“In this virtual book talk, Professor Edward B. Westermann discusses his new book, ‘Drunk on Genocide’, with Professor Dan Stone.

‘Drunk on Genocide’ highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews.”

“In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe. Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated “performative masculinity,” expressly linked to physical or sexual violence.”

Find more from The Wiener Holocaust Library (USA, April 2021)

Find more about the book “Drunk on Genocide”