The Making of an SS Killer: The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990

Description

In this pioneering biography of a frontline Holocaust perpetrator, Alex J. Kay uncovers the life of SS Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert, responsible as the first head of SS-Einsatzkommando 9, a mobile killing squad, for the murder of more than 18,000 Soviet Jews - men, women and children - on the Eastern Front. He reveals how Filbert, following the political imprisonment of his older brother, set out to prove his own ideological allegiance by displaying particular radicalism in implementing the orders issued by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. He also examines Filbert's post-war experiences, first in hiding and then being captured, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released early, Filbert went on to feature in a controversial film in the lead role of an SS mass murderer. The book provides compelling new insights into the mindset and motivations of the men, like Filbert, who rose through the ranks of the Nazi regime.

Alex J. Kay is Senior Academic Coordinator at the Institute of Contemporary History, Berlin. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Humboldt University, Berlin, and is author of Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941 (2006) and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is also co-editor of Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization (2012) and was awarded the Journal of Contemporary History's first George L. Mosse Prize in 2006.

'In this compelling biography of a key player in the implementation of the Holocaust, Alex J. Kay succeeds in explaining the extraordinary journey of Alfred Filbert to becoming a mass murderer. Sound in judgement and full of novel insights, the book is an important addition to the genre of perpetrator studies.' Robert Gerwarth, Professor of Modern History and Director, Centre for War Studies, University College Dublin 'In The Making of an SS Killer, Alex Kay recounts the fishtailing life of a typical Holocaust perpetrator - not a desk perpetrator, but a face-to-face killer - who staggered from jurisprudence to mass murder to corruption to imprisonment and eventually to modest movie stardom: an intriguing, disturbing, amazing book about the conjunction of lunacy, banality, unscrupulousness, and aggrandizement that allowed normal people to become mass murders.' Thomas Kuhne, Strassler Family Chair for the Study of Holocaust History and Professor of History, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, Massachusetts 'A thought-provoking and richly documented journey into the mindset of an SS killer.' Mark Roseman, author of The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (2002) 'One brother a Nazi murderer and the other a communist in a concentration camp: thus the history of the Filbert family. Alert to contingency as well as ideology, Alex Kay takes an important step towards understanding mass murder in this skillfully crafted book.' Timothy Snyder, author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015) and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010) 'Alex Kay has crafted an intensely compelling and detailed narrative of the life of one Nazi killer. ... Most impressively, Kay manages to pack detailed analysis, broader implications, the life trajectory of Filbert and a good number of excellent images into only 126 pages. ... Kay has written a book that is accessible to both scholars and students alike (and which would make a great companion book for a Holocaust course).' Waitman Wade Beorn, German History 'An impressively researched piece of scholarship, drawing on personal interviews and documentation from more than thirty archives. ... [Kay] provides an extremely interesting and exhaustively researched perpetrator case study that will be essential reading for specialists.' Christopher Dillon, Central European History '... Kay has provided a significant addition to the biographical literature of the Nazi annihilation apparatus; one can only hope that more individual biographies or a strong collective biography will follow.' Peter Black, American Historical Review 'In The Making of an SS Killer, Alex J. Kay provides an astonishingly well-sourced and detailed account of the life of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer (Lieutenant Colonel) Alfred Filbert, the first commander of Einsatzkommando 9, which killed over 18,000 Jews in Lithuania and Belorussia ... Kay's study shows that fitting perpetrators into single categories of motivation is too imprecise: in perhaps most cases several motives were at work.' Richards Plavnieks, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 'This book is not only well-researched, but intellectually tantalizing and addictive. Kay's narrative hooks you from his introduction and by the time the reader has finished, it is hard to believe that this is based on the facts of Filbert's life and career. Instead, it seems almost Hollywood-like in its tensions and its twist of an ending.' Natasha Margulis, New Books Network '... important and immensely insightful ... Throughout all chapters, Kay splendidly traces the complicated system of patronage and personal connections that were crucial in the making or breaking of a career under the Nazi regime.' Franziska A. Karpinski, Journal of Perpetrator Research '... a concisely and coherently written, lucid, well-researched, and detailed biographical study of a Holocaust perpetrator ... Throughout all chapters, Kay splendidly traces the complicated system of patronage and personal connections that were crucial in the making or breaking of a career under the Nazi regime.' Franziska A. Karpinski, The Journal of Perpetrator Research