An Uncompromising Generation

The Reich Security Main Office, founded in September 1939, under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich (until his death in 1942), and which included the Security Service and the Gestapo, was the organizational center of the Nazis’ murderous racial policy.

The historian Wildt's book shows how extermination plans were prepared and worked out in this office—in part by young, career-minded academics. Some of them were not just "desk perpetrators" but were directly involved in the mass murder as leaders of the notorious Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied Soviet territories. One famous case is Otto Ohlendorf, head of Einsatzgruppe D, who… show more.

Originally published in German, Wildt studies the role of the mid-level leadership of the Nazi SS who worked on the implementation of the “Final Solution” and the mass murder of the alleged racial and political enemies of the Third Reich.

Using a collective biographical approach and examining the individual backgrounds of these SS perpetrators, Wildt found that, contrary to popular belief, these men were not the so-called dregs of German society, but rather a cohort of ambitious, intelligent “men of action” many with advanced university degrees who came from borderlands areas throughout Germany. 

Whether with a pen or a pistol… show more.