Eric A Johnson

Who were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while they were happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans? Eric A. Johnson answers these questions as he explores the roles of the individual and of society in...

What We Knew offers the most startling oral history ever done of life in the Third Reich. Combining the expertise of a German sociologist and an American historian, it draws on both gripping oral histories and a unique survey of 4,000 people-both German Jews and non-Jewish Germans, who lived under the Third Reich. It directly addresses some of the most fundamental questions we have about the Nazi regime, particularly regarding anti-Semitism, issues...