Crimes of the Old-Right

The Prisoners of Breendonk by James M. Deem
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2015]
xi, 340 p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps ; 24 cm.

Deem has done something that is difficult to do - written a fresh Holocaust book that brings something new to light (a nearly forgotten Nazi-run prison in occupied Belgium), reveals the mundane and depraved day to day sadism and savagery of the Nazis, and rescues from oblivion the humanity of the men who suffered and/or were murdered at this prison.

I couldn't read the book cover to cover. It was just too hard to revisit the beatings, starvation, humiliations, tortures, executions, and day-to-day cruelties committed against the prisoners in Breendonk. However, the book uses a great many photographs, and personal testimonies to bring to life the inmates of the prison - and to put faces and names on the perpetrators of this smaller, but still horrible Nazi concentration camp.

I would definitely recommend this book to students who know some of the basic facts about the Holocaust, but who want to really engage with the people who were involved.  With maps, diagrams, artistic sketches from an inmate, reproduced documents, and many stunning photographs, Prisoners of Breendonk is a powerful read.

Finally, the book is a stark reminder of the horrendous crimes of the original Nazis - and the dangers posed by the current neo-Nazis and so-called "alt-right" groups and leaders experiencing a resurgence of power and influence in the US and Europe.


   

A Terrible January

A torchlight parade of SA formations passes in review before President Paul von Hindenberg, who sits in the window of the chancellery, on the night when Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany - USHMM

Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.
Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996.
xii, 255 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. ; 23 cm.

This was a very readable and informative book.  It is also a very disturbing and painful book to read, since I had not realized that the fortunes of the Nazis were very much in decline at the start of New Year, 1933. It really is a remarkable look at how Hitler insisted on an all or nothing offer of power, in spite of many pressures from within and without of the Nazi party for him to accept a coalition role in governing Germany.

There is much to ruminate over in this short, powerful look at the fateful month of January 1933: the willingness of the bourgeoisie to accept the violent and racist rule of the Nazis, the role of the rule of law in allowing the rise of dictatorial powers, the mistakes of elites in assuming they can control the representatives of vulgar right-wing populism.  There is also just the awful realization of what handing the reins of power to Hitler will mean for the Germans, the Jews, and the world.

I would definitely recommend this book to any student interested in the rise of the Nazis.