Thursday, March 29, 2018

“The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945”, by Gerald Reitlinger


502 pages, Arms & Armour Press, ISBN-13: 978-0853681878

The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945 is author Gerald Reitlinger’s thorough and authoritative history of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) and its growth from a small paramilitary formation designed to protect the Nazi leadership at rallies to one of the most powerful organizations in Germany. From 1929 until the regime’s collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. Reitlinger records its foundation as a police guard of about two-hundred members, to its development and growth over a decade later into a force of a half-million with a wide diversity of functions, and (thank God) its ultimate destruction of what had morphed into a vast criminal enterprise. Ultimately, the SS would possess its own military divisions in the field, the ubiquitous Gestapo offices across the Reich, and about a dozen Vernichtungslager (extermination camps) in Poland; this was in addition to such projects as “Germanic” archaeology, the cultivation of wild rubber roots and medicinal herbs, and the control of several nightclubs. In the end, the SS was an example of bureaucracy gone mad (if you are not amazed at how this kraken-like monstrosity seized hold of every police and civil branch within an increasingly-menacing police state then lord help ya).

Be careful with the first 20% or so of the book, as these German names and their relationships to one another can get pretty confusin’, but stick with it as ultimately these nefarious actors become more well-defined as every conversation or statement from the main characters is routinely cited from firsthand accounts; helpfully, the book includes an extensive bibliography and biographies of dozens of characters in the upper echelons of the Nazi military, SS and civil bureaucracy. Reitlinger weaves a remarkable tapestry of names, places and events in order to give the reader a better understanding of the inner workings of the Nazi government, their secret orders to exterminating the Jews, Slavs and other Untermenschen (sub-human) races, the often public denials of the concentration camps by members of the highest rank, the contests for power under Hitler, and the seductions and betrayals between officers and agents at the heart of the German Reich.

But Alibi of a Nation is so much more than a history of the SS; it is also – maybe even primarily – an especially brilliant piece of political analysis and a full-scale attack upon a popular fraud perpetuated by the inheritors of Germany. The fraud Reitlinger mercilessly scorches is the idea that the SS concealed its operations from the political and military leaders, a fraud that has been assiduously propagated since the downfall of Hitler to enable Germans to deny their knowledge of – and, hence complicity in – the SS atrocities. His major effort goes into demonstrating the role of the SS at the top levels of Nazi policy and administration and in their role of “Working Towards the Führer”. In reality, the book concerns Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Karl Dönitz and the conflicts and pressures and manipulations and murder plots within the Party hierarchy. If the structure and activities of the SS (there is a lengthy, almost unbearable section on the death camps) are carefully expounded, the SS is seem primarily as an instrument and embodiment of the inner political and personal views of the total Nazi regime.

Reitlinger has written an important scholarly addition to any library, a bleak book that details the most insidious plots and conversations among some of history’s most brutal mass murderers, the corruption of their officers, and the incredible processes of armies within armies, states within the states, and secret intelligence forces within the police and other ministries.

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