ResoluteReader

Friday, January 17, 2025

Joseph M. Marshall III - The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History

Crazy Horse is best known, to non-indigenous people, as the military leader whose charge destroyed General Custer's final defence at the Little Big Horn battle. But that's about it. There are no authenticated pictures of Crazy Horse, and much of the rest of his life as a Lakota leader is forgotten. Though his tragic murder is often mentioned in passing, a consequence of the genocidal policies of the US government who could not afford to have such a figure head live.

But there is a lot more history and autobiography about Crazy Horse, though learning it means listening to the people who knew him best - the Lakota themselves. Joseph M. Marshall III, himself a member of the Lakota, has written this epic autobiography basing it on the oral history of the Lakota. It is a remarkable read which interweaves the story of Crazy Horse with the story of the Lakota and the author's own experiences.

In fact, the most interesting parts of the book are not those dealing with the specific battles - though these are fascinating. They are the ones that depict Lakota life and how it was transformed by contact with Europeans. Crazy Horse himself represents this in microcosm. His birth mother died early in his life, and his father took two more wives who became Crazy Horses next mothers. It is an intriguing difference to the "family" that dominates Western culture and is told to us as the norm. Marshall points out that many Lakota, including people today and himself, have multiple parents in this way. Their upbringing not being restricted simply to a mother and father. Crazy Horse was mentored and trained by several different male parental figures, including his father. His father himself was called Crazy Horse, as was his grandfather. The Crazy Horse that is the centre of this book being given the name by his father at an appropriate moment while his father took a new name to replace it.

These aspects of Crazy Horse's early life are intriguing for the insights into different styles of organising life. And it is defending that way of life that Crazy Horse commited himself to. He and his contemporaries watched the settlers arrive and travel across their terrority on the Bozeman Trail, until the Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands saw Crazy Horse play a leading role in defeating Captain Fetterman's force and the eventual withdrawal of US forces from the area.

The treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 was supposed to bring hostilities to an end. But Crazy Horse was skeptical. As Marshall explains:

Sitting Bull knew what would happen, Crazy Horse was certain. The whites would use that treat as a way to control the Lakota. They drew lines on a paper to outline the picture of the land, something not unknown to the Lakota. But the idea that an imaginary line could define where the land begins andends was laughable - as if the line would somehow show up on the land. Even more laughable was the rule that the Lakota had to live in one part of the land and obtain permission from the whites to hunt in the other. Their thinking was laughable, but it was their thinking and they had the power of numbers, many soldiers with many rifles, many wagon guns and plenty of powder. Part of the answer was to fight. There could be no other way... The whites understood force.

Crazy Horse has always been judged by others. In his summary Marshall notes that there are multiple Crazy Horses to the whites. The "noble warrior" doomed to loose, the chief. He points out that Crazy Horse as the "conqueror of Custer" means that "Crazy Horse has no validity without Custer". Always depicted, weapon in hand, Crazy Horse epitomises a certain, racist, view of Native Americans. But, as this book shows, Crazy Horse was a thinker, a leader, and a fighter. He was a human being - with foibles and loves - and part of a community with a rich and powerful tradition. He led the resistance to the destruction of that community, but in remembering him the West does so in a way that seeks to defeat him and his people. Joseph Marshall III's wonderful book does much to tell the true story.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Cyprian Ekwensi - Jagua Nana

Jagua Nana is a remarkable, but forgotten, novel. Set in Nigeria in the immediate aftermath of independence, it centres of Jagua Nana, a forty-five year old sex worker who retains her skills, beauty and fantastic dress sense. She is an icon of Lagos, a woman whose clothing and makeup sets the fashions for everyone else. And a woman who is desired by many men.

Jagua wants to settle down and have children. She hopes to do this with Freddie, her twenty something lover, a school teacher, but one who has ambitions. Freddie wants to go to London, to study at the inns of court and return to Nigeria a lawyer who can help transform the country into a modern democracy. Jagua's plan is to pay his way, and ensure he qualifies, then returns and can help her lead the life she dreams of.

