I give this book five stars because of its historical value. This work not only gives insight into the mind of the leader of perhaps the greatest death factory ever built, but also allows a clearing-up of some errors that have accreted in the decades since that horrible time.
Hoess rejected God and the Church (p. 52-53, 57, 59, 72, 192), having rebelled against his father's wish that he become a priest. Like Himmler, he became an Artaman (pp. 202-203; a communal movement resembling the 1960's US communes, albeit Teutonic-centered) before switching to Nazism for his substitute religion.
Hoess wrote: "Until the beginning of 1942 the main body of prisoners was Polish." (p. 128). Many Poles were murdered secretly (the cause of death listed as natural), "...because of political and security reasons..." (p. 224).
During the Auschwitz Carmelite convent controversy, attempts were made to belittle the victimhood of Auschwitz Poles through the premise that they, unlike most Jews, were not generally killed upon arrival at Auschwitz. Hoess, in contrast, rejected any such dichotomy (if anything, praising the slow-death genocidal methods--as perfected by the Communists): "The Gestapo delivered the prisoners to the camps to be exterminated. It made no difference to them whether it happened by firing squad, gas, or by the horrible conditions in the camps. It was part of their plan not to improve conditions in the camps...Thus, the concentration camps were changed deliberately, and sometimes unintentionally, into large-scale extermination centers. The Kommandants received extensive composite reports from the Gestapo about the Soviet concentration camps. Escaped prisoners had made reports about the conditions and organization of these camps down to the smallest detail. They emphasized that by using forced labor methods the Soviets were annihilating entire nationalities." (pp. 168-169).
Holocaust-uniqueness advocates sometimes claim that the genocide of the Polish intelligentsia, unlike that of Jews, served a rational purpose--the elimination of resistance. Actually, the latter was, at most, a hoped-for byproduct of this nation-destroying act: "I want to add this, that the general opinion at SS headquarters was that the total annihilation of the Polish intelligentsia would also destroy the resistance movement. [SS Major] Thomsen was an ardent defender of this theory." (p. 322).
Initial plans to kill all Jews gave way to the sparing of some of them for forced labor (p. 34).
Hoess discussed the Jewish Sonderkommando in considerable detail. Those Jews temporarily got to save their lives by dutifully assisting in the deception, gassing, despoiling, and cremation of their fellow Jews. He also observed Jew-against-Jew behavior by some Jews who had no hope of postponing their own deaths. As they entered the gas chambers, they told Germans the addresses of fugitive Jews back home. Hoess commented: "I cannot explain what motivated them to reveal this information. Was it personal revenge, or were they jealous because they did not want the others to live on?" (p. 160).
In common with many Germans, Hoess attempts to rationalize his exterminatory conduct by equating it with the Allied bombings of German women and children. He estimates German civilian casualties in the several millions (p. 171), which is at least a 20-fold exaggeration.
As for lebensraum, Hoess belatedly concluded that Germany could have achieved it peacefully (p. 182).
Hoess suggested that crude propaganda such as Der Sturmer had hindered the development of scientific anti-Semitism (p. 140). He also came to believe that the extermination of Jews only brought hatred against Germany and increased Jewish power by discrediting anti-Semitism (p. 183).
This volume isn't limited to Hoess' memoirs. The entire Wannsee Protocol is printed in translation. It is obvious that the choice of Poland as the site of the German death camps was based solely on practical considerations (minimalized transportation) and had nothing to do with real or stereotyped Polish attitudes towards Jews: "State Secretary Dr. Buehler declared that the government of Occupied Poland would welcome it if the final solution to this question would be started in Occupied Poland. His reason: transport plays no important role here and the deployment of workers during the operation would not cause any problems." (p. 380).
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Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz Books In Print, Audio Books.