Ismail Kadare - The General of the Dead Army

Twenty years after the end of World War Two, a General is sent from Italy to Albania to find and bring back the bodies of the soldiers killed there. He leaves with a fanfare, carrying with him the hopes and expectations of hundreds of people whose sons, husbands and fathers died, and never came home. In particular the General hopes to find Colonel X, a senior soldier whose body was never found, and whose wealthy and influential family want it returned.

Travelling with the General is a priest and the two form a bond which is more than professional, but not quite friendly. Their world views clash, as the General approaches the task with a mechanical eye - a professional job that needs to be done, and measured out in lists of names, measurements of skeltons and careful identifications. 

But the land itself is full of ghosts. The official international trip is hardly welcomed by the peasants who fought off the fascist invaders, and the long days, the difficult terrain and the tension take their toll on the General who begins to fantasise as his stress develops, that the dead soldiers are an army of his own, manouvering on some old battlefield. The priest questions him - does he think it would have been better if he had led them? Its a poignant question because the General clearly does think so. The reality of war is not something he really knows - though the diaries and stories he hears of the dead soldiers teach him that the war, and the Italian troops, were not the brave heroes of his imagination.

Into this tangle of emotions and stress comes and added problem. A German general is here too. Removing their own bones. Inevitably the two clash. But really want causes the General to finally break down, and indeed brings out his contempt for the host nation and its people, his failure to really understand the nature of his task, and the impact upon the Albanians who were the victims, is the reality of the work. Despite the pomp and circumstance of his initial journey, there's little glory or thanks here.

Its a terrific novel, which says alot about Albania in the post war period, and its attitude to its "fascist" enemies of the past. 

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - The German Ideology: A new abridgement by Tom Whyman

In his introduction to his new abridgement of Marx and Engels' The German Ideology,Tom Whyman makes a point about the text itself. It is actually unclear whether it is a coherent work in itself. Whyman points out that there are two stories about it. The first is that its a 1846 text by Marx and Engels were they flesh out their thoughts and come to a "final reckoning with the 'philosophical tradition'" before leaving it to "the gnawing criticism of the mice", in Marx's words, and moving on. 

The second is that none of this is actually true. Rather the German Ideology was never really finished, and the bits that were, were a amalgam of Marx, Engels and other of their socialist friends, and then it was all "constructed" by Soviet Researchers in the 1920s. Whatever the reality, Whyman points out, The German Ideology is "a text of rare power: the rare sort of philosophical tract that, when you read it, can make you feel ecstatic with the rush of thinking, the bright brilliant naming and unlocking of the reality which is otherwise stuck inchoate all around you."

This is absolutely true. Re-reading the book I was struck by the absolute brilliance of Marx and Engels' insights as they, in contradiction to Hegel and the other thinkers they are critiquing, state their own positions on what we might today call Historical Materialism. It repays a re-read. 

I've reviewed The German Ideology before on this blog, the CJ Arthur abridgement, and I am interesting to note that I've highlighted many of the same passages. This work includes much more from the sections of the book that assault the ideas of Max Stirner. This poor fellow, similarly to Eugen Dühring is destined to go down in history as being remembered mostly as someone that Marx and Engels used to mercilessly attack in their exploration of their own ideas. But this is well deserved, as they say early on:

It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the realtion of their criticism to their own material surroundings. 

As the authors point out:

Life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself... Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they have never, therefore had an earthly basis for history and consequently never an historian.

A damning criticism of German philosophy.

Writing about the German Peasants' War and the Reformation recently, I was struck by the relevance of Marx and Engels' criticism of history in this format. So much writing about the 16th century begins from the premise that the Reformation took place, simply because Martin Luther had a brilliant idea and this idea mysteriously propagated. Luther did, of course, have an idea. As Marx himself said, the Reformation was "born in the brain of the monk". But why was it born then, and why did the idea take root in ways that similar ideas had not before? Not accepting the economic basis to the ideological superstructure in society means that one cannot comprehend how things change. As Marx and Engels say in The German Ideology this leaves historians without a materialist understanding adrift:

Thus, history becomes a mere history of illusory ideas, a history of spirits and ghosts, while the real, empirical history that forms the basis of this ghostly history is only utilised to provide bodies for these ghosts; from it are borrowed the names required to clothe these ghosts with the appearance of reality. 

