An illuminating biography and more evidence for the “banality of evil.”
A midlevel Nazi bureaucrat comes to life thanks to an unexpected discovery.
In 2011, a woman took an old armchair for reupholstering, and she discovered that, sewn inside a cushion, was a bundle of Nazi-era documents from a lawyer named Robert Griesinger. British historian Lee determined to learn more, and the result is a fascinating true-life detective story, as the author engagingly chronicles his searches in archives and interviews with elderly survivors. Five years of research revealed that Griesinger was born in 1906 in a family wealthy enough to escape most of the privations of World War I. Along with many Germans of his age, Griesinger hated the Treaty of Versailles and, like his family, was politically conservative. He attended university, where he acquired a circle of like-minded, fiercely nationalistic friends. Without distinguishing himself, he chose a career in the law and joined the Ministry of Interior in 1933 under new chancellor Adolf Hitler. This ministry dealt with the police, so Griesinger worked with the Gestapo, a group he eventually joined. Although working in buildings where vicious interrogation and torture took place, his duties were administrative; Lee turns up no evidence that he participated or that he disapproved. Called up in 1939, he served until wounded in 1941 and then returned to civilian duties, acquiring a plum position in Prague in 1943. Even as the Red Army approached, officials stayed on the job, so Griesinger was caught in the May 5, 1945 Czech uprising, which inflicted brutal revenge on the remaining Germans. He died in September, possibly of disease. Perhaps because few personal writings survive, Griesinger’s character remains a mystery, but Lee succeeds in documenting the life of a Nazi civil servant who, like many in his generation, showed little interest in Hitler before he took power or objection to him afterward.
An illuminating biography and more evidence for the “banality of evil.” (b/w photos, maps)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-50909-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | MODERN | HOLOCAUST | WORLD
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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