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The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History

by Hilary Earl

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Based on extensive archival research, this book offers a historical examination of the arrest, trial and punishment of the leaders of the SS-Einsatzgruppen - the mobile security and killing units employed by the Nazis in their racial war on the Eastern front. Sent to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, four units of the Einsatzgruppen, along with reinforcements, murdered approximately 1 million Soviet civilians in open air shootings and in gas vans and, in 1947, twenty-four leaders of these units were indicted for crimes against humanity and war crimes for their part in the murders. In addition to describing the legal proceedings that held these men accountable, this book also examines historiographical trends and perpetrator paradigms and expounds on such contested issues as the timing and genesis of the Final Solution, the perpetrators' route to crime and their motivation for killing, as well as discussing the tensions between law and history.… (more)
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As far as I know, this book is the only detailed description in print of the trial of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen who murdered around a million Soviet noncombatants during World War II. For this reason--that there is a lack of competing histories--this book is worth a read. And it certainly is the work of a competent historian who apparently did an awful lot of archival work.

Nevertheless, as my rating signifies, my feelings about the book are mixed. It was the author's dissertation at the University of Toronto, and it betrays some evidence of greenness on her part. There are lots of errors in punctuation and word choice, and it seems as if Cambridge University Press didn't have anyone proofread it carefully (and they certainly didn't put much care into the production of the paperback edition, which looks like a cheap, faded-out photocopy in places). At times, I felt that the exposition was lacking in seriousness and sophistication and that the author was insufficiently detached, too opinionated, bordering on glib. Other times, there was too much assertion and not enough presentation of facts that would allow the reader to draw the same conclusions him/herself. I wish there had been more analysis of how these mass murders could possibly have come about and less attention paid to the colorful life of the presiding judge. His escapades may make for a good yarn, but that's not the sort of thing most people buy books like this for. ( )
  cpg | Oct 15, 2017 |
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Based on extensive archival research, this book offers a historical examination of the arrest, trial and punishment of the leaders of the SS-Einsatzgruppen - the mobile security and killing units employed by the Nazis in their racial war on the Eastern front. Sent to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, four units of the Einsatzgruppen, along with reinforcements, murdered approximately 1 million Soviet civilians in open air shootings and in gas vans and, in 1947, twenty-four leaders of these units were indicted for crimes against humanity and war crimes for their part in the murders. In addition to describing the legal proceedings that held these men accountable, this book also examines historiographical trends and perpetrator paradigms and expounds on such contested issues as the timing and genesis of the Final Solution, the perpetrators' route to crime and their motivation for killing, as well as discussing the tensions between law and history.

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