The Order of Terror [Hardcover]

Wolfgang Sofsky (Author), William Templer (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 069104354X | ISBN-13: 978-0691043548 | Publication Date: November 25, 1996 | Edition: First

During the twelve years from 1933 until 1945, the concentration camp operated as a terror society. In this pioneering book, the renowned German sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky looks at the concentration camp from the inside as a laboratory of cruelty and a system of absolute power built on extreme violence, starvation, "terror labor, " and the business-like extermination of human beings.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Nazi concentration camps illustrate the Dostoevskian doctrine that where there is no God, everything is permitted. While the camps had many rules, there were no laws, and certainly no justice. In this lucidly translated volume, award-winning German sociologist Sofsky sets out to analyze the organization of dominance in the camps and concludes that they were places of "absolute power; not a means to an end, but an end in itself." Indifferently ruled by the SS, which delegated responsibility for the day-to-day running to prisoner-functionaries, the lagers were divided into classes, with German political prisoners at the top, and Jews, Poles, and Russians at the bottom. Whether beaten, worked to death or left to die of disease, their lives were worthless, and their pain meaningful only in the pleasure it provided to the torturers. They were nothing, so nothing done to them mattered. Sofsky emphasizes that the murderers, ordinary people who were suffused with a spirit of "camaraderie" and a faith that they wouldn't be punished, did more than was required. "They did what they were permitted to?and they were permitted to do everything." Despite Sofsky's vast and painstaking research, his admirable and horrifying book leaves the reader convinced that the Holocaust is not a subject for sociologists but for theologians. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This work, a prize winner when published in Germany in 1993, is derived from the author's postdoctoral thesis. In it Sofsky (sociology, Univ. of Gottingen) utilizes a wide range of both primary and secondary sources to analyze how concentration camps were used by Germany to maintain absolute power over its victims based on terror, organization, and excessive violence. He does not attempt to explain how or why the Holocaust happened and for the most part focuses on the concentration camps rather than the extermination centers. Rather, Sofsky patiently shows how virtually everything in the camps, from their physical layout to the use of time to the categorization of prisoners, was a way of exercising and consolidating absolute power over an increasingly dehumanized prisoner population. An important study; recommended for academic and large public libraries.?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll. Lib., CUNY, Jamaica
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr; First edition (November 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069104354X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691043548
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,642,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The harrowing dynamics of terror!, January 15, 2007

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Order of Terror (Paperback)

When we refer ourselves respect certain themes not precisely pleasant to face, most of people tend or ignore, overlook or evade it. And perhaps the Nazi concentration camps is the most conclusive evidence that shows us with implacable realism the state of primitivism that continues reigning in the spirit and soul of many people.

The future genocides simply have varied its schemes, obviously with major efficiency and discretion, but this rigorous analysis around the abominable horror beneath this unthinkable fact simply cannot and must not be forgotten, because of the fact the Nazism is just a branch of the nasty repression no matter the origin of its procedure. Basically all intransigence or prohibition is by itself a signal of fascism, because it's good to remark the fascism may embrace all the politic specters, from left to right. Because there are issues that by known they are silenced, and then forgotten. That's why you and me must insist, over and over, because the human memory is fragile and sentimental.

A definitive account of one the most bloody and embarrassing episodes of the last Century.

5.0 out of 5 stars Dense but Riveting, January 5, 2011

By 

Tracy Cramer "art and history lover" (Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Order of Terror (Paperback)

This is a powerful book. It analyzes and explains the sociology of the Nazi concentration camp.

I would, however, recommend reading it After reading other books about the camps in general, and survivor testimony in particular.

It is not light reading, but, I found it gripping nonetheless.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Painstaking detail, November 21, 2000

By 

Lindsay J. Hansen (los angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Order of Terror (Paperback)

This is a great sociology text regarding the concentration camp and its scary system. I have read several books about WWII and the Holocaust, but this has a totally different angle. If you have ever studied the sociology of control, crime, or time, this is a must read. It is an academic work, but definitely good leisure reading.