. By the way; the German POWs did not fare any better during the collapse in May 1945. The Allies also were not prepared for this mass influx. The prisoners were simply herded together on suitable terrain; surrounded by barbed wire; and then left to themselves. The German POWs suffered the same way as the Russians did." p. 132.With that observation; Hoess foreshadows James Bacques' assertions in his book; Other Losses; first published in the 1980s.Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War IIFor the most part; Hoess' assertions are believable. The most difficult to take seriously regard the Sonderkommando; the prisoners who were made to dispose of the bodies of gassed victims; he has them eating food; while handling corpses of people who've just been murdered with poison gas; on page 45.This edition of this book includes much additional material; including a foreward by Primo Levi; in which he addresses whether the book might not be genuine; he points out that the "confessions extorted by... the Moscow Trials of the 1930's had an entirely different tone." p.9.This edition also includes "final letters" Hoess wrote his family; profiles of the camps and profiles of the SS; written by Hoess. The latter includes a lengthy and scathing description of Heinrich Himmler; in which Hoess claims "[I]n the summer of 1941 Himmler summoned me to Berlin to give me the disastrous and harsh order for the mass annihilation of the Jews from all over Europe." p286.Appendices include a quote from the "Reminiscences of Pery Broad;" from KL Auschwitz as Seen by the SS; about a massacre at an Auschwitz sub-camp called Buda; a Chronology of Important Events at Auschwitz-Birkenau; by Danuta Czech; and the complete Wannsee Conference Minutes.8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Sobering Look At the Bureacracy of MurderBy Kindle CustomerOther reviews have adequately described the uniqueness of this diary. I want to comment briefly on its contents.What I found fascinating was Hoss' description of the petty rivalries various bureacracies within the Nazi regime had for each other; and their competing aims. These rivalries are very matter-of-factly explained; even though they involved the intentional murder of millions.For example; Speer and his war production needs placed significant demands for slave labor. This collided with Himmler's orders to kill all the Jews. So there was constant tension between finding sufficient slaves from the "prison" populations; keeping them healthy enough to be useful slave laborers; and yet also satisfy demands for more numbers of Jews killed. The Nazi doctors; meanwhile; had their own concerns -- they did not want to certify borderline Jews as "healthy" for slave labor; and then find their limited medical sources "wasted" on treating sick Jews that were going to die and were not particularly useful to the war machine anyways.The banal nature of this testimony -- by supposedly "educated" European bureacrats as they efficiently calculate planning and other material needs of a large sophisticated war economy -- is simply stunning.I also found his first-hand accounts of the final phase of the war to be interesting -- the trail of tears of millions of displaced German civilians; slave laborers; soldiers and of course Auschwitz 'death marchers' all converged in a mad rush through the snow to escape the marauding Russians; all while Allied bombs fell overhead.The personal details; as Primo Levi notes brilliantly in his introduction; are scary for their apparent lack of self-awareness and intense need for projection and/or denial.Hoss was a skilled cog; indoctrinated into a propaganda machine that emphasized country; loyalty and moral and racial superiority. His defense of anti-semitism (the Nazis got it wrong in its execution; but not in its ideology) remains one of the more chilling aspects of his "confession."Recommended.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. His message is quite clear that it is very easy for evil to transform otherwise good people into efficient ...By wbummerThis book is a collection of writings by R. Hoss that explores his transformation from a boy destined to the priesthood into the Commandant of Auschwitz. It is a series of notes that he wrote during his captivity and trial for crimes against humanity. As such; it is filled with repetitions and is not well edited. His message is quite clear that it is very easy for evil to transform otherwise good people into efficient killing machines.