Official Secrets...

[Larry Gude]

...Richard Breitman

Amazon.com: Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (9780809038190): Richard Breitman: Books

A controversial study based on newly declassified documents.

In the course of its war for world domination and a projected racial utopia, Hitler's government committed monstrous crimes. As defeat neared, the Third Reich's officials tried to destroy all the physical and documentary evidence about their murder of millions. They did not fully succeed, but huge gaps in the historical record have made it hard for us to reconstruct how they planned the Holocaust.

Great Britain already had some of the evidence, however, for all along its intelligence services had been intercepting, decoding, analyzing, and circulating many German police radio messages and some from the SS. Yet this critical evidence was sealed away--marked "Most Secret," "To Be Kept under Lock and Key," and "Never to Be Removed from This Office"--and it has only now reappeared.

Integrating this new evidence with the known sources, Richard Breitman examines how Germany's leaders brought about the Holocaust--and when. He assesses the British and American suppression of information about Nazi killings, and the tensions between the two powers over how to respond. His absorbing work concludes with an examination of the consequences...

Unless you are really interested in the subject matter, you'll be happier watching paint dry. However, if you are interested, it is still dull and bland.

However, it is an interesting examination of the time period and goes over old ground once again with some new facts. The facts, to me, don't add anything important to what we already know, especially 67 years after the fact BUT, it does bring up, and I think without meaning to, some very interesting questions such as the basis for such profound and widespread Antisemitism, including among the allies, as well as a quite uncomfortable subordination of some 30 million or so non Jews Hitler also meant to get rid of. It brings into question the very ugly and challenging idea of balance between the value of a Jews life, who were treated as sub human, and all the other millions and millions of Nazi victims who were not Jews yet are just as dead yet have nowhere near the recognition and examination of their fate as do Jews.

One question it did answer for me, and, again, I think without meaning to is this one I have long had; who was worse, Stalin or Hitler? Stalin killed more. Many more. However, at the end of the day, Stalin gets the 'benefit' and a small one it is, of being totally indiscriminate. ANYONE could be his ally and ANYONE could be his enemy. Hitler singled folks out so that no matter how good a German citizen you may have been, loyal, nationalistic, healthy and productive, he still saw you as something to be exterminated.

Adolph Hitler; Most evil of all time.