The S.S. Officer's Armchair
Uncovering the Hidden Life of a Nazi
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Narrated by:
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Alex Wyndham
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By:
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Daniel Lee
About this listen
Based on documents discovered concealed within a simple chair for 70 years, this gripping investigation into the life of a single S.S. officer during World War Two encapsulates the tragic experience of a generation of Europeans
One night at a dinner party in Florence, historian Daniel Lee was told about a remarkable discovery. An upholsterer in Amsterdam had found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the cushion of an armchair he was repairing. They belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich's Ministry of Economics and Labor in Nazi-occupied Prague during the war. An expert in the history of the Holocaust, Lee was fascinated to know more about this man - and how his most precious documents ended up hidden inside a chair, hundreds of miles from Prague and Stuttgart.
In The S.S. Officer's Armchair, Lee weaves detection with biography to tell an astonishing narrative of ambition and intimacy in the Third Reich. He uncovers Griesinger's American back-story - his father was born in New Orleans and the family had ties to the plantations and music halls of nineteenth century Louisiana. As Lee follows the footsteps of a rank and file Nazi official 70 years later, and chronicles what became of him and his family at the war's end, Griesinger's role in Nazi crimes comes into focus. When Lee stumbles on an unforeseen connection between Griesinger and the murder of his own relatives in the Holocaust, he must grapple with potent questions about blame, manipulation, and responsibility.
The S.S. Officer's Armchair is an enthralling detective story and a reconsideration of daily life in the Third Reich. It provides a window into the lives of Hitler's millions of nameless followers and into the mechanisms through which ordinary people enacted history's most extraordinary atrocity.
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Critic reviews
"In Daniel Lee's The S.S. Officer's Armchair, the story of an utterly obscure and 'ordinary' S.S. officer, recovered through extraordinary research, is embedded in the illuminating context of upper-middle-class German society and family life in the first half of the twentieth century. The result is a fascinating combination of social history, family drama, and ingenious detective work." (Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham professor of history emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of Ordinary Men)
"Beautiful and gripping, it unfolds like a detective story as an obscured past emerges into the light." (Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family)
"Many of the most horrific acts against humanity during the Holocaust were carried out by the untold thousands of low-level, virtually-unknown civil servants, who facilitated the worst deeds of the Nazi enterprise without ever getting their own hands dirty. In this brilliantly researched story of one such 'ordinary Nazi,' Daniel Lee illuminates the whole." (Martha Weinman Lear, author of Heartsounds and Where Did I Leave My Glasses?)
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Story
In 1940, the German sons and daughters of infamous Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring, Hess, Frank, Bormann, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at four, five, or 10 years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents. Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they eventually discovered the extent of their fathers' occupations: These men were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as monstrous war criminals.
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Fantastic
- By Anonymous User on 12-30-22
By: Tania Crasnianski, and others
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The Nazi’s Granddaughter
- How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal
- By: Silvia Foti
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A deathbed promise leads a daughter on an incredible journey to write about her grandfather who was a famous war hero. But this journey had a terrible destination: the discovery that he was a Nazi war criminal.
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A Compelling Story Well Told
- By Catherine S. Read on 03-17-22
By: Silvia Foti
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When Time Stopped
- A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
- By: Ariana Neumann
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.
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yesterday as fresh as today
- By reader mother on 02-17-20
By: Ariana Neumann
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When We Were Arabs
- A Jewish Family's Forgotten History
- By: Massoud Hayoun
- Narrated by: Massoud Hayoun
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism.
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painful to read.
- By Eli Cukierman on 03-13-20
By: Massoud Hayoun
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Those Who Forget
- By: Geraldine Schwarz
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her grandfather took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology.
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Not what it purports to be
- By DPM on 10-10-20
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Agent Sonya
- Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn’t know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn’t know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe.
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Wanted to love it
- By Robert Bell on 09-30-20
By: Ben Macintyre
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The Unanswered Letter
- One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help
- By: Faris Cassell
- Narrated by: Kate Mulligan
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to a stranger in America who shared his last name. Decades later, journalist Faris Cassell stumbled upon the stunning letter and became determined to uncover the story behind it. How did the American Bergers respond? Did Alfred and his family escape Nazi Germany?
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Wow, what a story and excellent new author!
- By Amazon Customer on 09-11-20
By: Faris Cassell
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The Crown: The Official Companion, Volume 1
- Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill, and the Making of a Young Queen (1947-1955)
- By: Robert Lacey
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Starring Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II and John Lithgow as Winston Churchill, Netflix's original series The Crown, created by Peter Morgan and growing out of his Oscar-winning movie The Queen starring Helen Mirren, paints a unique and intimate portrait of Britain's longest-reigning monarch. This official companion to the show's first season is an in-depth exploration of the early years of Elizabeth II's time as queen, complete with extensive research and additional material.
