I must begin this review with the acknowledgement that Mr. Dershowitz has rendered praiseworthy service on behalf of Patricia Hearst and other unjustly accused individuals. He also has a great understanding of legal principles and can communicate these precepts very clearly.
Unfortunately however an honest and reasonable reader must conclude from his book Chutzpah that Mr. Dershowitz is a Henry Morgenthau style racist. Both Morgenthau and Dershowitz advocated severe limits on the industry and living standards in Germany after World War II. On pages 136 to 139 everything Mr. Dershowitz writes about Germany is erroneous and wrong. Mr. Dershowitz makes the tacit assumption that the Nazi holocaust was a unique event in world history. Hence he can argue that ethnic Germans are uniquely stigmatized. However this argument is wrong. Yes, the Nazi dictatorship killed six million, men, women, and children because of their Jewish ethnicity in an often horrible manner. But there have been similar holocausts. In the Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin in 1932 and 1933 conducted a man made planned famine that killed seven million Ukrainians as well as a large proportion of the Kazakh population among other victims. Of course men, women, and children were killed by the millions in this holocaust. Similarly Mao Zedong murdered millions in parts of China in his Great Leap forward famine. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge murdered three million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. North Korea, the recent incarnation of the Nazi dictatorship, has killed four million people. And over history there have been numerous tribal massacres that did not kill as many people as the Nazis did mainly because the tribal leaders lacked the means at Hitler's disposal.
Mr. Dershowitz would benefit from examining R.J. Rummel website on democide (mass murder) and genocide. He would learn mass murder is not a uniquely German phenomenon.
Mr. Dershowitz states that Germans voted for and supported Hitler to reap material benefits from Hitler's conquests. Wrong. The Nazis never exceeded 37 per cent of the vote in a free election. In the last free election in 1933 the Nazis had 33 per cent of the vote. Hitler was worried his movement failed until Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor and, as became apparent, dictator. And German voters did not vote for Hitler to start another World War. They voted for Hitler mainly to end the severe and continuing Great Depression in the country. The desire to end the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty and unjust reparations was another reason. There was no free vote on the establishment of Auschwitz just like there was no vote on setting up Stalin's Gulag.
Mr. Dershowitz wants to believe that Germany's recovery after World War II and during the 1950s was due entirely to the Marshall Plan and U.S. aid. Again wrong. Germany received less aid per capita than some other European countries. Germany's recovery occurred because the country had and has a literate population, a work ethic, and a large number of skilled workers. Also the beneficial growth oriented economic policies of the Konrad Adenauer government helped rebuild the country.
Nor is it true Germans, Nazis or not, suffered no penalty after World War II. Germany lost roughly one third of its territory, namely East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia, after the war. Ethnic Germans in these areas and other countries in Eastern Europe were deported by the millions to the remaining German areas. Hundreds of thousands were taken to work as slave laborers in the Soviet Union for years. Over fifteen million ethnic Germans were uprooted, often placed in concentration camps, often starved and all remaining alive soon deported to the remaining Germany. Of these roughly two million, one third of the number of Jewish holocaust victims, died from deliberate murder, starvation, disease, and overwork. In the refugee overrun Germany itself the western allies imposed the JCS1067, a version of the Morgenthau plan, that prevented action toward German recovery for several years. Millions remained impoverished. In both east and west Germany factories were dismantled and sent to the victor countries. For years after the war the allies looted German patents for the benefit of Allied businesses and industrials concerns.
It should be shocking that racists attempt to limit the prosperity, job opportunities, and perhaps even the sustenance of Germans. Germans have contributed vastly to European and world civilization. Among other inventions Germans have invented the printing press, the automobile (Karl and Bertha Benz), and the Otto and Diesel engines. Germans have provided the world with numerous pioneering mathematicians such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Gottfried Leibniz. Germans have contributed vastly to music and other fine arts. The socialist totalitarian Nazi period was only twelve years of over one thousand years of the often incredibly rich and productive existence of German culture.
Mr. Dershowitz may believe he is an angel of justice. Unfortunately the reality is he often resembles Selma Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark.