Description |
xii, 376 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [347]-365) and index. |
Summary |
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were worked to death by the Nazis under a brutal system of slave labor in the concentration camps. By 1942, this vast network of slavery extended across all of German-occupied Europe, but the whole operation was run by a surprisingly small staff of bureaucrats--no more than 200 engineers and managers who worked in the Business Administration Main Office of the SS. Their projects included designing and constructing the concentration camps and gas chambers, building secret underground weapons factories, and brokering slave laborers to private companies such as Volkswagen and IG Farben. The business of genocide contradicts the assumption that the SS forced slavery upon the German economy, demonstrating that instead industrialists actively sought out the Business Administration Main Office as a valued partner in the war economy. Moreover, while the bureaucrats who oversaw Holocaust operations have often been seen as technocrats or simple cogs in the machinery, the book reveals their ideological dedication, even fanatical devotion, to slavery and genocide in the name of National Socialism. |
Contents |
1. Origins of the SS: The Ideology Is the Modern Organization -- 2. A Political Economy of Misery: The SS "Fuhrer" Corporation -- 3. Manufacturing a New Order -- 4. Engineering a New Order -- 5. My Newly Erected House: Slavery in the Modern War Economy -- 6. The Hour of the Engineer -- 7. Total War and the End in Rubble. |
Subject |
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt -- History.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Germany.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Concentration camps -- Germany.
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Genocide -- Germany -- History -- 20th century.
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Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
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Forced labor -- Germany -- History -- 20th century.
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Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Germany.
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Other Form: |
Online version: Allen, Michael Thad. Business of genocide. Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina Press, c2002 (OCoLC)606785019 |
ISBN |
0807826774 alkaline paper |
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9780807826775 alkaline paper |
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0807856150 paperback alkaline paper |
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9780807856154 paperback alkaline paper |
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