Customer Reviews

Nazi Terror : The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans

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Johnson did an excellent job researching the Gestapo archives. Further, he strengthens the scope of the book by addressing questions one may not even consider (e.g., why church leaders, at the end of the war, actually testified in favor of Nazi/Gestapo functionaries; the petty nature of denunciations). Unfortunately, I found the book too much of a micro study of life around Krefeld and Cologne. The book's title implied (i.e., NAZI Terror) a study to include aspects of life all over Germany and even the occupied territories. To assert and suggest that what occurred in the Krefeld-Cologne area was a manifestation of the overall Nazi apparatus seems to overstretch the limits of the research provided.

Of course, Johnson's intuitive and probing translation of facts, as presented in the Gestapo files, elucidates the nature of life in Hitler's Germany. Several case studies provide glimpses into the existence of the several groups Johnson investigates (including "ordinary Germans"). Here also, I found myself keeping my mind open to the possibility that Gestapo members were only police officers. That was a feat very difficult for me to overcome having previously (a view I still hold even after having read the book) perceived that the Gestapo were simply armed thugs meting out terror at every turn. In acknowledging the "ordinary German" theory, Johnson illustrates the societal roles of people in Krefeld and Cologne, from lowly factory workers to the Cardinal and those of wives and husbands. In this sense, the vertical examination was fruitful to see how the terror operated at various levels of society. Very informative! To further complement Johnson's book, the scope of works cited in the bibliographic section should be enough to satiate any minds enquiring about any aspect of Nazi Germany.

Johnson, a Central Michigan professor and former member of Princeton's Inst of Advanced Study confronts the theses of Hannah Arendt and Daniel Goldhagen, and presents this detailed history of the Gestapo's war on Jews as well as the handicapped, Roma, Communists, Socialists, Sinti, Unionists, and opponents of the totalitarian regime. This is a must read for Holocaust scholars and WWII historians, and raises interesting issues on the role of ordinary Germans, what was known, why the population "ignored" the news, how "ordinary" were the members of the Gestapo, and the use of terror.

This interesting book is the latest entry into the ongoing debate regarding the extent of "willing' complicity on the part of the average German citizen in the Holocaust. While it claims to settle the issue by showing the extent to which the terror unleashed by the Gestapo was selective and relied on the compliance and conformity of the average German. Yet one is left uneasy with how this interpretation skates so selectively over the thousands of cases other have cited regarding the degree to which Aryans risked much to help or save German Jews. I believe this account is too generalized to be satisfactory.

The book is well written, and the arguments and evidence well presented. I have problems with the research methods employed and the sampling techniques as described. My opinion is that this book only fuels the fire, and settles nothing. The main problem with its argument that ordinary Germans knowingly and enthusiastically complied with the Nazi policy to systematically scapegoat and exterminate the Jews, the truth is that there is just too much contrary evidence to trust such sweeping claims based on the evidence introduced and cited. Such a generalized argument ignores a lot of inconvenient evidence as well as a number of other more subtle and less reassuring conclusions one could also easily reach regarding the degree to which the ordinary German participated in the extermination of the Jews.

It's true that Germany in that period was characterized by a degree of conformity and adherence to very narrowly and carefully circumscribed rules of conduct. It's also true, however, that during the 12-year reign of the Third Reich deviance from these narrowly conceived moral codes was hardly considered an active or safe option for Germans to openly adopt or publicly support. Given this conformity and the fabled German awe for authority, ordinary citizens were ripe targets for the manipulation and propaganda the Nazis churned out. Properly frightened, chastised, and manipulated, the ordinary German was so concerned for his own safety and that of his family that he scarcely had the moral courage to stand up for what he thought was the unfair treatment of Jews.

