Ep. 64- The Birdman of Auschwitz with Nicholas Milton

Sometimes it can still be surprising how deeply the Nazi state tainted every aspect of society...including ornithology.  In this fascinating episode, I talk with Nicholas Milton about Günther Niethammer, a famous academic who became a guard at Auschwitz where he continued his scholarly activities.

It's a really interesting examination of both individual choices during the Holocaust and the impossibility of remaining divorced from the reality of Nazi crimes.

Nicholas Milton is an historian, journalist, and birdwatcher.

Milton, Nicholas. The Birdman of Auschwitz: The Life of Günther Niethammer, the Ornithologist Seduced by the Nazis (2025)

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman Beorn (00:00.942)
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust history podcast. I'm your host, Waite Moonborn. And today I'm talking with Nicholas Milton about his book about an SS guard at Auschwitz who also happens to be an ornithologist. And I think that the story tells us an awful lot about the ways in which ordinary people or perhaps extraordinary people became involved in the Nazi state. And so

We're going to go take a deep dive into this, but maybe also pull back a little bit to sort of reflect on what this might say about the larger historical process. And I will say that the name of the book is The Birdmen of Auschwitz. those of that follow me on social media may have heard me rant about all the X things of Auschwitz, but this actually is a good version. This isn't one of those horrible

fiction books about love affairs and that kind of thing. So Nicholas, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Nicholas Milton (01:05.328)
Thank you.

Waitman Beorn (01:06.702)
Can you tell us a little bit how you became interested in this particular topic? Because you have some things in common with the subject of the book. how did you find out about this and what inspired you to write this book?

Nicholas Milton (01:21.001)
Okay, you're right. I do have some things in common with Gunther Niethammer. I'm an ornithologist and my first job was with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. And I've always been particularly passionate about that subject. I also studied history. so a few years ago, I started writing nature and history books. And when I learned that there had been a...

Bird Survey of Auschwitz. So first of all, I didn't really believe it. And then I started to research it and came across Dr. Gunther Niethammer and was just fascinated by the motives behind him becoming a guard and ending up on Gate G, know, the really infamous gate with the R-Bike Max Frey sign above it. And his...

life story tells us an awful lot about the complex, really complex motives that underpin the Holocaust. But also, I think he comes at it from a quite unique perspective because he was, he was obviously he was a he was an ornithologist. He was a scientist. He was a family man. But above all, he was an academic. He was the leading academic of his generation. And

I'm very conscious I'm talking to an academic. But in that, we see the path that led him from becoming probably the leading scientist and ornithologist of his generation to a man who was a part of the greatest crime in history.

Waitman Beorn (03:10.45)
Yeah, and this story is really fascinating and it's kind of, it's really neat how you weave, you know, his story into some other events in terms of the development of Auschwitz, but also things we'll talk about, you know, where you wouldn't necessarily expect him to be really, if not complicit in certainly rubbing elbows with the Nazi genocidal project and Nazi crimes.

Maybe we can start just by, you know, at the beginning, right? Because this is in some ways a biography. you know, who is, who is Gunther Niethammer?

Nicholas Milton (03:48.553)
So he's born on the 28th of September, 1908 in Waldheim in Saxony. His father is Konrad Neithammer, a very successful businessman and a local politician. He's the eighth of nine children, so comes from very big family. His father had his own paper mill, paper manufacturer. He came from a very wealthy background.

And I think the young Gunther came very interested in natural history through his father's love of hunting. Often in those times, it was hunting that led to an interest in natural history. He went on, he was the top of his class. He excelled academically, studied zoology at Tumbingen and then went on to do his PhD at Leipzig in 1932.

Obviously, as he was studying, the Nazis were rising to power. And I think that for an academic like Nietzsche, he would have been very aware of the political situation, but sort of ensconced in Leipzig, he would have been quite isolated from it. So we see two things going on. We see a man pursuing

his career against the backdrop of the rise of the Nazis. And at some point, slightly later on, the two come together in a way that probably he could have never have envisaged. So just a very sort of sort of quick sort of summary of how we got to that point. So at Leipzig, he meets all the leading ornithologists of the day.

