Based on unique documents from the archives of the SS, Amy Carney succeeded to create a comperehensive overview of the lineage families within the Nazi elites, mostly focused on controlled parenting and a complex genetical selection for professional assignments. After 1933, 'only a person who descended from a superior racial lineage would have the hereditary credentials to join the SS', part of the larger race-based policy developed at different levels of the German society.
It profiled not only the SS as a racial elite - with the genetic lineage the main element evaluating the worth of a person and his or her place within the hierarchy - but created the model for the entire German 'Volk' as well. 'Himmler tasked each SS man with the responsibility of fathering a racially healthy family; the duty was repeatedly emphasized in commands, rhetorics, and policy'. With a clear distinction of the roles within the family and the mission to provide to the society at least to two children per family, with the corresponding financial state-supported measures, those elites were already in place at the end of the war and the model survived at certain extent in the post-war Germany.
Carney is mostly focused on the analytical overview of the policies during the Nazi times, with an explanatory approach which doesn't leave too much space for a critical and comparative approach on the sources. Given the novelty and extent of the information, which will extensively influence the content of similar approaches regarding the elites during that those times, the study is mostly self-contained and explores the material. There will be the duty of further academic studies to diversify the approach and create the theoretical models and support theories in this respect.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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