The S.S Officer’s Armchair: Uncovering the Hidden Life of a Nazi

Historians have been working at digging deeper into World War II Germany, trying to move away from the major figures and trying to look at how the more average person interacted, lived, and worked in Nazi Germany. This book takes a look at one such person; while a member of the SS, he was not well known and never really advanced his career before his death at the end of the war. Historian Daniel Lee was told the story of Nazi German records found in the lining of a chair. Wanting to know more, he started to research who was this person, how did his family react to him being in the SS, and whether he was a die-hard believer or someone who mostly wanted to maintain a steady life, family, and paycheck. What follows is an interesting look into how people remember the past, how countries remember the past, and if it is at all possible to take a look at the average person. It is hard to reconstruct the lives of average people even in modern day, let alone after a country destroys most of its records. This is a welcome addition to German Twentieth Century history.