Empire of Destruction, Alex J. Kay
Empire of Destruction, Alex J. Kay
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Empire of Destruction
A History of Nazi Mass Killing

Author: Alex J. Kay

Narrator: Tom Lawrence

Unabridged: 14 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/26/2021


Synopsis

The first integrative history of Nazi mass killing—showing how policies of mass murder were crucial to the regime’s strategy to win the war

Nazi Germany killed approximately thirteen million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, overwhelmingly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis’ pan-European racial purification program.
 
Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jewry can also be examined in the wider context of Nazi mass killing. For the first time, Kay considers Europe’s Jews alongside all other major victim groups: captive Red Army soldiers, the Soviet urban population, unarmed civilian victims of preventive terror and reprisals, the mentally and physically disabled, the European Roma, and the Polish intelligentsia. He shows how each of these groups was regarded by the Nazi regime as a potential threat to Germany’s ability to successfully wage a war for hegemony in Europe. This groundbreaking work combines the full quantitative scale of the killings with the individual horror.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ian on April 20, 2023

I had to read this book for a class, and, though the content is extremely dark, I’m glad I was given the chance to read it. I’m not typically interested in military history, but I think Kay does an amazing job chronicling the history of the Holocaust from its inception in mental institutions in Germ......more

Goodreads review by Tom on August 25, 2024

This is an essential text to understand the severity of what the Nazis represented. I think anybody who tries to downplay the Nazis by comparing them to the Soviet Union, or by even daring to entertain the idea that "the allies also committed war crimes so actually..." should be slapped across the f......more

Goodreads review by Andy on December 15, 2021

The book highlights the unremitting catalogue of horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Mass killings of Jews, Russian POWs, Roma, Slavs, the peoples of Eastern Europe. Wherever the Nazis went, mass killings began. Kay doesn't hold back on the details and it can be a tough read; there are passages here t......more

Goodreads review by Franki on August 18, 2023

This is a very thorough recount of the mass killing perpetrated by the Third Reich. It is a difficult to read because Alex J. Kay does not hold back on the details. However, I do recommend this book if you want to get a better understand of the absolutely massive scale of the atrocities committed by......more