Ilse Koch on Trial : Making the "Bitch of Buchenwald" / Tomaz Jardim.
Jardim, Tomaz, author.
2023
D804.G3 J365 2023
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Title Ilse Koch on Trial : Making the "Bitch of Buchenwald" / Tomaz Jardim.
Author Jardim, Tomaz, author.
ISBN 9780674293090
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674293090
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2023]
Copyright ©2023
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (336 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674293090 doi
Call Number D804.G3 J365 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification 940.53/1853224
Summary An authoritative reassessment of one of the Third Reich's most notorious war criminals, whose alleged sexual barbarism made her a convenient scapegoat and obscured the true nature of Nazi terror.On September 1, 1967, one of the Third Reich's most infamous figures hanged herself in her cell after nearly twenty-four years in prison. Known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald," Ilse Koch was singularly notorious, having been accused of owning lampshades fabricated from skins of murdered camp inmates and engaging in "bestial" sexual behavior. These allegations fueled a public fascination that turned Koch into a household name and the foremost symbol of Nazi savagery. Her subsequent prosecution resulted in a scandal that prompted US Senate hearings and even the intervention of President Truman.Yet the most sensational atrocities attributed to Koch were apocryphal or unproven. In this authoritative reappraisal, Tomaz Jardim shows that, while Koch was guilty of heinous crimes, she also became a scapegoat for postwar Germans eager to distance themselves from the Nazi past. The popular condemnation of Koch-and the particularly perverse crimes attributed to her by prosecutors, the media, and the public at large-diverted attention from the far more consequential but less sensational complicity of millions of ordinary Germans in the Third Reich's crimes.Ilse Koch on Trial reveals how gendered perceptions of violence and culpability drove Koch's zealous prosecution at a time when male Nazi perpetrators responsible for greater crimes often escaped punishment or received lighter sentences. Both in the international press and during her three criminal trials, Koch was condemned for her violation of accepted gender norms and "good womanly behavior." Koch's "sexual barbarism," though treated as an emblem of the Third Reich's depravity, ultimately obscured the bureaucratized terror of the Nazi state and hampered understanding of the Holocaust.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
In EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
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Harvard University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
Available in Other Form print 9780674249189
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Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction
1 Ilse Koch and the World of the Concentration Camps
2 Corruption, Murder, and the SS Trial of Ilse and Karl Koch
3 American Military Justice and the "Bitch of Buchenwald"
4 Clemency, Controversy, and the Koch Case in the US Senate
5 New Charges, New Challenges in a Divided Germany
6 The Augsburg Trial of Ilse Koch
7 The Long Years After
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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