IT was high time for a translation into English of
Der SS-Staat, that remarkable study of the concentration camps under Hitler. The Nazi concentration camp pro- vided a particular and dreadful aspect of National Socialism, perhaps its most direct and practical expression ; there is no under- standing the Third Reich without adequate • knowledge of this system. On the cover of the first edition Dr.- Kogon stated with truth that his book had neither propagandist nor sensationalist aims. Those who know its alithorknow that he possesses an integrity to match the courage which led him out of seven years in Nazi concentration camps alive, and not only alive but unsoured and intellectually lively ; he was ready, in fact, to become joint editor of what many people regard as the best German periodical today, the Frankfurter Hefte. The Theory and Practice of Hell is not a tedious catalogue of excruciating cruelty, though perforce it describes a great deal. It contains an acute analysis of the psychology of both the S.S. gaolers, and the medley of prisoners who lived at their mercy ; indeed Dr. Kogon gives a positively exciting account of the efficiency of the organisation secretly contrived by the political prisoners. Men of anti-Nazi opinions and of all nationalities joined together and at one time, Dr. Kogon claims, managed to be better informed about the outside world than the ordinary citizens of Germany. He himself, though more than once condemned to death, took advantage of a job in the Buchenwald hospital to hide away min who would otherwise have been
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