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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Mary Fulbrook, âA Small Near Town Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaustâ (Oxford UP, 2012)
Description: The question of how âordinary Germansâ managed to commit genocide is a classic (and troubling) one in modern historiography. Itâs been well studied and so itâs hard to say anything new about it. But Mary Fulbrook has done precisely that in A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2012). In the book she examines the career of a single Nazi administrator in âthe Eastâ, Udo Klusa, in minute detail day by day, week by week, month by month while the Germans were improvising what became known as the âHolocaust.â Klausa was not a big wig; he was...