Peter Klein fits the Łódź Ghetto Administration (Gettoverwaltung), managed by Bremen businessman Hans Biebow, into a “network of persecution,” encompassing German authorities at local, regional, and Reich levels. This interplay of diverse agency interests impacted the evolution of Nazi Final Solution policy and reveals how, despite jurisdictional conflict, the “Holocaust could be set in motion so efficiently” (p. 17). Besides the ghetto administration, key local players were Jewish Council President Chaim Rumkowski; the municipal government; the Łódź district civilian administration; and local commanders of Security Police and Order Police. Regionally, in the so-called Gau Wartheland (seat Poznań), interested parties were Artur Greiser's Reich Governor's Office (Reichsstatthalterei) and Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Wilhelm Koppe. In Berlin, the Ministries of Interior and Finance and Reinhard Heydrich's Reich Central Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA) had a stake.

Management of the ghetto was complicated by its status as a temporary solution. Yet it survived all other ghettos under German occupation. Neither local nor regional authorities would finance it, though each sought to maximize revenue extracted from it. Diverting fantasies of hidden riches inside the ghetto to a more realistic barter of Jewish labor for cash or food, Biebow and Rumkowski worked together: Biebow hustled clients and managed trade; Rumkowski organized Jewish labor to produce goods. That common interest, as Klein notes, should not be misunderstood in terms of any shred of human concern on Biebow's part for the Jewish residents. Nevertheless, Rumkowski could induce Biebow to support requests for edible food, medical supplies, and fewer police shootings of ghetto residents. Municipal and regional authorities granted Biebow autonomy because neither wished to solicit subsidies—and invite interference—from Reich central agencies. This confluence of interests permitted the ghetto to survive.

Klein offers new perspectives on the Chełmno killing center, pushing the planning dates back to September, and even July 1941. Revenue from ghetto contracts was insufficient to feed Jews unable to work, and German authorities elsewhere refused to accept Warthegau Jews. Consequently, Reichsstaatshalterei officials discussed alternate solutions in 1941. On July 18, Hitler authorized Greiser to take initiatives that “included the regionally organized murder of persons incapable of work” (pp. 348–349), whereupon German authorities began to shoot Jews in Warthegau rural districts. Klein forges a link between this authorization and Göring's general authorization for Heydrich to direct the “final solution” on July 31, reflecting less a change in Jewish policy than an effort to restore authority upon which Greiser had impinged (pp. 351, 636). When Łódź had to “receive” German Jews in autumn 1941, regional and municipal authorities voiced opposition, though Greiser agreed if he—not Heydrich or Koppe—had absolute authority over the Jews. Rankled by this intrusion, Heydrich established Theresienstadt in late November to “store” people until transport goals could be finalized under his authority. Thin on documentation, Klein's outline of cause and effect nevertheless offers a logical explanation for these key decisions.

In the Warthegau, the Reich Governor's Office conceived and civilian administrators implemented “Judenpolitik.” Contrary to practice elsewhere, the SS and police functioned as “junior partners” in the enterprise of mass murder (pp. 546–549, 635). Inclusion of central European Jews in deportations did not alter past policy to kill only indigenous Jews, but continued the policy of killing Jews incapable of work. Insisting on sparing only those who worked and ensuring that deportations did not affect production, the Ghetto Administration acted as an “interested bystander” (p. 477), while the Jewish administration became complicit in selections for deportation.

Mass murder in the Warthegau was also self-financing, but civilian authorities—not the SS—managed and invested the loot. Currency and valuables stolen from Jews at Chełmno were deposited in a Łódź account under Biebow's control. Looted cash financed salaries and “hardship” pay for Chełmno killers, while Greiser's office siphoned off eleven million Reichsmark for investment in Gau construction and resettlement projects. As this cash cow ran dry, Greiser revisited plans to eliminate the Łódź ghetto altogether. Regional and local authorities had lost interest, since ghetto real estate exceeded the yield on forced labor. His job at stake, Biebow sought clients to prolong the ghetto's existence. After Himmler became Interior Minister and appointed Security Police commander Otto Bradfisch mayor of Łódź, Biebow could no longer manipulate the coalition ranged against the ghetto. Klein demonstrates unequivocally that this history is not that “of a successful business venture, but solely … of total exploitation of forced laborers.” In 1942, Reich auditors found the “enterprise” to be “bloated, unnecessarily decentralized,” and unable “to balance … customer accounts” (p. 515).

Eighty thousand ghetto Jews had no place to go, however. Plans to ship factories and workers to camps in Lublin collapsed in November 1943 after revolts in Treblinka and Sobibor frightened the SS into annihilating the labor force. The killing centers in Chełmno and District Lublin were dismantled, while Auschwitz refused to take the Łódź Jews. The ghetto got another reprieve, therefore, but not for long. After another audit confirmed ghetto production to be insufficient to sustain the Jewish laborers, Himmler reopened Chełmno. Mass murder resumed in June, but the Germans killed only 7,000 people before Soviet military advances forced the SS to remove the remaining 67,000 Łódź Jews to Auschwitz in August 1944. As the SS deported some 19,000 survivors west to camps in the Reich, Biebow audited remaining raw materials, terminated contracts, and salvaged machinery. He finished in January 1945, shortly before Soviet troops took Łódź.

Noting the uniqueness of the Ghetto Administration, Klein recasts Browning's dichotomy of “productionism” (Łódź) versus “attritionism” (Warsaw) as an issue of jurisdiction. Lacking the legal underpinnings of the Ghetto Administration, the Warsaw Transfer Agency could not solicit production contracts, a factor that might have determined the fate of the Warsaw Jews. While ghettos in Upper Silesia and the Białystok District might parallel Łódź, too little is presently known about their administration.

Readable and outstandingly documented, this volume successfully places the Łódź ghetto and its civilian administration into the broader context of Nazi Judenpolitik. A paragraph on the postwar fates of civilian actors in this grim drama would have been a welcome addition.