Based on thorough archival research, this text provides a re-examination of the role of the Berlin bureaucrats in engineering the Holocaust. This research demishes the argument that Eichmann and his followers were only "following orders".

While most of these bureaucrats sat behind desks rather than behind machine guns, there was nothing banal about the role they played in the destruction of European Jewry.

Introduction 1. From Theory to Practice: 1933-1938 2. Documents in the Bureaucratic System 3. Toward the Final Solution 4. Executing the Final Solution in Germany 5. Holland 6. France 7. Hungary 8. Conclusion: Listening to the Screams