Empire of Rags and Bones

Waste and War in Nazi Germany

By: Anne Berg

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Paper, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones—the Nazi empire demanded its population collect anything that could be reused. Citizens conjured up schemes to squeeze value from waste or invent new purposes for defunct or spent material, no matter the cost to people or the environment. As WWII dragged on, rescued loot—much of it waste—clogged transport routes and piled up in warehouses across Europe.

Historicizing the much-championed ideal of zero waste, Anne Berg shows that the management of waste was central to the politics of war and to the genesis of genocide in the Nazi Germany. Destruction and recycling were part of an overarching strategy to redress raw material shortages, procure lebensraum, and cleanse the continent of Jews and others considered undesirable. Resource extending schemes obscured the crucial political role played by virtually all German citizens to whom salvaging, scrapping, and recycling were promoted as inherently virtuous and orderly behaviors.

Throughout Nazi occupied-Europe, Jews, POWs, concentration camp inmates, and enemy civilians were forced to recycle the loot, discards, and debris of the Nazi race war. In the end, the materials that were fully exploited and the people who had been bled dry were cast aside, buried, burned, or left to rot. Nonetheless, waste reclamation did not have the power to win the war.

©2024 Oxford University Press (P)2024 Tantor

Chilling & brilliant interpretation

The German obsession with recycling is familiar to anyone who visits. But there’s a much, _much_ darker antecedent to this desire to render waste reusable. This is a brief but extremely well-crafted account of how the mentality of resource extraction animated Nazi projects before and during WW II, culminating in staggeringly inhumane projects in the camps and in bombed-out cities across the Reich.

Well Researched, a New Perspective on the Holocaust

Suzanne Toren is an incredible presenter. I look for her when selecting an Audible title.

A New View into Atrocity

Berg’s work is incredible. Thoroughly researched and wonderfully written, it encapsulates the essence of Nazism and frames it in a definition of public sanitation and waste. I cannot recommend this enough!