Edward B. Westermann has now produced a book that pays tribute to all strands of research while, at the same time, highlighting an element that will need to be included in all future considerations: the stimulation of the murderers through alcohol.
Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed:
The role of alcohol abuse in Nazi Germany deserves a book in its own right. Here it is.
Thomas Kühne, author of The Rise and Fall of Comradeship:
That many Nazi thugs were prone to booze was never a secret. But only Drunk on Genocide shows how often alcohol consumption helped neutralize moral restraint before, and guilty feelings after, their horrible crimes. A must-read to understand how ordinary men could become mass murderers.
Dagmar Herzog, author of Unlearning Eugenics:
Drunk on Genocide exposes the corporeal and emotional effects of alcohol in the Nazi Judeocide, documenting its stunning pervasiveness. The evidence is devastating, and Westermann plumbs its complexities with enormous sensitivity, considering victims' and perpetrators' experiences anew. Our understanding of the Holocaust will be forever changed.
Steve Clemons, Editor-at-Large, The Hill:
The horrors of the Holocaust rattle one's soul. Socially demeaning and murderous behavior, fueled by alcohol and bloodlust, of powerful Germans toward fellow citizens revealed a subterranean intoxication. Drunk on Genocide shows the need to keep the worst of social impulses locked away.
Wendy Lower, author of Hitler's Furies:
From its founding in the Munich beer halls, the Nazi Party flourished in a masculine environment of rowdyism, revelry, and arrogance. Drunk on Genocide shines a glaring light on Nazi perpetrators of violence, drunk with the blood of Holocaust victims. A brilliant and unsettling study.
Westermann's work is incredibly thoroughly researched with a rich amount of survivor testimony that gives voice to the victims. Drunk on Genocide is a compelling work with a well-researched argument.
Drunk on Genocide is a important and terryfing book that tackles a persistent question in the study of the Holocaust and World War II: how was it possible that the Germans killed so many people and behaved so brutally in the Soviet territory they invaded and occupied?
Drawing on several decades of research into Nazi police battalions and comparative genocide, Westermann employs social, anthropological, and gender theories to create a framework that effectively analyzes the relationship between alcohol and mass murder.
[Ed Westermann's work provides an invaluable insight into the mindset and mentality of the everyday executioners of the racial war in the east.
Westermann uses a wide variety of primary sources ranging from photos to diaries to interviews to understand the behaviors and beliefs of perpetrators. It is a remarkably challenging book to read. But a necessary one.
Drunk on Genocide is an essential read, and one that offers considerable insights into the intimate relationship between ritualized intoxication, cults of masculinity, ideological antisemitism, and the mass murders in the bloodlands of the east.