In fact, even when someone like Stirner tries to be more specific, their failure to examine the actual reality of society, casts them adrift. As Marx and Engels say, for example:

He identifies first of all 'owning' as a private property-owner with 'owning' in gernal. Instead of examining the definite relations between private property and production, instead of examining 'owning' as a landed proprietor, as a rentier, as a merchant, as a factory-owner, as a worker - where 'owning' would be found to be a quite distinct kind of owning, control over other people's labour - he transforms all these relations into 'owning as such.'

This remarkable paragraph, which simultaneously skewers Stirner's crude comments and restates Marx and Engels' idea of capitalism as a system of class relations that determined by economic relations is a good example of the real value of The German Ideology, whether or not it exists as such!

Whyman claims that in making a new abridgement, he has felt confident, given the text's possibly history, to rearrange and reassemble to give new insights. He concludes:

This is first and foremost a popluar edition of The German Ideology, intended for interested students and lay people, as well as academics distant enough from Marx scholarship to feel able to simply dabble in his wriings: people who can feel free not to be completionist about a text, or to take some other authoritity's word for what is really important about it.

It should be said that Whyman has not just abridged the work. He has done so twice, abridging the work and then compressing it again for an even shorter and more accessible work. This permits him to make a neat dialectical joke about the most famous passage in the work.

Related Reviews

Marx - Value, Price and Profit
Marx - The Civil War in France
Engels - The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Perry - Marxism and History
Carr - What is History?
Harman - Marxism and History

David Reynolds - Slow Road to Brownsville

One day, while in Swan River, Manitoba, Canada, David Reynolds learns that road 83, "goes to Mexico". On enquiring further he learns that this is actually true, the road eventually leaves Canada and becomes Route 83, which makes its way south through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle, and Texas, before arriving in Mexico at the US town of Brownsville on the Rio Grande. Reynolds is in Swan River because his grandfather ended up there - an immigrant from the UK looking for work, and he has written an autobiography about the man he never knew.

But Route 83 gives him another idea. How about driving the whole length of it and writing about what he sees and who he meets. He isn't the first. It turns out that lots of people have made the journey, and indeed many Canadians made a habit of travelling south for holidays, and the people they befriended down in Texas used to come north for meet ups. Along the route he finds plenty of people who have travelled some of 83. But he also meets many people who haven't, and sometimes they haven't really left the immediate area they were born in.

North-South roads in the US are not quite the same as the East-West ones. Those, Reynolds points out, are routes to carry lots of travellers long distance. The vertical routes don't have the same need, and thus aren't quite as well supplied in terms of rest stops. Much of 83 is actually two lane road, and it makes for a quiet, if slightly cliched, road trip. For this is small town America, but it is a trip through a small town rural coutnryside filled with history. Reynolds muses on the colonial expansion of the US, racism and the treatment of indigenous people and the nature of rural America itself.

Reynolds is a classic English liberal. He shys away from confrontational politics, but he does meet plenty of people prepared to talk about the things you might expect. Racism, Indians, Guns, Democrats and liberal themselves. Everyone who has been to middle America, or its adjacent states will know that they are friendly and welcoming. Interested and suprised to receive visitors from far away, and proud of their areas. Reynolds however was travelling in what feels like a different time - Obama was just into his second term - and to Reynolds at least, the right feels isolated and on the retreat. Reynolds finds plenty to shock and worry him - not least the open racism he experiences in several places. But his diary of the trip feels a very different place to the United States in the first year of Trump's second presidency.

Like all road trip books, readers will find themselves wishing that the author didnt have to move on quite so fast. There's plenty of stories that we only scratch the surface of, and it feeds this readers on desire to return to this part of the world. But Reynolds is an honest enough writer and observer of people to give his readers a real feeling of the places he travels through. The book is also filled with references and quotes to the books that Reynolds reads about the places - a goldmine for future travellers. One this did irk though. Reynolds is unnevering in his physical descriptions of the people he meets. I'm not sure there is any real need, even when discussing the obesity epidemic, to talk quite so much about how people (and if we're honest it's mostly the women) look.

That said, this is an enjoyable read that has a lot to say about America before Trump.

