.
.
by Frank McDonough.
Hardback (6.5×9.5 inches). 416 pages. 2025.
The book covers the slow and steady erosion of personal freedoms that start with minor nuisances and end in concentration camp crematoriums and killing fields all over Europe.
As the WWII generation and the Holocaust generation pass, a real danger exists that the systematic strangulation of rights under the facade of lawful execution by the government can ultimately lead to wholesale genocide.
It can start with economic pressure: of the 100,000 Jewish businesses in Germany in 1933, by 1938 70% of them were closed or sold for a pittance to Aryan Germans. Of the 50,000 Jewish-owned individual shops in Germany in 1933, only 9,000 were left in Jewish control in 1938 (p132). Additional laws expelled non-Aryan civil servants from government, fired teachers, professors, staff, and other education professionals, and revoked licenses for doctors, plumbers, and other professionals. For example, of the 9,000 Jewish doctors in Germany in 1933, only 4,200 were left to practice in 1937 and only on non-Aryans (p133).
Early in the Nazi dictatorship, the official German policy was one of forcing Jews to leave Germany — with an 81% tax as of 1936 on transferring money abroad (p130). That’s assuming countries would allow such immigration.
Edict after edict and law after law, the Nazi government took away rights. With the start of the war, forced labor under inhuman conditions coupled with accelerated development of concentration camps increased the rate of murder.
The book contains 106 black and white photos, one color photo, and two color maps.
This isn’t exactly holiday reading, but propaganda whitewashing of genocide must be remembered to prevent the erosion of liberty. It’s well-researched, well-written, and well worth your time to understand the horror that can grow from complacency and denial.
Enjoy is the wrong word, for there is no joy about loss of rights leading to genocide, but to keep consistency with my other review conclusions: Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