And there was a group of them that throughout his whole life, leading scientists supported him. And through a colleague called Hans Kumalo, he's introduced to his mentor and the most important person in his life, Dr. Erwin Streisman. Streisman was the curator of ornithology at the Berlin Natural History Museum. He was the general secretary.

Nicholas Milton (06:10.931)
President and honorary president of the German Ornithological Society for 50 years. He was reverentially known as the Pope of Ornithology and Streismann saw in Niethammer a young academic who had real potential and so he commissioned him to write the Handbook der Deutschen Völkunde so the Handbook of German Ornithology a monumental three

part of work, which is still very much the sets the bar for all our unorthological guides today. It was a guide to all the birds of Germany. No one had done it up to that point. And in Neithammer, he saw somebody who was young, who wanted to make his mark in academia and who had the knowledge and the commitment and the perseverance, which you do, you'll know if you've written up a PhD.

need to have all those things. But to do a monumental sort three-part work was on a different scale. And he saw in Nietzsche, somebody who had the potential to do that, other German ornithologists had started it, not finished it. And at the time there was over 500 species in Germany. So it was a big task. What it entailed was going through all the scientific papers, going through all the taxidermy specimens, both in state museums and private museums.

a huge amount of research to bring together this work. And in 1937, Nietzsche published the first volume to great critical acclaim. That coincided with him becoming the curator at the Koenig Museum in Bonn. So this was a significant step up for a PhD academic researcher and a

And in the same year, he joined the Nazi party. Now, he was working away hard on the second volume when in 1939, war broke out. And like a lot of Germans, he probably was despondent that Germany had found itself at war again, you know, in just over 20 years with Britain. But what changed his mind, and I think this is where

Nicholas Milton (08:38.281)
we find the route of what happened next is he saw in the Blitzkrieg, he saw the lightning victories and he saw some opportunities for scientific expeditions, for finding new species to science and for having species named after him because that was very much what academics of his generation sought to achieve. They wanted to find something new to science and have something named after them. So I think he watched in awe as the German Blitzkrieg

sort of overrun Europe. And he had four brothers who were already in the army. And so he tried to sign up. He tried to sign up to both Luftwaffe, the Air Force and the army. And neither of them wanted him. maybe, you know, I don't know the exact reason for that, but he was sort of by that stage, he would have been sort of early thirties. He had a PhD. He was very much an academic.

And he was the curator at a museum. And I can sort of imagine maybe if you're in the army or the Luftwaffe, that's not perhaps the type of person that you might think might be very good at waging war. So he was rejected by both and instead joined the Waffen SS. The Waffen SS was the armed wing of the Nazi party, as you know, but also was in charge of the concentration camps.

So obviously the Waffen SS again didn't think he was the type of person being an academic who would be capable of sort of a frontline role. So they assigned him to the Deathshead divisions, which was in charge of the concentration camp system. And that's why after joining the Waffen SS on the 1st of May, 1940 on the 10th of September, he found himself as a guard at Auschwitz.

Waitman Beorn (10:32.35)
Yeah, and before we move on a little bit, I'm just curious, know, what do we know or how do we know about his ideology or his sort of belief system? You know, because that's always the hard thing about doing this kind of work, you know, is we know that, for example, that he joined the SS, we know that he joined the Nazi party. Do you have any inkling of sort of

you know what what what he thought about the Nazis or what he thought about Nazism or you know those kinds of things.

Nicholas Milton (11:07.709)
We have his court testimony after the war, but then again, that was written after the war and you would expect it to be quite heavily redacted in terms of that subject. I think he was probably ambivalent towards it, but saw in the Nazis and saw in the war and the Blitzkrieg an opportunity to progress his career. Cause I currently work at a university and one thing that I do know,

choose my words very carefully here because I'm talking to an associate professor here, but a lot of the professors who I know are very, very focused on their area of research or their work are quite, sometimes are quite insulated from what's going on around them. And some of them do sort of work in ivory towers. And I probably think this was Neat Hammer. Neat Hammer was

Waitman Beorn (11:37.646)
It's fine. We're in a safe space. It's okay.

