Types like my cousin [Klaus-Gunter] can cold-bloodedly murder tens of thousands -- from their desks, issuing orders on official stationery in standard memorandum form; and they take great pride in their efficiency. But don't think for a moment Klaus-Gunter would have been capable of beating an old man unconscious and dragging him on the streetcar tracks . . . I'm sure he would have found it extremely difficult to smash up an apartment or plunder a synagogue. He knew how to issue orders, but he always left it to the rabble to carry them out. You'll always find people willing to lend trhemselves to any atrocity anywhere. And in those years gangsters and murderers had free rein.

Some of them must have enjoyed it, don't you think?

That's not the point. None of it would have taken place if it hadn't been ordered from 'on high', if there hadn't been experts, most of them with university educations, organizing everything so that the 'operation' could be carried out with split-second timing throughout the Reich . . . They sat in their offices and dealt with issues of 'political necessity'. They dictated telegraph messages and signed lists and special orders -- like Klaus-Gunter.

And girls like my cousin Gudrun, from solid middle-class families, assisted them. They sat there with their chic hairdos and pretty white blouses and typed neat lists of the victims -- an important service for Fuehrer, Volk und Vaterland.

--Engelmann, 128-129