Synopses & Reviews
From January 1945, in the last months of the Third Reich, about 250,000 inmates of concentration camps perished on death marches and in countless incidents of mass slaughter. They were murdered with merciless brutality by their SS guards, by army and police units, and often by gangs of civilians as they passed through German and Austrian towns and villages. Even in the bloody annals of the Nazi regime, this final death blow was unique in character and scope.
In this first comprehensive attempt to answer the questions raised by this final murderous rampage, the author draws on the testimonies of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Hunting through archives throughout the world, Daniel Blatman sets out to explain—to the extent that is possible—the effort invested by mankind’s most lethal regime in liquidating the remnants of the enemies of the “Aryan race” before it abandoned the stage of history. What were the characteristics of this last Nazi genocide? How was it linked to the earlier stages, the slaughter of millions in concentration camps? How did the prevailing chaos help to create the conditions that made the final murderous rampage possible?
In its exploration of a topic nearly neglected in the current history of the Shoah, this book offers unusual insight into the workings, and the unraveling, of the Nazi regime. It combines micro-historical accounts of representative massacres with an overall analysis of the collapse of the Third Reich, helping us to understand a seemingly inexplicable chapter in history.
Review
This outstanding book is the first comprehensive, systematic study of the final phase of the murderous regime implemented by the Third Reich. Blatman provides heartrending descriptions of the cruelties experienced by the evacuees and of the strategies they employed to cope with the lethal conditions of the forced marches. He also offers the best summary available of the system of concentration and labor camps and the relation of that system to the mass murder of European Jewry. David Engel, author of < i=""> In the Shadow of Auschwitz <>
Review
A strikingly original work that breaks important new ground on the murderous evacuations, at the end of the Second World War, of more than a quarter of a million prisoners westward from concentration camps and elsewhere in the east. Blatman not only provides an overlooked history of these slaughters, he shows how the gruesome deportations involved not just Jews, but many other groups. Surveying this horrific history, he proposes new answers to questions about the place of these killings in the history of Nazi criminality and wartime German society. This book amplifies our understanding of the Holocaust and illuminates the disintegration of the Third Reich. Michael R. Marrus, author of < i=""> Some Measure of Justice <>
Review
It's hard to come up with a new historical thesis about the Holocaust or Nazism, fields of study that are already jam-packed with researchers. But groundbreaking studies do appear every now and then, studies that offer a different interpretation of familiar historical events and can change the way we understand history. Daniel Blatman's The Death Marches is such a work...Daniel Blatman's book is monumental, not only because of its breadth but also because of the enormous variety of sources it relies on, collected by the author from more than 20 archives in six European countries and the United States. It is a masterpiece of historical work, its power stemming not only from its scope but also from the radical insights it offers on its subject. Boaz Neumann
About the Author
Daniel Blatman is Professor of Jewish History and Head of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.