Description
By (author) McKale Donald M.
:
This deeply researched and informative book traces the biographies of thirty “typical” perpetrators of the Holocaust—some well known, some obscure—who survived World War II. Donald M. McKale reveals the shocking reality that the perpetrators were only rarely, if ever, tried or punished for their crimes, and nearly all alleged their innocence in Germany”s extermination of nearly six million European Jews during the war. He highlights the bitter contrasts between the comfortable postwar lives of many war criminals and the enduring suffering of their victims.The author shows how immediately after the war”s end in 1945, Hitler”s minions, whether the few placed on trial or the many living in freedom, carried on what amounted to a massive postwar ideological campaign against Jews. To be sure, the perpetrators didn”t challenge the fact that the Holocaust happened. But in the face of exhaustive evidence showing their culpability, nearly all declared they had done nothing wrong, they had not known about the Jewish persecution until the war”s end, and they had little or no responsibility or guilt for what had happened. In making these and other claims denying their involvement in the Holocaust, they defended the Nazi atrocities and anti-Semitism. Nearly every fabrication of these war criminals found its way into the mythology of postwar Holocaust deniers, who have used them, in one form or another, to buttress the deniers” biggest lie—that the Holocaust did not happen. The perpetrators, therefore, helped advance Holocaust denial without having denied the Holocaust happened.Written in a compelling narrative style, Nazis after Hitler is the first to provide an overview of the lives of Nazis who survived the war, the vast majority of whom escaped justice. McKale provides a unique and accessible synthesis of the extensive research on the Holocaust and Nazi war criminals that will be invaluable for all readers interested in World War II.
Table of contents:
Chapter 1: World War II and Allied Promises Chapter 2: Four Faces of Genocide: What Happened in the War Chapter 3: Leaving Auschwitz Chapter 4: A Liberation of Contrasts Chapter 5: Soviet “Liberators” Chapter 6: In the Custody of Leniency Chapter 7: Nuremberg, Number Two, and the Substitute Chapter 8: Nuremberg: “King Frank” Chapter 9: Nuremberg: “Fred” the “Endowed Seer” and Verdicts and Sentences Chapter 10: Poland: Occasional Trials amid a Continuing Holocaust Chapter 11: Memory in West Germany: Long and Short Chapter 12: Pseudo-Purges and Politics Chapter 13: Other Trials and Amnesty Chapter 14: Eichmann, Jerusalem, and Eichmann’s Henchmen Chapter 15: Hunting the Comfortable Chapter 16: Four Faces Long after the War: What Didn’t Happen Chapter 17: The Post-Holocaust World
Review quote:
McKale”s book stands out, not only for the detailed review of the war crimes of innumerous Nazis, but because he also chronicles their lives in the years following WWII. The book is graphic and the memories of survivors are painful to absorb, as one prisoner describes a concentration camp like ”Dante”s inferno . . . come to life,” while another recounts mass executions in the gas chamber. McKale uncovers a recurring theme of denial during criminal trials: Dr. Warner Best insisted that the first time he heard about the killing of 5–6 million Jews was in the courtroom and Josef Kramer claimed, ”I did not know the purpose of the gas chamber.” But it”s the enduring anti-Semitic attitude that resounds throughout the book; many war criminals went unpunished in the years following WWII. Even Adolf Eichmann, one of the most infamous Nazi criminals, went free for nearly twenty years, escaping Germany through a well-established ”rat line.” McKale ends the book with a haunting question: whether life would be different today if the Allies had pursued Holocaust criminals more aggressively afte
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