A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2015 A Kirkus Reviews Best History Book of 2015 Finalist
for the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category The first comprehensive history
of the Nazi concentration camps In a landmark work of history Nikolaus Wachsmann offers an
unprecedented integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933
through their demise seventy years ago in the spring of 1945. The Third Reich has been
studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history and yet until now there has
been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the
everyday experiences of its inhabitants both perpetrators and victims and all those living in
what Primo Levi called "the gray zone." In KL Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our
understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work much of it
untranslated and unknown outside of Germany but also presents startling revelations based on
many years of archival research about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Examining
close-up life and death inside the camps and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp
system was shaped by changing political legal social economic and military forces
Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen
before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance KL is destined to be a classic in the
history of the twentieth century.