But the tension between her life as a sex-worker, relying on her clients from the exotic Tropicana club to keep her in the life she has, pressures her relationship with Freddie until it snaps. Unable to see past Jagua's sex with other men, Freddie moves to England without Jagua's help. In his absence Jagua is cut adrift, finding solace and excitement in various dalliances and relationships in the country around Lagos. Here her urban street skills are a hindrance in navigating the countryside and its more traditional life, but also offer new ways of thinking to those stuck outside the capital. Her good looks do no harm either:

Here in Ogabu, men dressed well but sanely. Women were beautiful, but not brazen. They had become complementary to the palm trees and the Iroko, the rivulets and the fertile earth. TGhey were part of their surroundings as natural as the wind. Whereas in Lagos man was always grappling to master an environment he had created. It was money, money, yet more money.

Freddie's sudden return as a promising young politician standing in the local election as a radical, democratic and anti-corruption candidate upsets the apple cart. Initially, unable to see past his recent marriage to a young woman, Jagua initially decides to destroy him by supporting the other candidate. But the personal tensions become intensely political.

Jagua Nana is a remarkable novel because its story is a deeply personal one set against the backdrop of Nigeria's emergence into post-colonialism. It's intensely political, but with a small p, because it doesn't take up big questions of struggle. Rather it is focused on the consequences of individual and very personal decisions and sacrifices, made within bigger contexts. But front and centre are the stories of women's lives - stories that show how women fight to change things, to achieve their dreams and to break free of the limitations forced upon them by their social circumstances.

I loved this book. It was first published as part of the African Writers Series, curated by Chinua Achebe. I was very lucky to find a copy randomly in a second hand book shop, which proves it is always worth taking a punt on an unknown writer. See if you can hunt it down.

Monday, December 30, 2024

Michael Patrick F. Smith - The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown

One of the mistakes that environmentalists have been guilty of in the past is forgetting that behind every oil, coal, gas and fracking site are dozens of workers. The fossil fuel industry is both a uniquely devastating part of capitalism, and also a massive employer. This is why the British Campaign Against Climate Change produced a number of pamphlets aimed at the trade union movement to argue that a "Just Transition" to a sustainable economy could both create jobs, and transition workers from the fossil fuel industry to alternative employment while protecting terms and conditions. That remains, I would argue, a central task of both the environmental and trade union movement.

The Good Hand is an insight into the lives of the men and women who are behind the fossil fuel industry. Michael Patrick F. Smith lived and worked in New York as a playwright, singer and jobbing actor. In 2013, as the fracking (shale gas) boom exploded in North Dakota he headed up to the oil fields to try and make his fortune. Arriving in Willston, North Dakota, the centre of the boom he finds himself, alongside hundreds of others, trying to get work in a boomtown where rents are rocketing and McDonalds cannot (or won't) pay enough to hire enough staff. Living in a flophouse, where three or four men share a living room sleeping on bunks or airbeds, Smith trudges the streets trying to get a job.

This is oil boom capitalism. But its also capitalism that has shed any dignity. There's plenty of money sloshing around to ensure that the bars, sex clubs, and drug dealers are able to make a killing from the young, lost, alienated and immigrant labour. The work, when Smith eventually makes it into an oil job, is uniquely dangerous. There are safety briefings, but the chances of injury and death are ever present. The long hours, long distances, drink, drugs and pressure to work faster contribute to a workplace safety record near the bottom of the graph.

Smith is an incredible story teller. His experiences however are shaped in this remarkable book by his upbringing in a abusive and dangerous family. His father was violent and sexually abused his sister. Smith notes that there are two topics of conversation for oil workers meeting for the first time - the job, and paternal violence. It is, Smith thinks, because of this background that he is determined to make it in the industry - to be come a "good hand", a reliable worker in the eyes of his compatriots.

Because the other aspect to this alienated world of work is that workers make themselves a community. The shared danger, drinking and drugs, and the hell of life without proper public services and housing, means that men learn to love and defend each other. Even if they are often at each others throats. There are stories here that allude to the love that they develop for each other. Sometimes this is actual sexual relationships, and it's interesting that Smith notes that homosexuality isn't that frowned on, except for a few jokes. In this intensely macho world that seems surprising. That said, this is barely a bastion of liberalism. In his time on the North Dakota prairie Smith meets just one trade unionist.

Nor are there many progressives. The chapter where Smith confesses to the men that he voted Obama had me holding my breath. Here it seemed the jokes about "someone having an accident" might be very real. Smith, in fact, is shocked to find Willston almost entirely white. There are a few black workers, who are to the men from the region mostly figures of curiosity and fun. In turn the immigrant workers are shocked, upset and angered by the racism. It is when Smith realises that he has just accepted the "innocent explanation" for the name of a bar called the K K Korner that he begins to realise how much he has been changed.

