Guenter Lewy

If one is looking for a concise examination of the factors that generated the Holocaust, one could do quite a lot worse than this monograph, written by a man who witnessed "Crystal Night" as a child, and who has spent much of their career dealing with the analysis of organized violence against peoples. Concentrating on motivation amongst the field commanders and foot soldiers of the Nazi war on the Jews, Lewy is quite prepared to split hairs between genuine haters, careerists, and people show more just swept up in events. The one point Lewy comes back, and essentially ends on, is that while you can't expect suicide to be a general option by which to maintain personal integrity, even in Nazi Germany one did have options to avoid participating in industrialized murder, and the actual killers seldom availed themselves of it.

Apart from that, one thing that undercuts this monograph is that Lewy does invoke the work of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, whose experiments were being debunked basically as this book was coming out. show less

Written in the late 1970s, America in Vietnam is a positive account of a controversial war that the author believes was a worthy cause. Among Lewy's arguments is that the accusations of atrocities by American troops were greatly exaggerated. It might be worth reading for someone who wants to study the historiography of the Vietnam War, but it is a dated account. There is so much more available primary material now.

3816. America in Vietnam, by Guenter Lewy (read 22 Oct 2203) This is a 1978 book, full of good discussion of issues much talked of while the war was going on. Many of the points he makes are persuasive. He effectively demolishes some of the extreme antiwar positions, and I remain convinced that we got into Vietnam for seemingly good reasons, it was hard to get out, and LBJ is entitled to credit that the war did not turn into a war with China. Particularly the latter chapters of the book were show more highly interesting. I should have read it 20 years ago. show less

hardback book with dust-jacket