Since the early 1940's, many people have wondered at the fact that the Nazi regime devoted scarce wartime resources to the Holocaust. Their astonishment reflects an acceptance of powerful, enduring myths about German culture—ones often propagated by Germans themselves, such as notions about “German order” (deutsche Ordnung). Yaron Pasher attempts to give substance to that myth in particular, contending that the movement of Jews to death camps was “meticulously” organized. Moreover, he claims that the German economy, the military, and the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB) were so heavily burdened by the war effort that every last division, every last train, was essential for victory.

Pasher argues that a direct trade-off existed between trains used to carry Jews to their deaths, on the one hand, and, on the other, the number of trains available to support the German army in major campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. After rejecting traditional explanations of German failure, Pasher concludes that the opportunity cost of murdering Jews was defeat outside of Moscow, at Stalingrad, at Kursk, in Normandy, and, ultimately, in the war itself. Pasher's monocausal explanation collapses as a result of methodological flaws inherent in his approach, coupled with serious empirical mistakes. Most important, he falls victim to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, repeatedly jumping to the conclusion that if one event preceded another, then the first must have caused the second. He also repeatedly mistakes correlation for causation and sees correlations where none exists. Finally, he further weakens his argument by calling upon witnesses such as Hans Frank, the General Governor of occupied Poland, Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Center in 1941, and Dieter Wisliceny, Adolf Eichmann's deputy for transportation, whose positions in the government and military hierarchy did not make them reliable authorities on railroad matters.

Overall, the author's analysis is the product of his search for an alternative explanation of Germany's defeat. The obvious explanation for German failure in the East includes factors such as a poorly conceived strategy, inadequate military and economic preparations, poor intelligence about the Soviet Union and the Red Army, as well dissention within the German high command. The problems that confronted the German war effort were so severe, and the policy and strategic errors committed by the German leadership so grave, that an additional division, ton of steel, or freight train would have made no difference whatsoever. A complex analysis of rail and military operations built on invalid calculation methods and erroneous data used inconsistently necessarily yields misleading results—and is the product of looking for something beyond the readily apparent, and of then constructing a complex, abstruse analytical framework to show that it actually existed.

Pasher's analysis also suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Third Reich: it fails to take into account the fact that Adolf Hitler and his closest associates were racists. Behavior that repeatedly arouses the author's wonder is easily explicable when one bears in mind the Nazi regime's racist nature. Pasher concedes the importance that Hitler assigned to race on the last page of his book. Had his discussion been shaped from the outset by this generally accepted fact—i.e., the astonishing, irrational extent to which Nazi racial views influenced policy decisions, including those of a military nature—the reader would have been spared a great deal of confusion.

Pasher's analysis of railroad operations is laced with conceptual and factual errors as well—for example, his use of weight carried as a proxy measure of railroad transportation output, rather than the more meaningful ton kilometers and passenger kilometers, i.e., the movement of one ton of freight or one passenger one kilometer. Using an invalid measure negates Pasher's statistical analysis. Similarly, the author cites the number of trains requested and received, instead of examining the limitations on the throughput capacity of the rail lines that served the combat zones. Among Pasher's factual lapses is his contention that the same cars used to move Jews were also used to supply the German army. This leads him to the astonishing conclusion that the movement of Jews to death camps caused a shortage of cars needed to deliver tanks and fuel to the Eastern Front. In fact, the DRB used a special class of high-capacity flat cars to move tanks, not the passenger cars and box cars used to carry Jews. It used tank cars to move gasoline and diesel oil to military receivers, cars that cannot be used to transport people. Pasher summarily rejects as far too high Raul Hilberg's estimate of the number of trains operated daily by the Reichsbahn (“The Reichsbahn and Its Part in the Extermination of the Jews,” Yalkut Moreshet 24 [1977]: 34), and presents his own unrealistically low estimate without explaining how he developed it. (In fact, Hilberg's figure is itself too low; see Alfred C. Mierzejewski, “A Public Enterprise in the Service of Mass Murder: The Deutsche Reichsbahn and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 [2001]: 33–46.)

Compunding the confusion, Pascher contends that the DRB suffered from a lack of central direction. In fact, all modes of transportation were coordinated by the Central Transportation Directorate (Zentralverkehrsleitstelle); the Reichsbahn's Main Car Office (Hauptwagenamt) allocated freight cars for the entire area controlled by Germany; the Mechanical Section (Maschinenabteilung) of the Reich Transportation Ministry distributed locomotives among the operating divisions. Further, the allocation of assets for special trains, such as those used to deport Jews, was made during meetings held by the General Operating Office East (Generalbetriebsleitung Ost) where all claimants on car space were represented, including the Schutzstaffel (SS). There was considerable room within this planning structure to accommodate the fluctuating demands of the military and the SS. Pasher also misstates the relationship of the Reichsbahn to the government, gets the conversion of Soviet track to standard gauge backwards, and contributes to the myth that Jews were moved in cattle cars.

Pasher's distortion of military events is equally serious. He grossly overestimates Germany's ability to win the war right up to the spring of 1944, and overstates the tactical skill of the German army, moving into a realm populated by those who speculate about how Nazi Germany might have won. Pasher even praises Hitler's military judgement, highlighting the Führer's “flashes of genius, especially early in the war” (287). He underestimates the effects of Allied transportation bombing prior to Operation Overlord, without engaging the relevant literature, and deprecates the fighting abilities of the Allied armies.

Yaron Pasher presents an untenable interpretation of the relationship between the Holocaust and the German war effort. It is the product of a rigid, mechanistic view of historical causation. A much more effective approach would have been to apply Occam's Razor, namely, the idea that the simplest explanation is often the best. Doing so would have led him to conclude that the use of the Deutsche Reichsbahn to deport Jews did not contribute to the defeat of Nazi Germany. As most serious military scholars agree, the Wehrmacht would have lost the war in any event.