My version: Paperback
Genre: Non Fiction
Publisher: Tempus Publishing Ltd
First published: 2001
ISBN: 9780752433288
Pages: 213 (plus, abbreviations, notes, bibliography, index)
Bought
From the cover:
The Holocaust differs from other genocides in recent history for one main reason: there is no other example in which a minority was annihilated systematically and as completely as possible on the orders of a head of state and through the apparatus of government.
To reconstruct Hitler’s central role in the Final Solution represents a particular challenge. Hitler treated the murder of the Jews as a matter of the utmost secrecy and was careful wherever possible not to leave behind any written orders. Wherever his instructions on this matter are recorded he has used codified language. He kept away from the implementation of the orders and feigned ignorance, even to his closest friends and colleagues. Under these conditions, the surviving source material can only be described as fragmentary. The aim of this book is to offer documentary pfoof of Hitler’s central role in the murder of the European Jews. In order to achieve this aim, various documents and fragments of documents have been pieced together and the codified language of the dictator deciphered.
Given the German’sperceived love of written evidence, lists, and general book-keeping, writing everything down to cover your arse thoroughness…you might be forgiven for entertaining the ideas of the flat-earthers around the interweb, who say “it never happened! And if it did (surely an ironic 180 in itself) “Hitler knew nothing about it.” Which either makes Hitler the most incompetance nincompoop dictator ever, or he knew, initiated and directed it. And of course, the cliche about German thoroughness (which, as in Danish, I have learned is partly due to the way German (and Danish) can be if translated directly into English), extendeds also to burning the evidence once they finally admitted to themselves that they were going to lose this one (as opposed to not doing so after WWI), and knew they were going to have to pay for their crimes. Hitler obviously didn’t just make all those speeches, the ones you can see in the newsreels and the ones behind closed doors, to selected ‘colleagues,’ off the cuff. He made notes beforehand, so they’re either destroyed or still to be found. He gave verbal orders, which can still be found in the copious diaries of the aforementioned henchmen who were at the off the books meetings. He basically said “this is the direction we’re going in, I’m way too busy with other matters like losing the war due to my incompetance in micro-managing, you lot need to get on with doing the dirty work. GO!” As you will see from reading Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the prevailing atmosphere in Germany had been various strains and strengths of rabid antisemitism for many, many, even hundreds of, years before Hitler came in and took it to its conclusion. So there wasn’t really much need for guidance other than spointing out the direction the snowball needed to be rolled in.
And as a dictator, and a micro-manager, Hitler oversaw the measures being taken, he encouraged or discouraged, as fitted his reading of the situation at the time. The need for secrecy was at least initially, to keep the opposing European politicians, and the Americans from being so outraged, they would step in before Germany had the control over the continent Hitler wanted. After that, it didn’t really matter what the world outside thought and measures had progressed and been delegated so much, it would have taken nothing short of Germany losing the war to stop them. As happened.
That’s my take, anyway.
The book seems to have been written first in a shorter form as a brief for use in the Irving/Lipstadt civil action, brought after Professor Deborah Lipstadt published ‘Denying The Holocaust.’ Then, as there turned out to be so much evidence that hadn’t been fully assembled in a form to satisfy the question of the “was there a written order from Hitler to carry out the destruction of European Jewry” kind, Peter Longerich decided to expand on his original, shorter, submission.
It’s dry, it’s scholarly, and it is utterly fascinating. It concentrates, laser-like on its central theme, and doesn’t get distracted. In effect it is fleshed out by also reading others looking at the wider picture like Black Earth, Bloodlands, Final Solution, Eichmann and Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Read it, you need to and you won’t regret it.
You can buy The Unwritten Order by Peter Longerich from Amazon
Couldn't I Just Tell You 