HIMMLER'S NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARDS

Il reclutamento e l'addestramento delle guardie dei campi di concentramento - rare foto in bianco e nero

This book studies the whole process of recruitment, indoctrination and performance of those responsible for the guarding of concentration camp inmates. It is not an attractive subject – the conversion of human beings into sadists and murderers is bound to be shocking. But it happened under the Third Reich on a massive scale. Of the 55,000 Nazi concentration camp guards, some 3,700 were women. The book studies their behaviour with examples of individuals routinely carrying out appalling acts of cruelty alone or alongside their male counter-parts. Written and compiled by a highly experienced author, researcher and collector, the book follows the development of concentration camps from the early beginnings in the 1930s (Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, etc), through their establishment in the conquered territories of Poland and Czechoslovakia to the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz. In parallel it describes, using original source material, the behaviour of the guards who became in numerous cases immune to the horrors around them. The Liberation process is also described using numerous moving personal accounts of Allied personnel. Himmler’s Nazi Concentration Camp Guards, with its many rare unpublished images and authoritative text, is the most comprehensive pictorial study of this shocking aspect of the Nazi regime.