Customer Reviews

The Theory and Practice of Hell

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This is the best book written about the psychology of the SS and the concentration camps. It demonstrates that the concentration camps were well known among the German population, purposely, as a form of terror to keep them in line. Kogon's status as a German gentile lends extra credibility, as the Holocaust is too often portrayed as a private party attended only by Jewish victims. It also effectively captures the pointless cruelty, mindless ineptitude and irresponsible stupidity of the SS, whose mismanagement of the camps contributed nothing to the German war effort. The Final Solution and concentration camp system proved a logistical nightmare that helped bleed the eastern front to death of its needed supplies. Kogon also describes how camp resistance relied on corrupting SS guards, and how the SS kept forming bureaucracies and prolonging the camps' existence to avoid going to the eastern front. I read a crumbling paper back I picked up second hand. I'm glad Kogon's masterpieces hasn't gone out of print.

This is the most horrifying book I've ever read. The individual acts of violence portrayed in the book are bad enough. The fact that they are all true is worse. However what sets this book apart from other stories of mass murderers is that all the murderers (SS-men, Kapos, etc.) are all part of one SYSTEM, specifically designed to carry out the disgusting acts described in the book.

This is the reason we must never forget what happened to Germans, Jews (of all nationalities), Gypsies, Russians, Ukranians, French, Italians, Austrians . . .

I own approximately thirty books related to concentration camps and the Third Reich, and this book by Kogon is the most informative. He succeeds in describing the death camp system from every possible angle, and without emotional outbursts or condemnation so typical in other less scholarly accounts. His style is simply straightforward with no other intention than to tell it like it was.

Eugen Kogon, the author of this book, was a German left-wing political prisoner at Buchenwald concentration camp. Throughout this book, he praises left-wing political groups. He even equates the Allied bombing of Hiroshima with the Nazi concentration camp system (p. 5). Nevertheless, despite his obvious biases, he provides invaluable insights into this system. (My father had been an inmate at Gross Rosen and then Dachau). Many of Kogon's descriptions are very graphic, and the sensitive reader would do best to avoid this book.

A common feature of the Nazi concentration camps was forced labor under appalling conditions. Kogon writes: "The stone carriers on these details--mainly Jews, Russians, and Poles--were often compelled to run the gauntlet, staggering under their heavy loads. The most notorious of the SS `punchers' were always ready for such a `pastime'. Of 181 Poles who arrived at Buchenwald on October 15, 1939, more than half of them perished in this way within ten days." (p. 89).

In some instances, the Poles were actually treated worse than the Jews. Kogon comments: "In 1938-1939, the Jews, chiefly those of Vienna, had been forced to sign over their houses and property to Nazis and their creatures. The `sales prices' ranged down to ten marks! In the case of the Poles an even simpler procedure was adopted. They received no payment whatever. They were simply notified that they and their families had to leave their homes. To refuse to give the required signature was tantamount to suicide." (p. 188).

Ironic to the later Nazi project of destroying the European Jews, the Nazis apparently did not do a systematic search for Jews in the concentration camps themselves. Kogon writes: "Many Jews, especially if they were not German, lived in the camps unrecognized--i. e., the SS never identified them as Jews." (p. 185). And persecutions of those of partial Jewish descent were relaxed with time: "At a later day, `quarter Jews' and `half-Jews' were in part `aryanized' and no longer wore the yellow triangle. For most of those affected it was already too late." (p. 185).

Horrific "scientific" experiments were performed on the prisoners. For example, new malarial vaccines were tried on Polish Catholic priests incarcerated at Dachau, and this caused serious losses among them (p. 151). In addition, "At the Dachau concentration camp in 1942 and 1943 abscesses were artificially induced, in order to test the efficacy of allopathic and homeopathic drugs. The subjects were chiefly Catholic clerics and Poles." (p. 162).

Serious attempts were made by the Nazis to perfect mass-sterilization methods, and numerous prisoners were subject to heinous experiments in this regard (pp. 157-161). This demonstrates that Nazi plans for genocide of large numbers of peoples besides Jews (e. g., the Slavs) had in fact gone well beyond the talking stage.

The homosexuals incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camps have been magnified by modern gay-rights groups into some sort of systematic Nazi persecution of homosexuals. In actuality, the number of homosexuals incarcerated was relatively small. Furthermore, there were usually extraneous reasons for even this incarceration. Kogon writes: "It included individuals of real value, in addition to large numbers of criminals and especially blackmailers. This made the position of the group as a whole very precarious. Hostility toward them may have been partly rooted in the fact that homosexuality was at one time widespread in Prussian military circles, as well as among the SA and SS, and was to be mercilessly outlawed and erased. The Gestapo readily had recourse to the charge of homosexuality, if it was unable to find any other pretext for proceeding against Catholic priests or irksome critics. The mere suspicion was sufficient." (p. 37).

Interestingly, the concentration camps included some semblance of normal living in the form of sports, theatre, musical bands, etc. (pp. 125-130). All this took place within sight of or within hours of someone being tortured and murdered. Engaging in such diversions was not, of course, a sign of disrespect for the dying and dead. This sheds light on comparable behaviors elsewhere. Holocaust films have shown Poles engaging in normal activities, such as Sunday worship, shopping, etc., while the Jewish Ghetto was being burned by the Nazis. This has been misrepresented as Polish callousness to Jewish suffering. It was no such thing. Comparable to the diversionary activities in concentration camps, it was an attempt to carry on a semblance of normal living under the conditions of German terror.