Related Reads

Estes - Our History is the Future
Zinn - A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present

Michael Christie - Greenwood

In 2038 the last forest survives on a remote island off British Columbia. The world's woodlands have been destroyed by a cataclysmic disease, that has destroyed huge swathes of humanity and undermined the global economy. The forest, private land, is tended by scientists and forest guides who maintain it for the wealthy tourists to visit to be "regenerated in the humbling loom" of the last trees. Jake Greenwood shares her name with the billionaire owner of the island, a timber tycoon whose wealth was based on the ravaging of North America's woodland. Now Jake is heavily in debt and desperate to cling on to her job.

The Greenwood island is at the epicentre of this multigenerational story. Jake is the latest of a long line of people, who have an association with the land and the forests, and after the opening chapters that detail her place on Earth, the story skips back 150 years to tell how the rich got rich and destroyed the land, woods and people along the way. Its an epic tale, much of which centres on an itinerant veteran of World War One who makes his living tapping maple trees for syrup, and comes across an abandoned baby. Persuded by the powerful and wealthy agents of the millionaire father, Everett carries the baby through a North America wracked by economic depression. This story forms the centre piece for the remaining links to Jake, and the modern world - the story of an abandoned baby and a world gone chaotic around her.

Its an amazing tale, and Michael Christie has done wonders to weave countless threads together. From the 1930s depression era railroad cars to Earth First style direct actions against logging equipment, the book is filled with fully drawn characters, who constantly force the reader to ask themselves why we live in a world with so much beauty at the same time as hunger and destruction surround us. But this is no crude political tract, its a story that links future dystopia to a chain of events - both human and economic. The powers unleashed by a handful of billionaires in search of yet more wealth, draw countless others into the swirling maw. The trees that are stripped and destroyed and burnt along the way, merely fuel for the accumulation of wealth, yet poignant reminders of what we stand to loose. Great novel.

George Edwards - From Crow-Scaring to Westminster

George Edwards was born in rural Norfolk in 1850, the child in a "miserable" cottage of "two bedrooms, in which had to sleep father, mother and six children." At the time his father's wage "had been reduced to 7s. per week". Such poverty, and the appalling working and living conditions that were imposed on agricultural workers at the time, shaped Edwards' life and thought. His father had been a soldier, and an agricultural worker, thgouh his exemplary service bore him no long term benefit. Having protested against unemployment with others in the parish of Marsham, George Edward's father found himself unable to get work.

The punishment for organising against unemployment, low wages and poverty were severe, and as Edwards relates throughout his autobiography the only way to successfully do this was through trade union organising. There were two great periods in Britain of agricultural trade unionism. Edwards was part of the first, which saw the leadership of Joseph Arch and a wave of strikes that shifted the bosses massively. But he was central to the second, and by then was an established trade union leader, and on occasion, paid official. 

As the title of the book demonstrates, Edwards very much saw his most important trajectory as being from the poor beginnings to Parliament. A similar path was trodden by Arch, and both of them - the first and second agricultural workers to become MPs, fell easily into the trap of finding in Parliament the establishment recognition they craved. Arch, is must be said, comes out of it far better than Edwards. Both of them however, end up blaming the workers who cheered them on for their failures. Edwards, however, is far more of a cynic than Arch, the latter of whom retained faith in workers' struggle till the end of his life.

Edwards, by contrast, despises workers' struggle. For him it was the last choice representing failure of negotiations. At one point, in describing the battles of the 1910s, Edwards rights, "I was... determined that I would do everything that was humanly possible to prevent a strike of this magnitude". He continues:

I can't explain it, but I always had, I took a leading part in the trade union movement, the greatest horror of a strike, and would go to almost any length to prevent it, so much so that many of my friends used to say that I went too far in my peace-loving methods.... I have made many mistakes, but that is not one of them.

Edwards' revulsion of strikes stems, in part, from the position he found himself in, as a local trade union leader with an economic interest in avoiding actions that challenged the union. But also from his own weak politics. Edwards' came from a Methodist background. His socialism was not that of Marx and Engels. It was that of the pulpit and Christian socialism. An avid reader, taught to read by his beloved wife, Edwards lists many of obscure books that inspired him. Few of them would be recognisable to socialists today. His politics lacked an understanding of class and power, even though he sided with the lower classes - he is clearly unable to see that struggle is the only way to challenge the entrenched reality of capitalism. Reformism for Edwards flows from his faith and his politics.