Smith's time on the oilfields is a life changing experience - not because of the work. But because of the people. As an explanation of working class life, in the rarefied, high-stakes and sometimes high-paid world of booming fossil fuels, it is often difficult to read. This is a place of drugs, drink, casual violence and deep misogyny. But there are also moments of real beauty and solidarity. People standing up for each other, defending each other or simply putting a hand on someone else's shoulder at a time of need. It's a tough read, but it tells you more about the reality of the "American Dream" than any rhetoric from Trump or Biden will. Smith writes movingly, but never patronisingly about his life, work and the people of America. It's highly recommended.

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Richard Grunberger - Red Rising in Bavaria

The Munich, or Bavarian, Revolution is an often neglected part of the amazing German revolutionary wave that took place at the end of 1918 and into 1919. The German Revolution was important for two reasons. Firstly it effectively ended the slaughter of World War One as sailors, soldiers and working people struck, marched and created workers councils. Secondly, it extended a hand of solidarity and hope to the people of Revolutionary Russia, briefly opening up the hope that the Soviet Republic would not remain isolated. The revolutionaries of Munich certainly understood this second aspect of their struggle. But what was the nature of the Munich rising itself?

Richard Grunberger's account of these events "Red Rising" is a readable, if problematic account. It was, as he abley describes, in 1919 that the counter-revolutionary Freikorps began their fascist reigns of terror. Practising for events under Hitler. The "Reds" in Munich executed 10 hostages. It was probably a tactical error, and certainly not one supported by the majority of rebels. But the counter-revolutionaries outnumbered this slaughter ten to one. Over one thousand revolutionaries, participants, by-standers and completely innocent people were killed in the orgy of violence that suppressed the revolution.

Unfortunately there is very little here about the revolution from the bottom up. Grunberger is more interested in the individuals who led, or put themselves at the head of the movement itself. He is fascinated more with their individual eccentric behaviours than with trying to understand the real dynamics of the movement. Kurt Eisner, the Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic in the initial phases of the revolution, who was assassinated in February by the right-wing, seems to have been a volatile and unusual character. Franz Mehring, the leading German Marxist and biographer of Marx, described Eisner as an "aesthetic dilettante". It's probably an accurate depiction.

Eisner's weakness was to try and find a way between bolshevism and Social Democracy. His quest for a revolution without Bolshevism meant he failed to see the threat from the right, or their handmaidens in the SPD. But he was not alone in this. Those that followed frequently made the same mistake. The most able leader seems to have been Eugen Leviné. Leviné did not allow the fledgling Communist Party to inistially support the rising, saying, according to Grunberger, "We can only take part in a republic of councils if it is proclaimed by the councils - and if the majority of them are communists". It seems a sensible policy - focusing on revolutionary movements from below, not the arbitary declaration of a Council Republic from above. Leviné's eventual participation was a recognition that once the battle was engaged Communists could not abstain. Though for Grunberger it's more of a reversal of position rather than an act of principle from a position of enormous weakness.

There are some real political weaknesses with the book. But there are stylistic problems too. Grunberger's descriptions of people are sometimes very off. The SPD leftist Erhard Auer is described as a "huge man with large hands" for no apparent reason.

Despite it's limitations there are some real glimpses into moments of working class power and bravery during the Munich Revolution. For those who only know the name Dachau because of the later concentration camp there, remember the workers of the town who fought the fascists there long before the Nazis came to power:

In the fighting that follow Red troops advanced into Dachau... At a cricial moment in thebattle workmen and women from the Dachau ordnance factory disconcerted the defenders by wading into the melee and shouting amidst the hail of bullets, "Don't shoot at your brothers!" When the White hesitated before firing on civilisans, the Red attacks pressed home their advantage, diarmed some of the enemy and drove the rest northwards from the town.

Similarly, Grunberger quotes from an eyewitness to an early meeting in the revolution, when a worker cuts through the rarefied debates of professors including Max Weber:

The crowd was so tightly packed that the waitresses 'ate' their way through it like woodworms. One was barely aware of the alcohol and tobacco fumes or human perspiration, because it was so important that the things that mattered could be said. Suddenly a pale young workman mounted the rostrum and said simply "Have you, or you, made an armstice offer? Yet we ought to do it - not the gentlemen in office. Let us seize a radio station and let us ordinary folk address the ordinary folk on the other side - right away there'll be peace." As he said this a problem occurred to him, and with a touching gesture in the direction of Max Weber's fellow academics o nthe platform, the young man continued: "Here these Herren Professoren, they know French! They'll know how to say it the way we mean it."

