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Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History
Killing the SS The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History
Author: Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
Confronting Nazi evil is the subject of the latest installment in the mega-bestselling Killing seriesAs the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Others, howe...  more »
ISBN-13: 9781250165541
ISBN-10: 1250165547
Publication Date: 9/18/2018
Pages: 304
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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3.5 stars, based on 10 ratings
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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jjares avatar reviewed Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History on + 3429 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
First rattle out of the box, I'm dismayed the authors did not spend more time documenting their work. Statements were made that were not attributed specifically to anyone. Another problem I had was the jumping around of the text in this book. The story wasn't smooth, perhaps that is the nature of searching for Nazi criminals; things don't progress easily.

On the positive side, I think a book like this needs to emerge every few years to keep the subject alive to members of the human race. It is shocking to read that so many countries helped hide Nazi officers and soldiers. What were they thinking? What Cold War ideas/plans can negate the value of 6 million lives? Another shocking item I read was the reluctance of so many country's leaders to do the right thing and find/prosecute Nazi's in their country. It was good to read about Eli Rosenbaum, who is still working for the US Dept. of Justice, to expose and deport war criminals. I was particularly pleased to see that since 2015, Social Security payments to former Nazi's (living in the US) has been terminated.

Perhaps the most interesting and frightening thing I read in this book is the concern over the billions stolen during the Nazi's in the war. The authors allude to the money being secreted out of Europe and posited with German corporations worldwide, waiting for a favorable time for the Nazi reemergence. That idea is scary.
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terez93 avatar reviewed Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History on + 345 more book reviews
I think a better title would be "Hunting the SS." A disturbing number of high-ranking officials seemingly escaped the consequences of their actions, although it also seems that they knew that they were being doggedly hunted, all their lives, which perhaps is sufficient punishment itself. This capable albeit rather pedestrian history focuses primarily on the discovery and capture of one Adolph Eichmann, which is the most well-known tale recounted by the famed Mossad agency, which hunted down Nazi war criminals who escaped in the last days of the war (and still does; I believe that a 90-year-old camp guard was arrested and deported from the US only a few months ago, to face charges back in his native Germany).

It's a fairly simplistic retelling of the story which has been chronicled by many others. There is very little textual analysis or discussion of some of the controversies regarding the evidence. In fact, this is my primary difficulty with this book: there are almost NO source citations, but almost all of the information was generated by someone else. There are a fair few footnotes, but they're notes rather than citations. It would have been helpful to know which individual asserted which theory or source, but that's a major missing dimension here. Otherwise, this is a good overview of the information, even if it's a rather superficial treatment of the material. The strength is that it's accessible to a general audience and doesn't require a lot of background knowledge of the subject, as it fills in what's important to know. If you are more familiar with the topics addressed herein, however, you will probably find yourself arguing or at least engaging in conversation with many of the statements which appear rather uncritically.


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