That said when battles did happen, Edwards took his side - both on the pickets and in the union. The Norfolk union was built through hundreds of meetings, arguments and discussions. Edwards' training as a Methodist preacher served him sell here. One cannot fail to recognise that it was Edwards' hard labour (and thousands of miles of cycling) that built the trade union, and it was he who was punished by the union itself when the St Faith's strike of 1911 was sold out so that there would be no struggle to distract from the General Election. Edwards' discussion of this period in his book is in part a settling of accounts. The tiresome reproduction of motions aside, it is clear that Edwards' at least held on to a principled defence of the strikers' right to continue and their democratic decisions. Edwards was right. Fifty percent of the strikers did not get taken back, despite the union leadership's compromise.

Nonetheless historian Reg Groves is no doubt right when he wrote of Edwards:

George Edwards tells the stroy from the standpoint of one who was an active worker for the Liberal Party. He saw the growth of the union rather in terms of his own development, of his own slow passage from mesmbership of the Liberal Party to membership of the Labour Party. His opinions change little, if at all: he aw things much at the end of his life as he had done in the early days, and he remained for a long time coparatively indifferent to the changing opinions of the workers themselves, who were hearing and responding to the message of socialism.

Much of the latter half of the book is taken up with somewhat tiresome anecdotes and reprints of speeches and motions that detail the struggles inside the union as the movement went into decline. Then Edwards' election campaigns see reprints and extended quotes from favourable news reports and speeches. As a result there is very little of interest to those interested in rural history or agricultural trade unionism. The book becomes more and more about Edwards, and less and less about the conditions around him. In fact, it is noticeable, that even when describing strikes and protests that he was central too, Edwards is rarely speaks about the struggles, or those struggling. Despite the huge scale of the trade union movement at times, there's little flavour here of the strikes or the movement itself. It makes for a dry read.

One other thing that comes through is how Edwards' loyalty to the British state manifests itself against his better principles. The worst example of this is how he becomes a cheerleader and recruiter for the First World War. The horrors of those battles means he becomes determined to ensure those who returned get treated decently. But he never wavers from the idea that it was right for thousands of agricultural workers' to be sacrificed in the trenches for British capitalism. No doubt this approach is why he had such a fine time in Parliament.

Tiresome and dry though this book is, it confirms on almost every page the essential limitations of socialism without class struggle. Most readers will find in it an interesting insight into the way that Methodism and reformism found in themselves appropriate partners in the British Labour movement. It helps illuminate the way that British Labourism was born tied to the coattails of Imperialism, and how it has failed ever since to break. If you can suffer through the terrible Methodist hymns you might find something of interest. 

Related Reviews

Arch - From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography
Horn - Joseph Arch
Ashby - Joseph Ashby of Tysoe: 1859-1919
McCombs - The Ascott Martyrs
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle! The History of the Farm Workers' Union

Greg Steinmetz - The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The life and times of Jacob Fugger

In 1526, the Tyrolean radical Michael Gaismair, wrote a remarkable document known as The Landesordnung. In it, he outlined how a radicaly democratic society could function, based on social justice, religious freedom, equality and, through curbing the actions of the rich and powerful. In it, he demanded that the mines, an important part of the Austrian economy, be bought under democratic control and taken off the likes the Fugger bankers. They, and their kin, had

forfeited their right to them for they [bought] them with money acquired by unjust usury in order to shed human blood. Thus also they deceived the common man and worker by paying his wages in defective goods…raised the price of spices and other products by buying up and hoarding stocks. They are to blame for the devaluation of the coinage, and the mints have to pay their inflated price for silver. They have made the poor pay for it, their wages have been lowered in order that the smelters can make some profit after buying the ore. They have raised the prices of all consumer goods after they gained a monopoly, and thus burdened the whole world with their unchristian usury. 

Sadly this quote doesn't appear in Greg Steinmetz' account of the life and times of Jacob Fugger. But having read it, one can certainly sympathise with Gaismair and the rebellious peasants and miners who flocked to his call. Fugger was indeed one of the richest men ever to have lived, and as Steinmetz's account makes clear Fugger was uniquely for his time, adept at seeing business opportunities and using his existing wealth and power to get further wealth and power. He counted among his clients kings, monarchs and popes, and he played politics like a giant game of chess across Europe all in order to further his own ambitions.

