Day 271 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes is, without a doubt, the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. Rhodes starts off by giving the reader a glimpse of what the SS was and the Einsatzgruppen in particular. Just a general overview. Then he talks about the group that was to enter Russia in 1941.

As the title suggests, the Einsatzgruppen was the “special tasks” arm of the SS. Prior to 1941, their task was to secure occupied territory before German civilians took over the administration of the area. They’d confiscate weapons and documents, arrest people against the Nazi regime, and, of course, murder the “political, educational, religious and intellectual leadership” (page 4).

But in 1941 that all changed. No longer did they follow the army, they were to become part of the front lines, going in alongside of it when Hitler gave the order to invade Russia. The people in this “elite” group were not what I would have expected. They were lawyers, educators, physicians – most of the men in this group had earned doctoral degrees. They weren’t radical outlaws, or brutal mass murderers… they were school teachers, your neighborhood doctor, your accountant, and according to Rhodes and the data he cites throughout the book, “No more sinister phalanx was ever loosed on the world” (page 18).

Okay, that’s chapter one in a nutshell. Chapter two discusses violence. “Violence is an instrumentality, not a psychopathology or a character disorder. Violence is a means to an end – domination and control – one of many possible means” (page 19).

Rhodes spends a great amount of time talking about various theories on violence. He talks about the difference between “legal” violence (such as a police officer in the line of duty) and “illegal” violence (murder, willful act, police brutality. He states, quite accurately in my opinion, “any theory of violence development that fails to account for official violent behavior as well as criminal is incomplete” (page 20). At this point, he brings to light the research of Lonnie Athens, an American criminologist and why his theory about violent socialization is correct.

Athens’ theory divides the violent socialization process into four stages, which Rhodes explains in detail while relating it to not just the Einsatzgruppen, but Hitler himself.

Chapters three and four take us through the initial invasion of Russia and the beginnings of the horrors to follow. Here Rhodes starts to give us eyewitness accounts, testimony from the Nuremberg Trials, memoirs from survivors – each one becoming more gruesome than the last.

From there we get two chapters devoted to Heinrich Himmler. First we learn that “both the men doing the killing and the leaders ordering and directing it had to find a way to stomach it… a conditioning process was necessary” (page 69). Leaders had to keep their men in control and teach them to kill people who appeared unthreatening (elderly, children, infants), and yet Himmler knew he had to keep them from going off the deep end.

Rhodes then gives us insight into Himmler’s childhood and life up to 1934 – and chapter six takes us through the early years with Hitler in power. The last chapter of “Part One” discusses the “controversy” about when Hitler actually gave the order to begin the Final Solution – which he believes was in July 1941 (and he shows how movement of troops, testimony from Nuremberg trials, etc line up with this date).

Then we meet Friedrich Jeckeln, who in August 1941, personally supervised the murder of more than 44,000 human beings. I got out my calculator – that comes out to just over 1400 persons per day that were killed. That’s more people than in my hometown murdered in one day.

Part Two of the book is appropriately entitled “Seven Departments of Hell.” From here (chapter eight) Rhodes takes us through the invasion of Russia, almost city by city, and we meet the leaders of these “special tasks” groups and all of their “inventive” ways of murdering people. By the end of chapter nine, you have a very vivid view of who these people were and how they killed – and how many.

Chapter ten begins with Himmler viewing his first mass execution in Minsk – the date was 15 August 1941. And the effect it had on Himmler changed a lot of things. He panicked at the sight of two women who’d been injured but not killed and the loss of the firing squad’s nerve of having to kill them. So… Himmler wanted to find a more “humane” way of killing the women and children. And that eventually led to the infamous gas chambers.

Rhodes points out that even though the gas chambers have become almost synonymous with the Holocaust, they were actually the exception to the rule. The primary means of execution was by firearms and lethal privation. He also states that contrary to many historians’ beliefs, shooting was not less efficient than gassing, it was just easier on the shooters’ nerves.

Then Rhodes points out something I never really picked up on through all of my reading on Hitler and WWII: the Einsatzgruppen perpetrated these mass executions away from home. They weren’t in Germany – they were in occupied territories – away from domestic public opinion. They were judge, jury and executioner all in one.

Rhodes touches briefly on the euthanasia program in Germany (200,000 killed by the end of WWII) and how, because it was happening in Germany, and the public opinion was not in favor of it, Hitler had to cease this program. Which, I’m sure just irked him.

And it’s around this time that Hitler officially authorized the killing in the East to include women and children.

The next chapter (eleven) centers on Babi Yar. Now remember back in August when 44,000 people were killed in one month? Babi Yar, a ravine situated between three districts of Kiev, became a death pit. On two days in September (29 and 30) 33,771 Jews were executed.

Chapter twelve – more slaughter. More eyewitness testimonies. More stories from survivors. More insights into the lunatics performing the executions. Children murdered, ghettos erected, hospitals torched, more death.

Chapter thirteen shows in grisly detail how 25,000 people were murdered in Rumbula. This chapter alone will make your stomach toss and turn. It is just beyond the scope of understanding – the brutality – the extreme violence – the gruesomeness.

After all of that, chapter fourteen shows us the psychological impact on some of these men. Information is pulled from private diaries, “co-workers” and trials. Rhodes shows how they believed (after all of Hitler’s propaganda) that these people were basically just animals or sub-human. In other cases, they believed they had to follow orders and that they weren’t accountable because they were doing what they were ordered to do.

The last few chapters deal with the increased use of the gas chambers and mass executions now that it looks like the war is turning against Germany. We’re taken up to Himmler’s suicide and burial in an unmarked grave.

The Epilogue is the most discouraging. The number of Einsatzgruppen brought to trial is staggeringly low. “It follows that most Einsatzgruppen, Order Police, Totenkopf, Waffen-SS and other SS members who perpetrated mass murder in the East during the Second World War were neither indicted nor convicted but have lived out their lives in freedom, unpunished, a liberty they summarily denied their victims” (page 275-276).

If you can stomach it, it’s worth the read. But it is gruesome and leaves nothing to the imagination. It makes Schindler’s List look like a Disney movie.