In The Shadow Of The Reich

By Niklas Frank

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394583450
• ISBN13: 9780394583457
• Release Date: August 1991
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 371 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.2" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Niklas Frank on Hans Frank and the Planned Extermination of the Poles

Although Niklas was born in 1939, the same year that Germany unleashed WWII by conquering Poland with the Soviet Union, and was therefore too young to understand what was going on then, he provides a devastating critique of his father's conduct as the Butcher of Poland. Of course, some of the matters raised by Niklas have since been subject to further clarification. For instance, Hans Frank's assertion that he was responsible for protecting the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (Tschenstochau)(p. 117, 357) has since been exposed as a lie. It turns out that the Germans had placed explosives in the monastery in order to blow it up during their retreat, but a perceptive Pole saw a wire that led to the explosives, enabling the Poles to disarm these in time, thereby saving the Black Madonna. Much attention has been devoted to the fact that the Nazis, as individuals and as a group, profited personally from the theft of Jewish valuables. Niklas points out that Hans also stole a great deal of valuable Polish properties, including much art, Oriental carpets, gobelins, choice pieces of furniture, clocks, vitrines, jewelry, furs from both Jewish and Polish women, etc. (p. 116, 121, 224). We keep hearing about Poles and Jews being unequal victims. It is clear that they were unequal in the matter of timing and methods of their destruction, and not in terms of German attitudes and aims. To begin with, the Poles were not deemed to have any more inherent worth than the Jews. For instance, Niklas quotes Hans as: "...using the icy voice you always liked to use when you talked about inferior Poles and Jews who had no right to be alive." (p. 201). Also: "...Kruger...and his SS men commenced their extermination of the `subhuman creatures', whether Jew or Pole." (p. 123). Up to that time during the German occupation of Poland, two million Poles had already been openly murdered (p. 254), while the remainder of the Polish population was being forced to die a slow death, as tacitly admitted by Hans: "The majority of Poles consumer only about six hundred calories per day. The population is by now so debilitated that it becomes an easy prey for typhus...We may further decease the diet of the Polish peasant only to the point just short of where he is no longer fit for manual labor!" (p. 128). Clearly, Poland under Hans Frank had been transformed into one giant concentration camp! Niklas also points out that Hans Frank's later concessions to the Poles were belated attempts to cover up his crimes as the defeat of Nazi Germany was becoming inevitable (e. g., p. 258). Niklas Frank quotes his father's statements that came up at Nuremberg (p. 26). The elder Frank had said that there would not be enough trees on which to print the names of all of the Poles that he had ordered killed. An even more chilling statement by Hans Frank was the one in which he said that, after Germany won the war, the Poles and Ukrainians could be turned into mincemeat. The juxtaposition of Jews and Poles

A son reacts to a terrible father

Niklas Frank hates his father, and few sons could have better reason. Hans Frank was one of Hitler's goons and ruled Poland during the war. He was hanged at Nuremberg. Had I been his attorney at the war crimes trial, (And I am an attorney.) I would have argued that Frank was a figurehead and never had any real power for good or ill. He was no Albert Speer. While this line of defense would not have been likely to succeed, it would have been minimally better that his real defense, which was that he was really an enlighted ruler and did a great job for the Poles under difficult war time conditions. Unfortunately for Frank, his official diary and war time speaches were available. In one of them he said that he didn't care if the Poles were made into mincemeat after the war ended their usefulness. The book is interesting both as a biography of Hans Frank, and as a psycological study of Niklas. So far as I can judge, it is accurate in its facts and opinions; but I cannot claim any expertese. I would reconmend the book to anyone with a interest in Hans Frank, the Government General, or the psychology of children of German war criminals.