Review: Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (2003)

[truepenny]

The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a very interesting book about how Nazi Germany (meaning not just those in the Nazi Party, but Germany under the Nazis) came to believe that genocide was morally right. Koonz lays it out very carefully, so that although it's an alien thought-process, you can follow the logic step by step. You have to start by believing that your Volk, your people, is more important than anything else, including yourself. And YOUR Volk is of course better than anyone else's Volk. Once you believe that, believing that anything that strengthens the Volk is good and anything that weakens the Volk is bad, is a pretty easy next step, and the language of social Darwinism---the idea that your Volk is in competition with all these other Volks---is a comfortable fit. And since your Volk is the best Volk, anything you have to do to ensure its superiority is morally right, up to and including mass murder. The rhetoric, used by Nazi propaganda, of the Jews as a disease, as a threat to the health of the Volk is easy to see (and was apparently easy to believe). Koonz shows all the links in the chain.



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