Customer Reviews

The Camp Men: The SS Officers Who Ran the Nazi Concentration Camp System (Schiffer Military History)

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French Maclean's latest work is a resource book designed to chronicle those Nazi SS officer personnel who served in the Nazi concentration camps. While some readers may be dissatisfied with the shortness of the narrative, this is not the objective of the author. Maclean's book provides us a near complete record of all SS officers who served in the camps. He has met his objective to give a full accounting of those who were part of the great crimes perpetuated by the Nazis. While the text is an excellent source work, the lengthy photograph section is superb. The section includes extremely rare photos of the Nazi leaders at the death camps. Some photos have never appeared before, having been obtained from private sources. Maclean, now with four books on the Nazis, is quickly becoming the master of new detailed research about the Third Reich.

The only negative aspect of this marvelous book is that it was not written forty years ago, when undoubtedly it would have put numerous men behind bars. Author French MacLean appears to have left no stone unturned in a massive effort that lists and provides key background data on almost one thousand SS officers who served in the concentration camps. MacLean doesn't just rehash the dozen or so major camp commanders; he goes after, and finds, camp doctors, dentists, supply officers and guard commanders from general down to lieutenant. It would have been a prosecutor's dream in 1945; in 1999, it is a Holocaust historian's dream.

Almost everything you could want to know about each man is there: date of birth, place of birth, marital status, religion, highest rank, highest decoration, dates served in the camp, service in the Waffen-SS, SS number, Nazi Party number, and so forth, derived from the SS officer personnel files located on microfilm at the National Archives. Many biographies also have a human interest nugget of information that could range from postwar fate to whether the officer had ever been wounded in action.

A second compelling feature of this book is the presentation of a computer analysis of the officers as a whole. This includes an in-depth discussion of rank, marital status, awards, Nazi Party affiliation, SS membership, combat service, post-war fate and more. This research alone should spur even more historical research into the lives of these SS officers. Especially compelling is MacLean's treatment of the number of doctors who served in the camp, the link between concentration camp service and later Waffen-SS front-line service, and an intriguing "what if" scenario concerning the fate of the officers assigned to Operation Reinhard, the secret murder camps that killed almost two million people at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec.

The photographs are magnificent and number well over 150. Presented in black and white, they show individual studio portraits as well as group shots of these men at the camps themselves. Several will send a chill down your spine. The dozen or so maps are professionally done and show the locations, by country, of all of the major factories of death of the Nazi regime. Especially interesting are the maps, and the camp descriptions in the first part of the book, of the early Nazi camps from the 1933 to 1937 period.

In short, if you could only have one book in your personal library that presented a history of the Nazis in these notorious camps, this would be that book. It is a book you will keep at your fingertips, when reading other books about the Holocaust, for easy reference when one comes across a name of an officer. Get this book. You won't be disappointed.

Many books have been written about the Holocaust, SS and the Nazi regime in general. Where many of them fail is in referring to individuals as if the reader understands exactly where they fitted into the overall picture and is familiar with them.

If you have made more than a cursory journey through this fascinating and terrifying period this book is an essential source of reference.

The author has diligently uncovered, at the very least, the basic identity of virtually every individual who served in the concentration camp system. That many of them subsequently 'graduated' to front line service in the Waffen SS does not disguise the reality that they had camp 'pedigrees' - somewhat at odds with the popular 'we were only soldiers' cop out.

So next time a name, whether familiar or unfamiliar, crops up in a World War 2 oriented publication you are reading chances are you could reach for this book and find his ( or her!) personal details, service record, and maybe even a photograph.

Had this book been released shortly after 1945 I am certain it would have caused a great deal of discomfort to a number of individuals who subsequently covered themselves in shrouds of anonymity.

Per gli appassionati i libri di French MacLean sono stati una rivelazione. In particolare, in questo "The Camp Men" viene fatta definitiva luce sui rapporti fra le SS impegnate nei campi e le Waffen SS e più in generale sulla storia personale di quanti offrirono la propria anima al folle incubo nazista (provenienza, studi, onoreficenze, stato di servizio). Il lavoro sulle fonti è denso e accurato, l'organizzazione dei dati è puntuale, le conclusioni sono semplici e dirette. Non si tratta di un libro di uno storico: direi che l'approccio è più archivistico o statistico. Ma questi dati sono talmente immediati che chiunque abbia un minimo di conoscenza della storia delle SS non potrà che riconoscere che di uno studio del genere si sentiva assolutamente bisogno. Altamente raccomandato assieme a "The Field Men" e a "The Cruel Hunters", sempre di French MacLean.

Consisting of a long section presenting (very abridged) cv's, and a photo section, the photos are what makes the tome valuable. These pictures aren't to be found elsewhere, and for those who are fond of reading facial features, they make for a very interesting journey into the heinous world of everyday neighbors turned mass murderers.

As more information related to the persons shown is to be found on the internet at a mouse's stroke, the cv section is basically just a starter, and could well have been done away with.

Based on the initial description of this book and several of the reviews, I thought this was a book that would give in depth information about the SS officers and their roles in the concentration camps. Instead, most of the book consists of lists of officers with short biographical info. There are some very good pictures and some information, but the majority of the book is simply lists. Based on the initial description, I purchased this book for my students to use as a research tool to learn more about how the SS operated, their day to day lives, etc. I was extremely disappointed. Considering the price, I wish the description of the contents had been clearer. I would not have purchased the book.

This was the first WW2 book I read that I was not happy with. The previous reviews gave a false impression as to the content of the book, which was the original reason for my purchase. The book is nothing more than a "directory" of names of those personnel that served in the camps---no pictures at all! The photo section was not impressive, except for several photos of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This would probably be better advertised as a history reference book, don't expect anything more than cold, hard facts here.