The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Canto original series) [Paperback]

Browning is very specific in his research. There are no guessings, though we can not escape from not being able to give final answer to certain details. He works with data of documents in trying to track how the decision to kill was taken. He is able to get to the point of saying the most probable dates for the final decision by Hitler.

The book presents some answers and alternatives to the question. It analyses 'functionalism' and 'intentionalism' and theories of historians like Arno Mayer, which by the way sufers heavy critics by Browning. You will surely refer back to this book after reading it when discussing the subject of the decision making process of the Holocaust.

Until that point the Nazi command had been more favorably disposed toward using indigenous populations as slave labor and working and/or starving them to death, rather than killing them outright. Here too Browning argues about three key issues surrounding the decision to proceed with the Holocaust; first, that the Nazi hierarchy itself was divided in terms of strategy and objectives about the resolution of the "Jewish Question"; second, that it was seen as highly advantageous to the national socialist cause to employ their skills and labor as long as possible in support of the war effort, and finally, that the actual implementation of the fragmented policy was further fragmented and "ad-libbed" at the field level by local commanders or police authorities.

Browning uses a virtual flood of documentation and data to substantiate his various positions, and marshals a convincing argument on behalf of the notion that indeed the resulting mass murders of the Holocaust were more likely the production of a series of small but fateful conclusions made incrementally to solve immediate and pressing logistical and tactical situations the Nazi hierarchy faced at particular moments than it was the result of some long-standing grand and evil scheme to systematically annihilate the Jews. Of course, it is in one very real sense an academic issue, since all of the indigenous Jews (as well as everyone else in the areas of interest to the Nazis along the eastern front in Poland and the Ukraine already pre-designated as new settlement areas for Germans would die at the hands of the Nazi regime. The question at hand is whether the actual extermination of those individuals would be accomplished through slave labor, starvation, and exposure to the elements, or through more active and murderous intervention by way of the death camps.

One must also remember that there were also large numbers of German Jews being transported both within and without the country to concentration camps. The same issues of intent apply to them, as well. Certainly Browning's efforts here will not end the long-standing debate. It is, however, a critical contribution to informing the direction and future tenor of that argument. This is an important, provocative, and worthwhile book, and one anyone interested in understanding the details of the "natural history' of how the Holocaust actually came to transpire must read to understand the complexities, contradictions, and confusions abounding in both the record and in individual recollections about the time. I recommend this book, and hope it is much more widely read and appreciated.

His subordinates held him in contempt, especially since he was never seen at the shooting sites. He is quoted as saying, "If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans". There were sergeants who also requested to be excused from the firing squads, as the idea of slaughtering human beings proved too horrendous to carry out. The Germans who carried out the executions were given alcohol to help with their agitation. It was decided "intolerable" to carry out the slaughter while sober. Some ran into the forest to vomit, others were so wracked with nervousness, they misfired. At the end of the day, some 1500 Jews lay dead.

What is so compelling about this essay is that is explains how these German battalions were later able to round up Jews to the gas chambers with relative detachment; there was so much less participation or responsibility (compared to shooting)and the men had become desensitized. In fact, historians have shown that the camps were constructed largely to spare the German executioners the trauma of face-to-face murder.

What is fascinating is this: it has been long believed that Germans who refused to carry out executions feared for their own lives. Not necessarily true. When Major Trapp let his aversion to the killings be known he was relocated and later promoted. In the case of Jozefow, the men had the opportunity to withdraw from shooting. Why didn't they refuse? Because they did not want to seem cowardly and they wanted to be promoted. The ones who refused generally had businesses back home to rely on and didn't care about being promoted. And some did business with Jews, so their animosities were not inflamed.
This essay is riveting. I give this book 3 stars because the other readings are so dry, so long-winded, and so devoid of emotion, that you find yourself reading the same sentence five times. History MUST be exciting to read - otherwise, no one reads it, which is a dangerous thing indeed.