Reviewed by: The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi by Johann Chapoutot Bradley W. Hart The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi. By Johann Chapoutot. Translated by Miranda Richmond Mouillot. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. 504 pages. $35.00 (cloth). In his autobiography, the commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Rudolf Höss, recounts a personal struggle between the horror of the actions he was undertaking and his sense [End Page 377] of duty to the Führer and Nazi ideology. Recalling a horrendous instance in which a woman tried to push her children out of the gas chamber and begged the SS guards to "at least let my children live," Höss remarks that "there were lots of little heartrending scenes like that, which affected everyone," but at the same time, "I could show nothing … I was feeling, as everyone's eyes were upon me." For Höss, following orders that led to the mass murder of women and children was necessary because, "I had to make do with the Führer's orders and take comfort in them. I had to tell [other SS officers at the camp] that this destruction of Jewry was necessary to free Germany forever, to free our descendants from their worst enemies forever" (397). The question of how it was possible to convince Germans like Höss that mass murder was unpleasant but necessary work lies at the center of Johann Chapoutot's recently-translated work, The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi. The book first appeared in French in 2014 and carried a similar title (La loi du sang. Penser et agir en nazi). Across nine chapters, Chapoutot explores the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Nazi ideology through a close examination of intellectual and elite-oriented texts alongside popular films and other mass propaganda. Chapoutot states in the introduction that his intention is to follow in the footsteps of past scholars "by pursuing and deepening the study of the norms, imperatives, and duties that underlie Nazi discourse" (15). At first, he writes, the project was intended to examine "Nazi morality" but eventually developed into a wider project of exploring "Nazi normativity" (15). The author further states that "to my knowledge, no one has ever yet attempted to map out what might be called the mental universe in which Nazi crimes took place and held meaning" (8). In part, he claims, such a project was seen as unnecessary as "the Nazis were far too boorish for [philosophers and intellectual historians] to waste their time investigating their writing" (8). This is, of course, an exaggeration. To provide just one counter-example, historians of science have examined key texts related to the German eugenics movement for decades. Ulf Schmidt has examined the use of [End Page 378] film in popularizing eugenic themes, particularly in heavy-handed (though also cinematically sophisticated) films such as Ich klage an ("I Accuse"), which argued for the use (and morality) of euthanasia. Other examples of historical engagement with Nazi intellectual arguments and cultural productions exist as well. This observation is not to diminish the overall accomplishment of Chapoutot's book, however. A glance at the primary sources section of the bibliography indicates the breadth of research that went into this project, ranging from the writings of mostly-forgotten and discredited Nazi historians, philosophers, and legal scholars, to a wide range of films and other cultural products. Chapoutot estimates that he consulted more than 1,200 sources in total, ranging from well-known works like Mein Kampf to the obscure writings of minor lawyers and academics (16). Rather than breaking entirely new ground, as he suggests, Chapoutot has produced a wide-ranging analysis that adds considerably to our understanding of how the Nazis viewed themselves, their fellow Germans, and the rest of the world. Chapoutot breaks the book into three main sections: Procreating, Fighting, and Reigning. Each section contains three parts that elucidate the overarching theme using the sources described above. The first section focuses primarily on Nazi racial theory, eugenics, and euthanasia. Fundamentally, the Nazi project was all about bringing the German people back into harmony with their racial past...