Micro-history uses
the close study of a tiny slice of events to shed light on larger themes.
"Hitler's First Victims" takes us to the years just before WWII to
study the establishment and running of Dachau, a camp outside of Munich used to
concentrate, control and punish political dissidents.
It
was a time when the rule of law, as practiced by the book's hero, Bavarian
prosecutor Josef Hartinger, was
almost perfectly balanced with the ruthless, lawless "justice" (i.e.,
brutality, arbitrariness and terror) that was the Nazi's stock in trade. It was
a time when a concentration camp "suicide" might actually be
investigated by local authorities, and perpetrators at least threatened
credibly with punishment. Watching the defenders of the old systems be
outmaneuvered by the likes of Josef Himmler (then in charge of police in
Munich) or slowly knuckle under to the vicious new realities was to see
ordinary people silently assenting, via opting for the own survival, with the
Nazi's murder machine.
"Hitler's First
Victims" gives a glimpse into the machinations of Hitler as he attempted
to wrest total power from president Hindenburg. The road to the Third Reich was
made of such grand scheming as well as the petty and seemingly insignificant
murder of a few local dissidents in the grip of an barbarous prion commandant.
A story brilliantly
researched and quite clearly told.
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