Of course, this concern for one's own skin quickly leads to cowardice, and there is no debate over the degree of such loathsome behavior many (if not most) Germans adopted. My point is emphatically not meant to excuse the cowardice of the German people, nor to deny the author's claims that many individual Germans did cooperate enthusiastically in order to benefit themselves, it is simply not accurate to say that the German people generally knew of the "Final Solution" in advance, nor while it was proceeding until very late in the game. Even Jews queried do not consistently understand the savage degree to which Hitler meant to deal with the so-called "Jewish Problem". In recently published books like "I Shall bear Witness" by a German Jew living through the holocaust in Dresden, it is not until the early 1940s that he and his fellow Jews seem to recognize the full extent of what is happening. The author, Victor Klemperer,attributes his own survival (and that of his Aryan wife), to the quiet kindness and risky interventions of countless anonymous Aryans they didn't necessarily even know.

Thus I have to confess that I wasn't convinced by the author's argument or evidence as presented that things were as clear or as simple as he claims. It is an interesting, highly readable, and well-presented book, and certainly an impressive effort on behalf of a revised version of the so-called Goldhagen thesis. However, in the real world, one comprised by ordinary, imperfect, timid, and self-interested individuals, this argument is just too general and convenient to believe (at least based on the evidence presented). And so the debate will likely continue. Enjoy!

When I read this book I wasn't surprised about its main thesis. It is a well-known fact that even the most dictatorial of governments manage to hang on to power only by judiciously dosing out the terror they choose to inflict. A regime that descends into an orgy of blood-letting against its own citizens, such as Pol Pot's Cambodia, or Idi Amin's Uganda or Macias Nguema's Equatorial Guinea can only become undone. It is also a well-known fact that most people have no strong views about events that don't affect them personally, and are willing to give significant leeway to the authorities provided they feel that they feel they are improving their own lot even if it comes at the price of persecutions against widely disliked miscreants such as Communist agitators, turbulent priests, religious sectarians (such as Jehova's Witnesses), homosexuals and Jews.

In this book, Johnson analyses the Gestapo's modus operandi throughout the Third Reich. He uses a medium-sized city and the surrounding small towns and countryside to paint a picture of the whole country. He reviews the files for several typical crimes, such as listening to foreign radio broadcasts or criticising government policies or Nazi bigwigs. He also follows the career of the Gestapo officials in the region from the beginning to the end of the Third Reich. He concludes that most Gestapo officials were typical policemen, and many in fact had careers that dated to Weimar Republic and even Imperial times, that there weren't too many of them (contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not omnipresent and rarely acted unless called in by interested parties) and that, up to the end of the war, most people were left alone even when they violated the laws. Only targeted groups, such as those mentioned above, were persecuted mercilessly. In his interviews he concludes that most Germans did not fear the police, and in fact rarely came in contact with them at all. The ubiquitous informants that most of us associate with Nazi Germany never existed (they would become very real in the post-war German Democratic Republic), and such accusations, when they came up, were frequently disregarded by the Gestapo, who were aware that the denouncers were often disgruntled relatives or former friends of the accused, out for revenge. In short, the Gestapo were not a band of sadists and thugs, but a very professional tool in the hands of a ruthless government. Something that comes across very clear is that the type of person who went into the Gestapo was not politically motivated, but merely a more or less efficient follower of orders. Which is not to say that persecuted minorities had no reason to fear for their life and property. It is just to mean that an unusually orderly, law-abiding populace had usually no reasons to worry about this risk. The persecutorial madness actually came to happen in the last winter of the War, when the Gestapo seems to have gone berserk and dedicated itself to random imprisonment and torture, often of a vile nature. In Johnson's story there was even the obligatory B-movie sadistical female guard who organised orgies with unwilling prisoners, whom she killed by the score. The real nature of the regime, and its deep nihilism were exposed in its final throes. In the small corner of Germany covered by Johnson we see some of the horrible dispair and collapse of everything human that comes across so vividly in Beevor's "The Fall of Berlin 1945" and Trevor-Roper's "The Last Days of Hitler" (Joachim Fest has recently written a book on the subject "Der Untergang", but it hasn't yet been translated into English). Of great interest is finding out what happened with the Gestapo members after the War. According to Johnson most of them were purged from the police force, and a few were blacklisted from government employment, but most were quickly cleared of any wrongdoing, and a few went back to their old jobs (one hopes, having learned a few lessons-but maybe not). Most of them had no trouble producing character witnesses, including many from persecuted groups themselves. This is not surprising, given that authorities often spared some while persecuting others of the same group, and it would be hard to find someone who never helped anyone.