Sadly there is too little such flavour of "ordinary folk" in the book. It is these people and their hopes that made the German Revolution, and sadly this book doesn't deliver enough of this. That said, for a subject that is badly neglected in the literature of the Revolution, it is a decent overview. Socialists should read it to be reminded of the need to build revolutionary organisation ahead of the crucial battles. Otherwise we are, as Leviné famously said at his trial, "Communists are all dead men on leave".

Friday, December 27, 2024

Joan Nabseth Stevenson - Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter & Custer's Seventh Cavalry

An almost uncountable number of publications have been written about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In a genre of history that has no shortage of books, the defeat of Custer and his men by the combined might of the Lakota, Dakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho has been analysed, debated and obsessed about, almost from the moment Custer's command was extinguished.

There are a good number of microhistories that focus on particular individuals or experiences at the Bighorn. Deliverance from the Little Big Horn is one of these, though because its focus was on the only medical Doctor to survive the battle, and his experience with Reno and Benteen as they were besieged overnight, it is an unusal and rewarding read for those who are interested in the Battle.

Doctor Henry Porter was a contract surgeon with the US Army. This meant he was one of a handful of civilians to accompany the Seventh Cavalry on their expedition to slaughter the Native Americans. Porter was not armed and was not expected to fight. His job was to help injured troops on the trip and during any confrontation. The other doctors with the troops were killed with Custer, or early in the battle with Porter. In fact Porter's friend and fellow medic James M. DeWolf was killed a few metres from Porter, because he took a slightly different route up the hill during Reno's disastorous and panicked retreat from the first encounter with the Native American forces. It was to Porter that Reno famous denied he had fled. "That was a charge" he said.

Only a small section of the book is devoted to the battlefield experiences of Porter. It must have been a horrific situation as Porter used limited resources to patch up and keep alive a growing number of severally wounded soldiers. Most of these were bullet wounds. Porter did not have to deal with many arrow heads. But he did have to amputate and provide urgent care. Saving up to 68 men. One important detail that Joan Stevenson's book does explore is the complete rejection of germ theory by the US medical establishment and hence the doctors down to Porter on the battle field. Interestingly this would probably have made little difference on the battlefield as there was hardly any water for cleaning equipment or hands. But in the aftermath of the encounter Porter, as was common at the time, was more concerned by the bad smell from dead animals and men, and its impact on the wounded men's injuries.

When relief finally arrived Porter ministered to the men on an arduous trek to the vessel that was to take them down the Yellowstone river to Fort Lincoln near Bismarck in North Dakota. All the way Porter cared for the men.

Porter's dedication wasn't reflected in his treatment by the Army. As a contract surgeon he was expected to be at the beck and call of the military, but could be terminated almost without notice. In the immediate aftermath of the Custer defeat Porter set out again with General Terry on a classically pointless military adventure that failed to confront the Native Americans. Along the way though Porter was witness again to a military failure as the soldiers, following weeks of poor diet of hardtack and bacon, feel sick to scurvy.

In the miltary austerity of the next few years, Porter gained and lost contracts. He eventually became a successful doctor in Bismarck, and travelled the world. Dying in India trying to see the Taj Mahal. He also campaigned for better treatment, and pay, for medical professionals in the US army. Whether he eventually accepted germ theory is not said.

Joan Nabseth Stevenson's little book is an excellent account of medicine in the US army at the time. It is clearly a work of love, but written with a serious scholarship and knowledge of the Battle itself. For those interested in military medicine who know little of events in July 1876 this will be a good introduction. Stevenson has little to say about the wider context of the war, and makes no real comment on the overall strategy of the US government. To be fair to her that's not what the book is about. She does conclude with Porter's testimony into the conduct of Major Reno on the battlefield. He, along with the other surviving civilians, had little good to say. The officers, as is the military want, kept their deepest thoughts to themselves for the "good of the regiment". Porter's honesty did him credit. History has been less kind to Reno. The victorous Native Americans however were still being slaughtered.