Eugene Kogon takes us on a wild ride from beginning to end as we're ushered inside the gates of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp in WWII era Nazi Germany, and given a thorough and methodical tour of the premises (and an indoctrination into the system behind the camps). As a former Buchenwald inmate who escaped death several times and ultimately lived to tell the tale, Kogon has the dirt on everything and everyone--from the notorious quarry details, to his cunning domination of SS Doctor Maj. Ding-Schuler, to the particularly harsh brutalities suffered by Russian prisoners-of-war. A unique and ultimately very fruitful perspective, and a very informative and engrossing volume on Buchenwald in particular and the camps in general; I'd have given it five stars, but it bogs down just a tad in the middle in discussions on SS office policies. Overall, a very worthwhile purchase.

On this Patriot's Day 2009 I wish to report that in 1955, in my first year in college, for one of my courses we were assigned to read THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL by Dr. Eugen Kogon. Dr. Kogon had spent from September 1939 until the fall of Germany in April 1945 as a prisoner in Buchenwald. One year later in 1946 he published Der SS-Staat: Das System de Deutschen Konzentrationslager which was immediately hailed as an extraordinarily significant sociological study of concentration camps. The book was translated into eight languages and sold half a million copies.

I vividly recall reading it fifty-four years ago. I had been on the boxing team at school. I knew what it felt like to be hit hard. Reading this book the first time felt like a powerful punch to my gut that I didn't see coming. It sucked the air out of my lungs. Or like a stunning blow to my brain. I felt my skull would split. I have never forgotten that first experience in reading this book. Kogon's book remains today as relevant as ever as a critically important marker of what can happen. Over the years I re-read it all once and re-read parts several times. I have recommended it highly for over half a century and still do.

Kenneth E. MacWilliams

This is the ultimate Holocaust book. Kogon, a prisoner at Buchenwald, went out of his way to be absolutely objective and factual in describing the atrocities committed there. By the end of the book, I found myself saying, "For God's sake condemn these pigs," but he never does, despite the fact that at several points he seems to be writing through his tears.

There's no romanticism here -- just pure, unadultered evil.

I have given this book to my own daughters to read, warning them that it is likely to make them want to vomit. I think it should be required reading in every high school in the world.

You don't have to be Jewish (or a Gypsy, or Cossack, or Jehovah's Witness) to be horrified by the acts described in this book (I am a Protestant). These truly were crimes against humanity.

There is probably no other book which is as accurately detailed of the Nazi atrocities and death camps as is in this book. The author himself spent seven years in the concentration camp Buchenwald and was assistant to the ghastly medical experiments. Eugen Kogon's book was used in the Nuremburg trials as evidence of the guilt of National Socialism. Every aspect of prisoner life and the ordeals the inmates of the camps went through are written in these pages. The horrors and sadistic cruelty of the dreaded SS are also shown, as well as statistics of food, deaths, and mortality. If one would like an exhaustive perspective into the workings and nature of the Holocaust seen through the eyes of an inmate, I strongly reccomend this book. Until I read this book, I never knew that Hitler's regime commited atrocities as evil as those which are described here.

I read this book when I was living in Germany and attending the University of Maryland in Munich and taking a course on German Life and Culture. This is an extremely important book in understanding German history and what happened during that time, and is a very relavent book now in what could happen if Fascism arises in the US. With the black camps in central Europe that the US has set up, many of which were used for this "theory and practice" during the 3rd Reich, and such horrific practices in place like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, where torture has been and is still being used against, for the most part, innocent Iraqi prisoners by US troops and US contractors, and where many people have died, we need to be aware of the ultimate dangers of a totalitarian state. It's always a danger of course, in any country...

I strongly advise though that this is a book that can give one nightmares, so be prepared. It is excellently written, and quite disturbing. But those that ignore history, truly are doomed to repeat it.

This book is Eugen Kogon's account of the Buchenwald concentration camp. It is an outgrowth of a document he wrote for the Nurnburg trials. Much has been said about the "objectivity" of his writting, although I do not see how anyone ever came to such a conclusion. He is persistently preaching about the evil of the concentration camps, and his assessment of the intellect of SS men is slanderous at best. The book dwells on every act of corruption engaged in by both the SS and inmates in positions of authority. However, he never acknowledges any such misconduct on his own part. He also does a cover up on crimes perpetrated against German POW's and innocent civilians by the Allies and camp inmates after the liberation of the concentration camps.

Despite these limitations, the book provides a good inmate's perspective on life in Buchenwald: "Viking salad", plagues, medical experiments, discipline, golden showers, and a long string of intrigues at the latrine. Relations between the various groups of inmates are covered in detail, with a strong emphasis on communists and habitual criminals. Homosexuals, the retarded, Jews, and Jehovah's Witnesses are also covered. Dirlewanger's recruitment of inmates to serve in his SS unit is briefly touched upon. Issues surrounding the Kommandant's wife are inadequately addressed.