Nicholas Milton (12:05.891)
incredibly focused on completing this monumental work. And you can imagine how, you know, he was a workaholic, came from a strong conservative tradition of, know, which is something he shared very much with Hoss, who we'll come on to. Yes, I imagine he was incredibly focused in on, you know, completing this work and a lot of what was going on.

was first of all was a distraction, but then he saw in it an opportunity to progress his career. And from what I know of lot of academics, they are very, very focused on their career.

Waitman Beorn (12:47.47)
Well, I think that's, I mean, that's a fair point. And I guess I would also ask then, and hopefully, you know, you're in the position to answer this. He might not have been sort of as perhaps read into what's going on in the street, but he certainly would have been aware of what's going on in his discipline, right? And I'm guessing because it sort of happened in every facet of life, but also in the professions.

that he might have seen his Jewish colleagues, for example, you know, lose positions, lose their jobs and that kind of stuff. Did that happen? What happened to German ornithology under the Nazis?

Nicholas Milton (13:18.729)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Milton (13:30.281)
The Nazis actually were quite keen on ornithology. If you think about it, the symbol of the German Wehrmacht and the German army was an eagle. Eagles were very prominent in Nazi party life. It was a huge eagle that was, the Nuremberg rallies, that was the symbol that they most associated with.

know, so, and the person who was who was most into ornithology and hunting was Hermann Göring. Göring, as well as being was the role will know him most as his head as Luftwaffe, was also head of the German hunt and head of the German, you know, sort of forestry and conservation sort of came under him and he, he bankrolled a variety of expeditions just before the war. He was he had a large

collection of birds of prey at his home, Carron Hall. And he was particularly keen to get a pure white geofalcon. So for example, he bankrolled a trip to Greenland where they found it one and brought it back, was his favorite bird. was a big oil painting that hung in Carron Hall. And Neat Hammer would have been very aware of all this because it would have been well reported in the press. And those type of expeditions were exactly what he wanted to go on.

And if you wanted to progress your career in Nazi Germany, you had to fall in with the state. In terms of his Jewish colleagues and other people he worked with, absolutely he would have seen people around him demoted. He would have seen people around him disappear. But I think, again, I'll come back to this point, if you're very focused in on your...

big project, which in his case was the completing the handbook of German ornithology, which nobody had ever done. And, you you saw opportunities to progress your career in what was happening. And then you saw, you know, you saw the German eagle, the Adler swallow up a huge, you know, bit of Europe, you would have seen, you know, if you put your sort of

Nicholas Milton (15:55.089)
career before your conscience, would have, you would have sort of, like a lot of people, you would have ignored the wider issues about what was happening. The German Ornithological Society, which is this year celebrating 175 years, has a very dark past when it comes to its involvement with with Nazism. A lot of the people at the top enthusiastically supported what was what was happening.

think that would surprise a lot of people because people might think that scientists and academics somehow would have been, would have seen through a lot of the Nazi propaganda, would have seen where Germany was heading, but that's not true and you know Dr. Künter Neithammer is a good example.

Waitman Beorn (16:43.042)
Yeah, I and I would also guess that just, you know, given the sort of Nazi obsession with heredity and genetics and, you know, social Darwinism and those kinds of things that looking at birds and the different species and how they're subspecies and how they're developing in different places, you know, would also be something that I mean, it's not as it's not as sort of directly transferable as some of the other sciences to sort of Nazi race ideology, but

you know that they are very interested in issues of genetics and science and those kind of things so yeah.

Nicholas Milton (17:16.841)
Absolutely, underpinning Nazism is Darwinism, that they distorted it for their own purpose. natural selection is absolutely what Nazism sort of based its sort of twisted ideology on. And so the scientific biological underpinning of finding new species, of seeing evolutionary biology in action, which is what Nietzsche Hammer did, particularly when on Crete.

was very much something that sort of supported Nazism and indeed even underpinned it. So yes, the scientific basis for Nazism was always there. It was twisted and it was taken completely out of context. But yes, natural selection of Darwinism is what underpinned it.