Unfortunately Steinmetz's book suffers from superficial analysis and simplistic comment. Writing of the great German radical Thomas Müntzer, Steinmetz says that he "was the most dangerous to Fugger. It was not because he had the most guns but because his populist agenda held enormous appeal". Müntzer did indeed rail against "the profiteering evildoers", but then so did many others. Müntzer was a threat because his brand of radicalism was linking up with a mass movement - not because he was uniquely radical. The revolutionary movement of 1525 was, after all, a massive challenge to all the powerful and weathly. 

Steinmetz charts Fugger's rise to power, and in particular highlighting the way he was able to extract wealth from labourers and use that to strengthen his hand. It is notable, and Marxists might appreciate knowning it, that the world's first capitalists and bankers were as ruthless as others. Despite the lack of serious competitors, Fugger seems personally driven to accumulate wealth for the sake of it. Even Steinmetz who is clearly sympathetic to the banker's lot is forced to acknowledge that Fugger's methods were devious and nasty. In the case of the repression of the peasantry and their allies, Steinmetz notes that Fugger "sponsored" "savagery".

Despite these insights, Steinmetz tends to give Fugger far more credit than he is due. He is portrayed as the figure who personally drives forward key moments in central European history. Steinmetz doesn't appear to be engaging in hyperbole when he improbably claims, that Fugger

roused commerce from its medieval slumber by persuading the pope to life the ban on moneylending. He helped save free enterprise from an early grave by financing the army that won the German Peasants; War, the first great clash between capitalism and communism. He broke the back of the Hanseatic League... He engineered a shady financial scheme that unitnetniotnally provoked Luther to write his Ninety-Five Theses... he most likely funded Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe.

Like Brecht, we might wonder who else built Thebes of the Seven Gates? The problem is that this account fails to acknowledge the very real changes taking place within the economic base of European society in the early 16th century. The changes that were driving all sorts of economic, political and theological changes and opening up a space for others. By placing these changes in the hands of one individual (to be fair Steinmetz does say "helped") the authors is simply engaging in that favourite bourgeois fantasy of the individual discontected from society and the wider world. 

Tragically there are no modern biographies of Jacob Fugger, and Steinmetz has at least written one that covers the key moments of Fugger's life. Sadly its not without fault. It also has some annoying mistakes. Fugger claims that Müntzer was finally defeated in battle at Mühlhausen "a small city Müntzer gad seuzed and sought to run as a communist utopia". But this is wrong. The battle took place at Frankenhausen, and is today marked by a significant museum.

Greg Steinmetz's biography of Fugger will likely have a renewed readership as a result of the anniversary of the Peasants' War. It is perhaps most charitable to say that it is the sort of biography you would expect "a securities analyst for a money management firm in New York" to write, and use it as a jumping off point for more serious studies elsewhere.

Related Reviews

Klaassen - Michael Gaismair: Revolutionary and Reformer
Blickle - The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a new perspective
Baylor - The German Reformation & the Peasants' War: A Brief History with Documents
Drummond - The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer

Rudolf Hoess - Commandant of Auschwitz

This is, in everyway possible an utterly repugnant book. I must start out by saying two things. Firstly none of the proceeds from this publication go to Hoess' family. The publishers say that royalties go the "help the few survivors from the Auschwitz camps". Secondly, reading this book is an insight into the minds of the figures who made the Holocaust happen. Written as it while under arrest and facing trial for crimes against humanity, it is naturally distorted and with much self-justification. The shocking thing is that Hoess is surprisingly unashamed of his actions.

Hoess starts his book with his childhood, in a strictly Catholic family. He was himself expected to become a priest, and his parents seem strict, but highly moral. He says, without any sense of self-irony, that "I was taught that my highest duty was to help those in need". From his early life he believed in the importance of service, duty and obeyance of orders from those in superior positions. He eventually served in the First World War in Iraq, and like many Nazis, he saw action in the Freikorps. This led to his imprisonment for his role in the murder of a far-right figure who was believed to have betrayed another nationalist to the authorities. Following his imprisonment, Hoess who was already a Nazi member, lived in a far-right rural commune, until the new Nazi regime found him a position in the Concentration Camp system. Hoess' knowledge and contact with leading Nazis in the aftermath of WW1 say him rise quickly - as did his commitment to the cause, and his organisational skills.

