Dagmar Herzog
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.
Wendy Lower
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.
Thomas Kühne
"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."
Steve Clemons
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.
Thomas Kühne
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.
Norman Ohler
The role of alcohol abuse in Nazi Germany deserves a book in its own right. Here it is.