Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction - Tapa dura

The front page of the OBSERVER books section carried this large review full of praise. "How, 60 years on, can there be anything fresh left to think, write or research about the Holocaust... Yet this new work, from a couple of young German historians, is still a revelation." "Gotz and Heim have written a fascinating and important book, illuminating an aspect of the grim history of the Third Reich with care and excoriating honesty." AC GRAYLING, FINANCIAL TIMES "Architects of Annihilation is a disturbing read. Authoritatively well-researched , it blows away many of the popular myths which surround Hitler's hand in genocide." THE HERALD "This is an important, honest, unsensational, thought-provoking book, the more important because the authors are German. We should be grateful for - and respectful of - that" DAILY TELEGRAPH We have set an

Architects of Annihilation follows the activities of the set of demographers, economists, geographers and planners in the period between the disorderly excesses of the November 1938 pogrom and the fully-effective operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz in summer 1942. The authors, both journalists and historians, argue that this group of intellectuals, often combining academic, civil service and Party functions made an indispensable contribution to the planning and execution of the Final Solution. More than that, in the economic and demographic rationale of these experts, the Final Solution was only one element in a far-reaching programme of self-sufficiency which privileged the German Aryan population.