This background is important. Partly because it is important to understand the trajectory that Hoess took to get his position runing Auschwitz. Mostly however it ensures that the reader understands that Hoess was a committed Nazi. He wasn't in charge of the world's most appalling death camp because he was good at organisation. He was in charge because he was committed to Nazi ideology and to following the orders of the regime's leaders. 

According to the Auschwitz museum, about 1.1 million people died in the camp. Most of these died while Hoess was in charge. It is impossible then for the reader to be anything but shocked by Hoess' comments. He says, for instance, of his work in Auschwitz:

I though that the construction and completion of the camp itself were more than enough to keep me occupied, but this first progress report served only to set in motion an endless and unbroken chain of fresh tasks and further projects. From the very beginning I was so absorbed, I mist say obsessed, with my task that every fresh difficulty only increased my zeal. I was determined that nothing should get me down. My pride would not allow it. I lived only for my work.

"I lived only for my work" in the death machine that was Auschwitz is such an extraordinary statement that it takes the readers breath away. With paragraph's like the above, it can seem that Hoess is trying to depict himself as a technical functionary, obsessed with the details of the "machine" but unconnected to the wider murder of the camp. Indeed, Hoess's anger at the extreme Nazism of the Der Stürmer newspaper, the newspaper that was avidly read by SS staff in the camp for its extreme antisemitism, is because it undermined the proper functioning of the camp and "far from serving serious anti-Semitism, it did a great deal of harm". This is a theme for Hoess. His frustrations at problems in the camp are because he is frustrated at being unable to properly carry out his order. Hoess himself explains.

When in the summer of 1941 [Himmler] gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: i had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.

While he says that he did not form an opinion at the time. He does not allow himself to argue that it was wrong after the event. Indeed, much of his criticism of the extermination policy comes, not from a moral outrage, but because he thinks it was a waste of labour. Thus the millions of Jews and others who died in the camps are dismissed by Hoess.

Indeed Hoess "watching the killing" himself. The sections of the book where he describes this, and the individual tragedies his witnessed are some of the most difficult pieces of writing I have ever read. Time and again he says things like "the killing of these Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time". Hoess is more focused on describing the technical solutions, and supply problems that hampered the extermination programme. In fact, at times, the book reads most as a tract written to prove that Hoess was good at his job. Hoess was happy in his work, "In Auschwitz I truly had no reason to complain that I was bored". He continues by explaining that when he was "deeply affected by some incident" he was able to go riding, or see his family, until the "terrible pictures" had been "chased away". Homelife was idylic:

My family... were well provided for inAuschwitz. Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted them. The children could live a free and untrammelled life. My wife's garden was a paradise of flowers. The prisoners never missed an opportunity for doing some little act of kindness to my wife or children, and thus attracting their attention.

I will spare the reader here by not quoting the passages were Hoess indifferently describes the murder of people, or watching their deaths through the windows of the gas chambers, or his efforts to make the process more efficient. In his introduction Primo Levi says that the book is "filled with evil, and this evil is narrated with a disturbing bureaucratic obtuseness; it has no literary quality, and reading it is agony". He continues that Hoess comes across as "a coarse, stupid, arrogant, long-winded scoundrel, who sometimes blatantly lies".

The "bureaucratic obtuseness" that Levi refers to is accurate. But we have to be careful at simply seeing Hoess' actions as just reflecting the "banality of evil". What Hoess did and describes in this book reflects that he was more than just a functionary. He was committed to Nazism. His strict obeyance of orders flowed not from having a personality that enjoyed organisational work, but because he saw in Himmler and Hitler leaders who he was personally and politically commited to. He was a Nazi through and through, and his last paragraph statement that he was "unknowingly a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich" is exposed as a lie by every preceeding paragraph. Hoess was not a cog in an office far away from the camps. He was looking in through the glass observation panels as trainload after trainload of Jewish people died. He was also happy to kill himself. To those SS men whose moral was sapped he could only offer inspiration by reminding them of the Nazis' plan. 

My interest in Rudolf Hoess came from seeing the recent film Zone of Interest. If anything this book exposes Hoess as a far nastier and brutal person than the film does. I don't think I have previously read a book by a Nazi. It has left me feeling sick and angry. But also committed to making sure that the 21st century fascists never get a chance at power again.

Related Reviews

Evans - Hitler's People: The faces of the Third Reich
Evans - Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial
Roseman - The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution
Mazower - Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe
Browning - The Origins of the Final Solution