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Kent Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce

If you happen to be travelling in Yellowstone National Park you might drive on Chief Joseph Highway. Its a somewhat unusual name. Roads in the US tend to be named after US military heroes, not their adversaries. But Chief Joseph, or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, to give him his Nez Perce name was one of the most famous Native American leaders during the period after the Little Bighorn. In 1877 the Nez Perce Native Americans made a journey of almost 1200 miles from their ancestral homelands, across huge areas of what are now Wyoming and Montana trying to reach safety. Chief Joseph was one of Nez Perce chiefs, though for reasons that Kent Nerburn explains, he was not actually the supreme military leader that the US military, media and white population thought he was.

This account of Joseph, by one of the most talented non-Native American chronicllors of their history, begins with the first encounter the Nez Perce had with European settlers. This was the meeting between them and the Lewis and Clarke expedition, sent out from the East to learn more about the lands that would become the USA. The Nez Perce and the explorers got on well. So much so that later encounters were often marked by misunderstanding, confusion and tragedy. By the 1860s the US government was trying to force the Nez Perce to sign a treaty that would give up their lands so that settlers and gold hunters could use it. Some bands of the tribe did sign, but many, including Chief Joseph's, did not. A difference that became enshrined as the Treaty and non-Treaty Nez Perce.

Nerburn recounts the history of this period, as indignities and falsehoods grew, with the Nez Perce increasingly being forced into confrontations with the whites. By 1877 it was increasingly difficult for the Native Americans to avoid conflict, and more and more pressure was put on the non-Treaty Nez Perce to relocate. Refusing to do so, the Nez Perce were threatened with War. Thus began the long trek of the Nez Perce as they tried to escape and find sanctuary.

It is a gripping tale. The Nez Perce fled, intially with hope of finding a place to live, then simply to escape the persuing military. A series of confrontations took place as the Native Americans skillfully defeated the ill-equipped and under experienced troops. It might be described as a sort of fighting retreat, except the Nez Perce didn't think they were retreating. The telegraph and local journalists created a news story that was followed from coast to coast. Joseph became the supposed leader, though he was at the start only one of several other chiefs. Joseph infact was the least beligerent, the more warlike leaders unknown to the press. As the Nez Perce fled, lurid and racist stories followed behind and in front. Terror gripped the plains out of all proportion to the acts of the Native Americans, though as they travelled they did, under force of arms and increasing desperation commit acts. It is notable that by this point Yellowstone Park was open to tourists. Some of the first where indeed captured and killed by Native Americans. The history of the US war on its indigenous population is surprisingly close in time to our own.

Eventually the Nez Perce were defeated at the battle of Bear's Paw. They were a few tens of miles from the Canadian border and safety. Their defeat is remembered for Joseph's alleged speech that said he was no longer fighting. Promised much, but in reality offered little, the Nez Perce were relocated to Kansas where they became victims of racist and unscrupilous Indian Agents. Their they would have languised if Chief Joseph and others become skilled at public opinion. Joseph used every opportunity to speak to the press, to audiences and to visitors. He was skillful at highlighting the great injustice his people had suffered and how they only wanted to go home. Arthur Chapman, a translator, also wrote vast numbers of letters pleading the Nez Perce case.

There was some success. Many of the Native Americans did eventually return, though Chief Joseph was never allowed to. In fact he never again saw his own daughter, barred from visiting the lands she had been relocated to.

The tragedy of the Nez Perce is told brilliantly by Kent Nerburn's book. He highlights how the Nez Perce "war" as it is sometimes known arose out of the racist and genocidal policies of the US government that saw the Native Americas as people to be pushed and pulled from their homelands to wherever they were least in the way. It also demonstrates how, far from being the uncivilised people that racist politicians, military leaders and journalists thought they were, the Native Americans were skilled and careful politicians in their own right. And frequently far better soldiers than the US troops. Perhaps Kent Nerburn's greated achievement in this book is rescuing all the Native American leaders other than Joseph. But he also shows how many of the whites were also willing to show kindness and assistance to the Nez Perce after their capture. Even in the 1870s there were those who recognised the injustices of US settler colonialism. But Nerburn never lets you forget that the real heroes, and the ones that forced the US state to back down several times, though political campaigning and a fighting resistance, were the Nez Perce. Let's hope one day they receive adequate recompense for the injustices made against them. A superb read.

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Alex J. Kay - Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing

One of the photos in Empire of Destruction is of Richard Jenne, a four year old child who was murdered in the "special children's ward" at Irsee Monastery by the head nurse, one Sister Mina Wörle. The killing of young Jenne was part of the systematic murder of patients with mental health issues by the Nazi regime. Jenne was probably one of the last children killed under this barbaric plan. Notably he was murered by Wörle three weeks after the end of the war. For her role in killing up to 100 children Wörle got just 18 months imprisonment.

