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A review by cascadienne
The S.S. Officer's Armchair: Uncovering the Hidden Life of a Nazi by Daniel Lee
3.0
I went looking for this book after hearing the author, Daniel Lee, discuss it on a history podcast earlier this month. It’s both a deep dive into the extraordinary evil done by “ordinary Nazis” and into the research methods available/necessary to track down the story of someone who was a low-to-mid-level bureaucrat for the Third Reich.
It was fascinating to see just how much information was available on Robert Greisinger from official paperwork, and what that allowed the author to track down and piece together.
I would have rated the book more highly if Lee had taken a step back to more thoroughly address the issue of whitewashing the Nazi period in German history among the general public. He touched on it in relation to how Greisinger’s daughters and other family members perceived his story, but I feel like it’s a significant enough issue to have spent more time focusing on it - especially with the resurgence of nationalism and re-emergence of overt far-right groups in the general culture in so many countries in the last 10-20 years.
Also, the audiobook narrator generally was great... but for every single elderly person he portrayed as a separate character, he chose a breathy, exhausted voice that was indistinguishable from any other elderly character. It happens often enough that I found myself getting seriously irritated by it.
It was fascinating to see just how much information was available on Robert Greisinger from official paperwork, and what that allowed the author to track down and piece together.
I would have rated the book more highly if Lee had taken a step back to more thoroughly address the issue of whitewashing the Nazi period in German history among the general public. He touched on it in relation to how Greisinger’s daughters and other family members perceived his story, but I feel like it’s a significant enough issue to have spent more time focusing on it - especially with the resurgence of nationalism and re-emergence of overt far-right groups in the general culture in so many countries in the last 10-20 years.
Also, the audiobook narrator generally was great... but for every single elderly person he portrayed as a separate character, he chose a breathy, exhausted voice that was indistinguishable from any other elderly character. It happens often enough that I found myself getting seriously irritated by it.