Marching into Darkness : : The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus / / Waitman Wade Beorn.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE Complete Package 2014
• VerfasserIn: Beorn, Waitman Wade,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (332 p.) :; 19 halftones, 2 maps, 3 graphs

On October 10, 1941, the Jewish population of the Belarusian village of Krucha was rounded up and shot. This atrocity was not the routine work of the SS but was committed by a regular German army unit acting on its own initiative. Marching into Darkness is a bone-chilling exposé of the ordinary footsoldiers who participated in the Final Solution on a daily basis. Although scholars have exploded the myth that the Wehrmacht played no significant part in the Holocaust, a concrete picture of its involvement has been lacking. Marching into Darkness reveals in detail how the army willingly fulfilled its role as an agent of murder on a massive scale. Waitman Wade Beorn unearths forced labor, sexual violence, and grave robbing, though a few soldiers refused to participate and even helped Jews. Improvised extermination progressively became methodical, with some army units going so far as to organize "Jew hunts." The Wehrmacht also used the pretense of Jewish anti-partisan warfare as a subterfuge by reporting murdered Jews as partisans. Through military and legal records, survivor testimonies, and eyewitness interviews, Beorn paints a searing portrait of an army's descent into ever more intimate participation in genocide.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Maps -- Introduction -- Chapter one. The Deadliest Place on Earth -- Chapter two. A Weapon of Mass Destruction -- Chapter three. Improvised Murder in Krupki -- Chapter four. Mogilev and the Deliberate Targeting of Jews -- Chapter five. An Evil Seed Is Sown -- Chapter six. Making Genocide Routine -- Chapter seven. The Golden Pheasant and the Brewer -- Chapter eight. Hunting Jews in Szczuczyn -- Chapter nine. Endgame -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index