The death of Richard Jenne is one moment in the mass killing undertaken by the Nazi government. It serves as a stark reminder of the human story behind the figures for Nazi mass murder. It is well known that over six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. In addition millions of others were systematically killed. These include people with mental and physical disabilities, Russian prisoners of war, Gypsy and Roma, Russian civilians and others. These mass killing each "possessed a racial (and racist) component". But Kay argues that central to them all was that how the Nazi regime considered these groups a barrier to Germany's ability to win the war. It is difficult or impossible, he argues, to separate "German wartime stratgy from Nazi genocidal racal policies". This approach is not universally accepted among historians of the Nazis.

Kay explains:

In view alone of this intertwinement of war and extermination, it makes a great deal of sense to consider the different strands of Nazi mass killing togheter rather than in isolation... This of course means going against the grain of most scholarship on the subject by examining the genocide of the European Jews alongside other Nazi mass-murder campaigns.

In contrast to those who argue that the Holocaust must be considered separate to other mass killings, Kay argues that "taking an integrative approach to Nazi mass killing in no way contradicts the view - advocated here, too - that the Holocause was an unprecedented phenomenon."

I will not quote from any of the horrific eyewitness accounts to the murder, the description of events or the testimony of survivors. The book is perhaps one of the most difficult books I've ever read. There are relentless accounts of murder. Despite having read several books on the Holocaust and visited concentration camps and other places of Nazi killing, I don't think I've been quite so shocked and upset before. Indeed Kay explicitly warns the reader that the book is "harrowing". But reminds the reader that his "extensive use of testimony from survivors and other victims hopefully goes some small way towards giving them a voice". Bearing witness like this is of course important.

But also important is Kay's central argument that the racist policies of the Nazi regime, combined with their war aims allowed this to happen. It also built upon racist, antisemitic, eugenic and Malthusian ideas that predated Hitler. But once the regime was in power, and when the war had started, they took on an importance to the Nazis that was not anticipated. The logic of war, led to mass murder. For instance, Kay writes how the German military's systematic attempt to stop partisans in Eastern Europe was tied up with their belief in living space for Germans:

The measures taken by German forces in the context of their 'pacification' campaign constituted an attack on a substantial section of the Soviet population and, simultaneously, on the national and ethnc fabric of the state. These so called anti-partisan operations were in effect an attempt to depopulate the Soviet countryside. German forces massacred hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians, destroying thousands of homes and, indeed, entre villages in the process... The vast majority of the victims... had little or no connection to guerilla resistance, and virtually all of these deaths had a racist component.

It is worth noting that there were murders on this scale on the western front, which highlights the racial dimension to the war. Understanding all this however means comprehending Nazism as something more than antisemitism. There were "specifically Nazi motivations for mass killing", but no "monocausal explanation" for the "actions of the perpetrators" says Kay, and concludes:

The answer we seek can be found only in the interaction of tseveral factors converging in a specific historical circumstances. The conduct of the Holocaust perpetrators... cannot be unexplains in terms of their ideology alone, and yet cannot be understood without it.... The prevalence of radical ideological convictions during the years in querstion point to a shared and defining historical context.

Hundreds of thousands of Germans under Hitler, "by virtue of a certain set of circumstances and the events of the preceding decades, were particularly radicalised and mre inclined to pursue extreme solutions to perceived problems." Those solutions murdered over ten million people.

Kay's book is an important study, that opens up a way of approaching mass murder and the nature of the Nazi regime. I am not quite sure he is able to the bottom of what the specific set of circumstances that led to the Nazi regime was. While he is right to point to the historical roots of mass murder in Germany, including the prevelant racism and eugenics, I also think we need to look deeper at the way the context of the end of World War One shocked and frightened a generation of the German middle classes, and allowed Hitler to mobilise by promising to stop the Marxists. In this context Richard J Evans recent Hitler's People: The faces of the Third Reich is good to read alongside Kay's book because it shows how those at all levels of the Nazis' machine were drawn to fascism and Hitler and motivated to do what they did. That said, Kay's history is important both to remind us of the horrors that took place and help us understand how they were organised. Never Again.

Kershaw - Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris

Kershaw - Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis

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