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by: Richard Breitman
List Price: $22.00Amazon.com's Price: $19.80 You Save: $2.20 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 943
EAN: 9780809001842
ISBN: 0809001845
Label: Hill and Wang
Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: August 09, 1999
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Sales Rank: 151089
Studio: Hill and Wang
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
An important new work based on newly declassified archives.
As defeat loomed over the Third Reich in 1945, its officials tried to destroy the physical and documentary evidence about the Nazis' monstrous crimes, about their murder of millions. Great Britain already had some of the evidence, however, for its intelligence services had for years been intercepting, decoding, and analyzing German police radio messages and SS ones, too. Yet these important papers were sealed away as 'Most Secret,' 'Never to Be Removed from This Office'-and they have only now reappeared.Integrating this new evidence with other sources, Richard Breitman reconsiders how Germany's leaders brought about the Holocaust-and when-and reassesses Britain's and America's suppression of information about the Nazi killings. His absorbing account of the tensions between the two powers and the consequences of keeping this information secret for so long shows us the danger of continued government secrecy, which serves none of us well, and the failure to punish many known war criminals.
Amazon.com:
Historians have long debated whether the origins of the Holocaust can be traced to a German tradition of anti-Semitism that Adolf Hitler was able to channel to his advantage (a view taken by Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners), or whether, instead, the mass murder of Europe's Jewish population was the byproduct of the Nazi war against neighboring states (Christopher Browning's position in Ordinary Men). In Official Secrets, American University historian Richard Breitman proposes an explanation that lies somewhere in between: whereas most ordinary Germans approved of the persecution of Jews, he maintains, the German leadership nonetheless took pains to keep the facts of the Final Solution out of the public eye, fearful that those ordinary Germans might not have approved of wholesale slaughter. Widening the scope of his inquiry, Breitman points out that the Holocaust was well mapped out in the pages of Mein Kampf, which the Allied leaders had studied well before war broke out. Those leaders also knew, thanks to detailed intelligence reports and intercepted German radio messages, of the existence of extermination camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka. Breitman examines why the Allies did so little to oppose the Holocaust as it unfolded--or, as he puts it, why 'the U.S. government and the British government did not try to do what might have worked.' His thoughtful answers are likely to excite further debate among historians. --Gregory McNamee
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Review
I have read this book twice. Perhaps the author repeats himself. I may even have a few minor quibbles with some of research regarding conclusions. All that does not matter. Why? Because the author makes you think twice about commonly held beliefs. A good author in this area makes you want to read his footnotes. Again why? Because what he has written makes you want to know more. The author had me bookmarking where I was reading, and his footnotes, so I could go back and forth.
This ... Read More
Rating: - Short but Informative, and Free from Anti-Polish Bias
Breitman's little book stands in striking contrast to much popular-level Holocaust material, which demonizes the Poles. Viewers usually see "Polish death camps" and Poles wishing death to Jews. Brietman's book, instead, shows how the Polish underground (notably Jan Karski) made a major effort to inform the west about Nazi-German efforts to kill millions of Jews, and also millions of others. The limiting factor was not what Poles could do, but, as pointed out by Breitman, the ingrained disbelief of western ... Read More
Rating: - Repetitive but well researched
Like the reviewers before me I found this work very repetitive and light in areas of Nazi attrocities. True, it discusses in overexacting detail the horrors inflicted upon the Jews but what about the non-Jewish children, Gypsies and others? Why have their voices gone unheard?
The true picture of how the allies treated the refugees comes to light and will bring many to realize that the horrors of modern conflict are nothing more than mankind reliving the wrongs committed by those who came before ... Read More
Rating: - The holocaust uncovered
Professor Breitman has managed in a couple of hundred pages to give a picture of Nazi attrocities against the Jews during their terrible reign. The 'Final Solution' was not entirely planned from the outset of the Nazi reign but, according to Breitman, begun at the start of the war with mass shootings from Order Police Battalions and SS units.
However, I must agree with a previous review that states the somewhat repetitive nature of the book. Another weakness, I feel is the fact that the book does ... Read More
Rating:  - Good overview, but repetitious...
A good overview of the subject, but Breitman, at times, becomes repetitious, and it does get confusing trying to follow the trail of evidence that he presents. Another problem is that many of the suppositions are made based on documents not yet de-classified, so his hands are tied before he even starts the book. But, it is still a powerful book, on a disturbing subject that needs further examination, and I would hope that his efforts bring out these long-classified documents from their secret hiding places, ... Read More
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