Author offers warnings after interviewing former Nazis for decades
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Headshot of author Laurence Rees and the cover of his new book, "The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History."
A British journalist whose BBC documentaries tackled the Nazi dictatorship's chaos has released a new book exploring the minds of those who carried out the Holocaust and how they defended their horrible actions decades later.
Why it matters: "The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History" released in the U.S. last week comes as antisemitism and new authoritarian regimes are rising around the world.
- It also comes around the 80th anniversary of Allied Forces defeating Nazi Germeny known as VE-Day and as Holocaust denial misinformation spreads online.
London-based author Laurence Rees tells Axios he wasn't interested in calling out any present world leader or current policy, but sought to examine why former Nazis did what they did and later insisted they were right.
- That's where we can draw the warnings, since it shows how lies, propaganda and prejudices can explain away accountability and crimes against humanity, Rees said.
- "Nobody ever said I had a gun to my head, and I just had to do it. It was orders. And the reason they didn't say it is because, actually, none of them ever did have a gun to their heads and had to do it for orders. It's a myth."
Zoom in: The book came from previously unreleased interviews Rees conducted with now dead former Nazis.
- He combines that testimony with new psychological insights around obedience, authority and the brain.
- He shows how the "us" vs "them" evolved into violent bigotry against former neighbors.
- Like his previous works, Rees seeks to debunk widespread misconceptions and get into the minds of former Nazis through their own words.
Context: Rees earned praise for his BBC documentaries and his previous books like "Auschwitz: A New History," sold at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum in Poland because of its sensitivity and reportage.
- He has collected testimonies for Nazi veterans and Holocaust survivors to show the complexities of how the Holocaust evolved overtime.
- Nazi veterans would talk about what the British were doing in India and what the United States did to Native Americans to call out the hypocracy of any criticism of Germany.
The intrigue: The book was released in the U.S. days before hip hop artist Ye released a song praising Adolf Hitler that is spreading online despite attempts to remove it.
- It also follows Elon Musk, the world's richest man, giving what scholars, journalists and rights groups said was a Hitlergruß, or Nazi salute.
- Last year, President Trump repeatedly said undocumented immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country," language echoing the rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
Yes, but: Rees said he did not write the book to attack Trump because he didn't even know if he'd win the U.S. election.
- "It would be unbelievably presumptuous of me to say, 'Oh, well, here's how this applies in Caracas or in Seoul'," Rees said.
- "So the idea was to write it in such a way that the reader, whilst reading it, makes those links themselves, depending on where and when they are."
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