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Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing is a 2021 book by British historianAlex J. Kay published byYale University Press.
According to Kay, the groups subjected tomass killing byNazi Germany, on the order of tens of thousands of victims or more,[1] were300,000 disabled people,as many as 100,000 Polish elites, nearlysix million European Jews,200,000 Romani people, at least 2 million Soviet urban residents targeted by thehunger policy,nearly 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, about 1 million rural inhabitants duringanti-partisan warfare (excluding actual partisans), and 185,000 Polish civilians killed during and after theWarsaw uprising.[2] The total number of deaths from mass killing would thus amount to at least 13 million.[3] Kay argues that all these groups, including Jews, "were regarded by the Nazi regime in one way or another as a potential threat" to Germany's war effort. However, viewing them as a threat was informed byNazi racial theory, making it hard to separate racist versus strategic reasons for killing.[4] The book is organized partly thematically and partly chronologically with chapters on each of the groups targeted.[5]
InGerman History, reviewer Maris Rowe-McCulloch writes that the book is "an excellent study" that "coherently brings together a range of findings" from up to date scholarship.[6]
Waitman Wade Beorn called the book "a truly exceptional book that will be of great interest to general readers and students as well as academics" and praised its coverage of less recognized aspects of Nazi violence and for illustrating the connections between different murder operations. Nevertheless, he questioned its heavy reliance on German-language scholarship and lack of attention to non-German perpetrators.[7]
Jan Burzlaff called the book "an inclusive, compelling, and innovative history of the mass killing of some 12.86 million civilians under Nazi rule"https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcad069