In this work, Eric Johnson explodes the myth that the Nazis ruled solely by terror - that ordinary Germans were their victims too. Using thousands of original Gestapo case files, interviews of Germans and Jews who experienced the Reich at first hand, and investigations of the "local Eichmanns" who presided over Jewish affairs as well as scores of officers who staffed regional headquarters, he shows that the Gestapo had neither the power nor the desire to act other than selectively, targeting chosen minorities and sending the handicapped, Gypsies, and above all Jews for extinction. Johnson also documents the ways in which, after the war, government officials, business leaders and heads of all the main religious groups took part in the cover-up that minimized prosecutions.

I decided to keep this because the front flap informs me that the author focused on understanding who exactly was in the Gestapo and what they did. ( )