The Most Valuable Asset of the Reich

“Cogently argued, thoroughly documented, and fluently written, Mierzejewski’s book will be the standard work on the German National Railway for years to come.” — Holocaust and Genocide Studies

“Mierzejewski’s unruffled narrative style serves him (and history) well when it comes to describing the transport mechanism of the Holocaust. . . . Essential reading for all scholars of modern Germanyóand it should be mandatory for those benighted history buffs who continue to doubt that there actually was an organized destruction of European Jews.” — Central European History

“Mierzejewski has done a wonderful job in explaining the complicated organisation and working of this vital transportation instrument within the Third Reich.” — Business History

“The development of German railways in the twentieth century has found its true historian . . . . Scholars are bound to marvel at Mierzejewski’s facility in tackling one technical problem after another with a keen eye and sure hand . . . . He has produced an account that is elaborate, circumspect, and thoroughly convincing.” — Central European History

“In the confines of this review it is not possible to discuss critically every new argument raised in Mierzejewski’s essential work. Researchers cannot ignore the arguments of either volume. For the public the hope for a carefully edited German edition is as important as it is urgent.” — Historische Zeitschrift

“Building upon the superbly crafted first volume in this original and important study, Mierzejewski details the essential — indeed indispensable — role the Deutsche Reichsbahn assumed in each phase and every aspect of the Hitlerian agenda for economic recovery, national mobilization, aggressive war, and mass extermination. Nazi Germany literally ran on trains, and without the Reichsbahn and the wartime European rail systems harnessed to it, war, conquest, and the Holocaust would not have become what they did. This volume is an essential sourcebook for the specialist, a catalyst for further research by the student, and a fascinating saga for the general reader.” — Charles W. Sydnor Jr., author of Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933–1945

“Mierzejewski shows himself as complete master of the subject. . . . [He] has done his job very well and has provided us with an excellent and much needed thorough history of the German Reichsbahn.” — Business History

“An original and compelling account of the railroad system in the Nazi dictatorship and a sober assessment of its role in the Holocaust and the war.” — Harold James, Princeton University

“This is a major study of the administrative substructure of the Third Reich, showing how the technocratic culture of a huge organization facilitated Nazi mobilization for war and the execution of the 'final solution.' I recommend it as one of the most significant contributions yet to a notable recent literature on the adaptation of businesses to Nazism in order to negotiate their own survival.” — Theo Balderston, University of Manchester