Having read the book didn't change my views on the matter of the larger German public's responsibility for the Third Reich and the Holocaust. As Johnson shows, most people were remarkably free to gain information and disseminate it, and in several occasions were able to change government policies through organised protests (such as those against deportation or Mischlinge relatives of German citizens or forced euthanasia). The view that Germans were cowed by a totalitarian power that would have destroyed anyone daring to lift his or her voice is a fantasy. One thing I took from the book was new admiration for unlikely figures of sympathy: the Jehova's Witnesses. I formerly saw these sectarians as somewhat comical figures doggedly pursuing the uninterested with their tedious "Watchtower" journal. I now respect them. They had a power of resistance in the face of annihilation that is deeply respectable. In spite of the hopelessness of their task, they never surrendered, and bit the hand that strangled them. When we see misfits such as Muslims or vagrants being mistreated or persecuted, let us never forget Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous lines:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

Professor Johnson has written an important academic book which should be read by more than academics. His book avoids some of the more common errors which make books of this type difficult or annoying for the general population to read. Most importantly, Johnson allows the evidence to lead him to conclusions rather than seeking out evidence for some preconceived notion. In addition, he humanizes the stories of victims. Instead of mere numbers, Professor Johnson forces us to see that the Nazis carried out their crimes against real people whose stories he relates with true emotion. Finally, the book attempts to display the range of responses evidenced by "ordinary Germans". Never painting with broad brushstrokes the book still poses uncomfortable questions for the German people about what could have been done had ordinary German citizens, and in particular their religous leaders, responded differently to the Nazis.

In world history of the 20th century the one event that will forever standout is Nazi Germany and the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. This book takes on that very subject and the over 600 pages is simply one of the best books I have ever read on the subject.

Johnson holds nothing back as he shows how one man took a country to the brink of world domination, mislead and lied to the German people and tried to rid the world of one religious group all in the name of power and control.

The book details the Nazi Party and the fear tactics, the Nazi regime and the actions of the Gestapo. You'll read, in stunned horror, the atrocities inflicted on a group of people by the Third Reich, from first hand interviews by those who were there.

While some of the stories are extremely graphic in nature, the overall book is extremely well written and well researched. I was deeply moved by this book and I am very proud to have had the chance to review it. An excellent book - well done Eric Johnson!

The title and cover blurbs are misleading. My expectation was that this book would address the issues raised in Goldhagen's controversial book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust", which argues, with some powerful facts and analysis, that the Holocaust was attributable to a vicious and malignant "eliminationist" anti-semitism subscribed to by most "ordinary" Germans, not just some lunatic minority. One reviewer cited on the cover page, George Mosse, asserts that Johnson's book makes "hash" of Goldhagen's claim. It does nothing of the kind--Johnson repeatedly cites Goldhagen with approval for the proposition that ordinary Germans were the ones who committed and bore responsibility for the murders, tortures, etc. He only disagrees with the explanation Goldhagen gives why ordinary Germans did this. However, Johnson gives little or no data or reasoning to explain or support his disagreement. What the book covers is the relationship between the Gestapo and ordinary Germans--did ordinary Germans fear the SS or Gestapo? (No.) Were ordinary Germans often arrested by the Gestapo? (No.) Did they fear getting arrested? (No.) Were they tortured, murdered or sent to concentration camps for minor offenses like listening to British newscasts, which resulted in almost immediate death sentences for Jews? (Rarely.)

It also covers, but sometimes as superficially as its treatment of Jews, the Gestapo's campaigns against gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, elderly or mentally or physically handicapped citizens and other minorities.

