Album of the Damned:
Snapshots from the Third Reich
Paul Garson

Category: History/Photography
Format: Cloth, 400pp, 8 1/2 x 11
ISBN: 978-0-89733-576-8
Price: $50.00

About the Book

“Album of the Damned is a very special document; a unique and well-researched collection of photographs of German civilians and soldiers at work and play. Coming face to face with the seeming ‘normalcy’ of these images is what stuns the reader. The visuals and the commentary are powerful and remarkably fresh.”
—Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies
The American Jewish University, Los Angeles, California

The photographs in this startling collection were taken by German soldiers and civilians during the era of the Third Reich, 1933–45; a few were taken by professionals embedded with the troops. But for the most part, they are the work of amateurs taking snapshots for family and friends.

Through these black and white images, we enter the living rooms, the back yards, the boulevards and the war zones of Nazi Germany. Many of these photos were once in family albums. Some soldiers returned with them after the war and, years later, these photographs were offered for sale by relatives along with their own snapshots of the home front. Other pictures were captured by the Soviets and, after the fall of the USSR, became available on the open market.

The author acquired these snapshots from some fifteen countries during a four year research effort and after reviewing more than 100,000 images eventually selecting nearly 400 for this book. “The images,” the author says, “are accompanied by text that hopefully both complements historical research and offers a subjective analysis of each—all in an effort to comprehend, to somehow attempt to understand what is essentially unfathomable.”

About the Author

Paul Garson is a freelance writer, consultant, photographer, screenwriter, editor and teacher. Over 2000 of his featured articles and stories—and some 1000 of his photographs—have appeared in more than seventy U.S. and overseas publications, including the L.A. Times, Omni, Details, Automobile, Cycle World, WWII History Magazine, Robb Report MC, Black Belt Magazine, Story, L’Ecran Fantastique. He is also the author of The Great Quill, and Born to be Wild, a cultural history of American motorcycling, 1947–2002. He lives in Los Angeles.