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If you like The Crown
- By E F on 10-23-17
By: Robert Lacey
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All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
- The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
- By: Rebecca Donner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Donner
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.
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Riveting narrative non fiction
- By Sarah Q on 10-22-21
By: Rebecca Donner
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The Great Successor
- The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
- By: Anna Fifield
- Narrated by: Olivia Mackenzie-Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.
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Great book
- By WPD on 06-26-19
By: Anna Fifield
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I Want You to Know We're Still Here
- A Post-Holocaust Memoir
- By: Esther Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Esther Safran Foer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.
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Interesting but…
- By mk on 08-23-21
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Inge's War
- A German Woman's Story of Family, Secrets, and Survival Under Hitler
- By: Svenja O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in Paris, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. In this transporting and illuminating audiobook, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of her grandmother Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow.
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Ordinary German Citizens Caught Up
- By Hinterlander on 08-22-23
By: Svenja O'Donnell
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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
- Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
- By: Jung Chang
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through 100 years of wars, revolutions, and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak.
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Fascinating reading
- By David L. Jones on 03-26-20
By: Jung Chang
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The Buried
- An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Hessler
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
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A Fascinating, Funny, and Moving Account of Egypt
- By Jefferson on 07-23-19
By: Peter Hessler
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
What listeners say about The S.S. Officer's Armchair
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Wildfire
- 12-31-22
People Make Choices That Have Repercussions
A very interesting and well read story about the life of a man that chose a career and a political party in Germany between the end of World War I and prior to the beginning of World War II. I found the details about this man’s family, friends ,professional contacts ,and the decisions he made while interacting with them illustrative of his personality. Not all evil people look like monsters.
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- David M. Walton
- 07-25-21
This book leave me wanting more
In my view this book should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the History of Nazi Germany. Well we all know about Hitler and his inner circle this is the first book that I found that examines the life of a low level SS officer without men such as Robert Griesinger the subject of the Book the Nazi state could not have existed without the willing participation of a large number of people, cogs in the machine as it wereHopefully more scholarship will be done on every day life and the third Rike
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- dogsbylori
- 01-20-23
Fascinating!
History as presented in this book of an ordinary overlooked member of SS, reminds us of the evil pervasive in all facets of the Nazi war efforts. Wish there were more historical records of the “ordinary” soldiers to get a broader perspective on how this evil happened and could happen again.
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- marykk
- 10-30-20
What a mystery solved!
The author does a masterful job of sleuthing the origins and identity of the person to whom the papers belonged. Who would imagine that such papers would years later be found under upholstery? Griesinger seemed an "ordinary German" who was opportunistic in joining the S.S. I learned that those who served as he did didn't wear the uniform every day like those who were in combat so perhaps it was easier for them to be more ordinary. Though it would seem Griesinger wasn't involved in the Holocaust the author demonstrates how such people could be considered "desk murders" by their ability to issues order. This is a must read for those who like this genre.
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4 people found this helpful
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- appreciative reader
- 09-27-21
Well Researched and Easy Listening
This book is chock full of details about WW II that are fascinating. I thought I had read it all!
It is not a rehash of Nazi persecution but instead a fascinating deep dive into one man’s story. His place in history is horrifically problematic, but the author does a great job of placing this “desk murderer” in time and place.
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1 person found this helpful
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- S. Hall
- 11-15-20
good book; strange voice...
the story is very interesting and clearly well researched. however, the narrator's voice (especially when he attempted women's voices) was just strange.
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6 people found this helpful
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- W Zuelzer
- 08-01-21
Review
Outstanding Brings to life a poorly assessed part of the nazi “success” in “subverting” a culture and “torturing” so many .
How ordinary this officer who wanted to move up the ladder of success appeared
The key is the culture was not subverted but the nazi setup was built on the culture of his parent and friends to step on Jews and Slavs and Gypsies and other in the most gruesome way They deserved each other They deserve to be in Dante’s hell— which layer is debatable
What a great story teller thanks
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1 person found this helpful
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- Buretto
- 01-17-21
An important message, not entirely compelling
A moderately interesting account which works to belie the notion of the guiltless functionary, working in the evil machine. Both historically and in these times, it's important to keep all cogs accountable for their roles, and rip away any plausible deniability. However, I'm not sure the scope of this particular story could expand beyond a serialized magazine expose. Stretching to an 8 hour book seemed a bit much.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Beth
- 10-21-20
Fascinating story
Daniel takes you on an exciting journey to investigate the owner of the armchair's contents.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joseph Goldberg
- 01-15-21
interesting
easy listen, well written, really well documented, but most important a statement on the average Nazi there were so many!
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