The book's conclusions are based on a rather small sampling--e.g., a survey of handful of citizens from Cologne and two smaller cities and a review of a selection of criminal court and Gestapo files and records. Possibly, there could be some statistical validity to such a small sample, but Johnson does not show that the sample is mathematically sufficient to support such major conclusions about the Holocaust and I am dubious, especially since he concedes that he knew that some of the survey respondents lied about what they knew or did and that Cologne may not have been typical--it gave Hitler fewer votes than any other city in Germany. He also deals almost exclusively with the Gestapo. Goldhagen dealt primarily with the civilian police battalians, and also with the SS and the German army.

Finally, I was surprised that the bibliography doesn't even mention some of the major studies like Lucy Davidovich's "The War Against the Jews".

The book has some interesting points (e.g., Johnson makes a strong argument that, by 1942 or 43, most Germans knew the truth), but does not attempt to address in any depth the issues raised by Goldhagen and Browning. E.g., if most Germans knew the truth and believed that their Government was acting in a criminal manner, why did they keep silent? Compare Johnson's reasons and Goldhagen's explanations why those reasons don't hold up. It is hard to dismiss Goldhagen's analysis, and Johnson's explanations are just too facile.

For a more interesting and authentic picture and, arguably, a view not completely consistent with Goldhagen's position, try the Victor Klemperer diaries now available in English.

Johnson's book is clearly written and very informative. He puts other recent books on the Nazis, especially the Gestapo, in perspective, while providing a great deal of original information that he gleaned from Gestapo files and Nazi court records. He explains the source and nature his data and puts the reader in the position of drawing his own conclusions. He provides a clear, balanced view of the Gestapo and the German people under Hitler without downplaying the horror nor stereotyping any of the groups involved.

Eric Johnson's skill is to have made us understand how the Gestapo actually operated at local level without falling into the trap of identifying with the police organization. We learn, for example, that senior Gestapo were usually law graduates with a comparatively small number of officers. They relied to a great extent on third party informants often with a grudge against someone. Target groups for the Gestapo were Jews, churchmen and homosexuals. But it seems most "ordinary" German citizens had little to fear from the secret police even when they indulged in that most favorite of pastimes - listening in to the BBC. Gestapo oppression was very real but also selective and even passive on occasion. This reviewer would have liked a little more background on how the Cologne Gestapo, the subject of the study, related to their bosses in Berlin. An insightful study of the "Little Eichmanns" who abounded in the Third Reich. The book is all the more convincing as Johnson has conducted research in the 1990s on what elderly Germans remember about the events under discussion.

This is a book which was written over ten years by an Academic who traveled to Germany. He has tried to work out what it was like to live in Nazi Germany and how the organs of a police state would have affected day to day life.

His methodology consisted of a number of surveys of people who lived through the Nazi period in two German cities and supplemented this by looking at Gestapo files and court records. The study is interesting for a number of reasons.

Immediately after the war, large numbers of Germans used the excuse of living in a police state as a means of providing an explanation for war crime guilt. The reality is that the repressive mechanisms of the German state were reasonably modest. The number of Gestapo operatives in the city of Cologne was 14. The use of informers slightly increased that reach. In more recent years a number of books have come out which suggest that the German public were reasonably committed to the ideals of the Nazi regime, and as a result the notion of an all encompassing police state was something of a myth. (For instance Hilter's willing executioners for instance)

This book describes the Gestapo in action. It would seem clear that initially most of the efforts of that agency were aimed at leftist opponents of the regime. Communists were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. After that the Jews and some of the Churches were targeted.

The thesis of the writer is that the Gestapo had two different faces. To the German public it was reasonably benevolent. Although it had power to send people to concentration camps for offences such as listening to foreign broadcasts and being critical of the regime, it generally did not do so. In fact it warned most people and dismissed a number of cases. Further in matters in which informers were involved the Gestapo appeared to be reasonably judicial looking carefully at the strength of evidence and to what extent it might be tainted by person antagonism or other factors. With Jews and other groups which were the target of the regime things were different.

The surveys undertaken by the author support this view of a reasonably benevolent state. That is a majority of the people surveyed were committed to the values of the state and did not feel a day to day unease about the security organs. All in all an interesting and provocative book which explains the mechanisms of a selective terror.