Hitler's First Victims

Timothy Ryback's gripping and poignant historical narrative focuses on the first killings in Dachau in 1933 and on the investigation that followed, which exposed not only the earliest evidence of the machinery of the Holocaust, but also the remarkable courage of Josef Hartinger, a local Munich prosecutor, who openly challenged these first homicidal impulses.

Traces the work of German prosecutor Josef Hartinger to find justice for the first victims of the Holocaust, who died in 1933, as a state detention center for political prisoners turned into the Dachau concentration camp.

Auteur
Timothy W. Ryback is the author of Hitler's Private Library, which was named to the Washington Post Book World Best Nonfiction list in 2008, and The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, a New York Times Notable Book. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times . He lives and works in Paris.

Résumé
Mr. Ryback's important book shows how even such a small, stubborn, apparently futile determination to adhere to the rule of law can, with fortune on its side, help see final justice done. It is fitting acknowledgment of a forgotten German or (as Hartinger might have preferred) Bavarian hero. - The Wall Street Journal"Fascinating...Has all the makings of a legal thriller."- The Boston Globe"Fascinating, disturbing...Ryback's book is a decades-overdue recognition."- Jewish Times"Ryback...here examines an early but enormously significant episode in the evolution of the Nazi program of genocide....An important addition to Holocaust collections."- Booklist"A chilling, lawyerly study with laserlike focus."- Kirkus"In recounting the compelling story of a prosecutor who sought to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes at Dachau in the early days of the Nazis' reign, Timothy Ryback's book is all the more startling and important for bringing to life an episode so little known. It suggests what might have been if more Germans at the time had done their professional duty with equal moral compass. "-Raymond Bonner, author, Anatomy of Injustice"This is an extraordinary, gripping, and edifying story told extraordinarily well by Timothy Ryback. I read it with a sense of amazement at the capacity of one good man to stand tall in the face of evil, and at the capacity of others to fall into unspeakable barbarism."-Richard Bernstein, author, Dictatorship of Virtue"In this finely researched and deeply disturbing account of how Jews and Communists murdered in Dachau in 1933 became 'Hitler's first victims,' Timothy W. Ryback finds a rare point of light in the courage of an obscure Bavarian prosecutor who tried to fight the escalating Nazi savagery with the rule of law. Thanks to his documented record of the atrocities taking place at Dachau, Ryback can now demonstrate how, within weeks of coming to power, the Nazis had already set off along the dark path that would lead to genocide."-Alan Riding, author, And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris."Timothy Ryback's Hitler's First Victims is a significant addition to the Holocaust canon. The story of the first four Jews murdered at Dachau, as well as the astonishing account of the German prosecutor (surely a precursor of Claus von Stauffenberg) who, in 1933, attempted to charge the vicious Nazi concentration camp commandant with murder, form the heart and soul of Ryback's amazing book. The author's research is prodigious and his accumulation of new details make the reader feel as if he is observing the first spreading of the Nazi plague through a microscope. This is history come alive in your hands."-Robert Littell, author, The Amateur"In this horrifying and heartbreaking account of Dachau's early days, Timothy Ryback restores, to the murderers and the murdered alike, something crucially, necessarily missing from most Holocaust histories: their individuality. Then, by capturing, meticulously and understatedly, the retail barbarity of the place, he helps anticipate the wholesale annihilation to follow. And by recounting the striking heroism of two men-a local prosecutor and a medical examiner, simply trying to do their jobs-he allows us at least to ponder whether, had more such good Germans come forward, it all might just have been stopped."-David Margolick, author, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink"Timothy W. Ryback's gripping account of one man's fight against Nazi atrocities holds important lessons for us. Experience demonstrates that the authors of genocide and crimes against humanity frequently test the waters before fully implementing their murderous plans. The Holocaust was no exception. Ryback shows how this genocidal act may have been averted had more people acted with vigilance and determination. Our challenge today is to act on Ryback's historical insights before new rounds of mass atrocities unfold."-

Échantillon de lecture
1 Crimes of the Spring Thursday morning of Easter Week 1933, April 13, saw clearing skies that held much promise for the upcoming holiday weekend. Mild temperatures were foreseen for Bavaria as they were throughout southern Germany, with a few rain showers predicted for Friday, but brilliant, sunny skies for the Easter weekend. Previous generations hailed such days as Kaiserwetter, weather fit for a kaiser, a playful gibe at the former monarch's father, who appeared en plein air only when sufficient sunlight permitted his presence to be recorded by photographers. In the spring of 1933, some now spoke in higher-spirited and more reverential tones of Führerwetter. It was Adolf Hitler's first spring as chancellor. Shortly after nine o'clock that morning, Josef Hartinger was in his second-floor office at Prielmayrstrasse 5, just off Karlsplatz in central Munich, when he received a call informing him that four men had been shot in a failed escape attempt from a recently erected detention facility for political prisoners in the moorlands near the town of Dachau. As deputy prosecutor for one of Bavaria's largest jurisdictions-Munich II-Hartinger was responsible for investigating potential crimes in a sprawling sweep of countryside outside Munich's urban periphery. "My responsibilities included, along with the district courts in Garmisch and Dachau, all juvenile and major financial criminal matters for the entire jurisdiction, as well as all the so-called political crimes. Thus, for the Dachau camp, I had dual responsibilities," he later wrote. Deputy Prosecutor Hartinger was a model Bavarian civil servant. He was conservative in his faith and politics, a devout Roman Catholic and a registered member of the Bavarian People's Party, the centrist "people's party" of the Free State of Bavaria, founded by Dr. Heinrich Held, a fellow jurist and a fierce advocate of Bavarian autonomy. In April 1933, Hartinger was thirty-nine years old and belonged to the first generation of state prosecutors trained in the processes and values of a democratic republic. He pursued communists and National Socialists with equal vigor, and since Hitler's appointment as chancellor had watched the ensuing chaos and abuses with the confidence that such a government could not long endure. The Reich president, Paul von Hindenburg, had dismissed four chancellors in the past ten months: Heinrich Brüning in May, Franz von Papen in November, and Kurt von Schleicher just that past January. There was nothing preventing Hindenburg from doing the same with his latest chancellor Adolf Hitler. Until then, Hartinger's daily commerce in crime involved burned barns, a petty larceny, an occasional assault, and, based on the remnant entries in the departmental case register, al…