Waitman Beorn (18:04.728)
So this guy who is a nerdy academic, and I say that as a nerdy academic, there's no, there's there's no pejorative meaning there. You know, but he's a guy that studies birds and for whatever reason he's decided that he's going to join the Waffen SS and then he gets posted to Auschwitz. So can you talk a little bit about this? Because he gets posted there in a place

Nicholas Milton (18:09.491)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (18:35.778)
that it's pretty hard to ignore, you know, what's happening at Auschwitz. And of course, there's the moment that he arrives at Auschwitz is a particular moment. We'll talk about that. But can you talk can you talk a little about about this is sort of first his first impressions, I suppose.

Nicholas Milton (18:51.485)
Yes, so he arrived there in September 1940. let's be clear, Auschwitz then was not the mass extermination camp that it became a couple of years later, but it was still a brutal place of incarceration where every day, you know, sort of acts of violence were meted out, mainly then to Polish prisoners.

So the first prisoners at Auschwitz were mostly Polish political prisoners. And Nietzsche would have seen that happening. And he was in charge. He came at a time when the camp command that ruled of Hoss was very focused on converting the old army barracks in Auschwitz 1. But he had also identified the

so-called 40 kilometers square, this huge zone of interest which became Ashfit's to Birkenhall. And Neat Hammer for the first sort of six odd months of his time there was posted as I say to Gate G and there he would have been in charge of overseeing the work gangs, know, shooting dead any prisoner who tried to escape and

was part of the security detail. But then, as I say, it wasn't the place of mass extermination that it became.

Waitman Beorn (20:28.206)
But of course he also is, you know, I mean, if he's watching these work details come back from work, he's watching them carry back the bodies of people who died or were killed, you know, and I imagine, when is, we're skipping ahead a little bit, but when does he leave Auschwitz for the first time again? Is it, it's 1942, right? I think 1941. So the first gassing is at Auschwitz take place in September of 1941, right? And so, I mean, he's.

Nicholas Milton (20:35.941)
Mm. Mm.

Nicholas Milton (20:47.165)
He leaves at end of 1941.

Waitman Beorn (20:57.294)
You know, it's one of those situations, I suspect, where, you know, by that point, he may not have had any reason to be wandering around. But, you know, everybody in the camp would have known it. You all the all the guards would have known, you know, the gassing, for example, had taken place in the basement of Block 11 in September, you know, and these kind of things. So just for our listeners to kind of give a.

You know, he, cause what he does do, and I'm going to let you talk about this in a second. He's kind of, he removes himself or tries to remove himself from sort of his day to day interaction with, with the operations of the camp. But he's still living in a barracks, you know, with, with other guards. knows, you know, it's a, it's a small, relatively small community in that sense. You know, and so it's going to be very hard for him to avoid knowing, you know, the, the goings on.

in the camp as it becomes more and more of an extermination site as well. I just want to throw that in for a little context, but what is his reaction to sort of to where he's posted it and how does he try to get out of it?

Nicholas Milton (22:07.337)
Well, as you say, I he's not immune to the brutality and the violence that's going on. And he would have seen prisoners shot, prisoners collapsing from exhaustion and sort of being left there to die. He would have seen those sorts of things. And I think this was why he became very focused on trying to find the way out. what he did was, and this is

this is fundamental to the story, is he applied for special duties from the Camp Commandant. The Camp Commandant very rarely gave guards special duties. And what happened here was that his fellow sort of camp guards who were probably had a very basic education were sort of, were mostly sort of die on the wall, die hard Nazis. Niethammer would have soon realized he had very little in common with them.

He would have been appalled, I think, at some of the things that he was seeing. And whereas a lot of his fellow guards, you know, there was a community in Auschwitz, wasn't there? There was a cinema and there was, it was like a small sort of town, wasn't it? Whereas his fellow guards would have gone out and taken advantage of the facilities that Auschwitz had to offer. If they had more time, would have gone into the town or to crack out, to go onto the bars and the restaurants there.

know, use the prostitutes, whatever it is that they did. Neat Hammer wasn't really in that and he started exploring the grounds and in particular in this 40 square kilometre zone, the zone of interest, this was like an internationally important wetland for birds before all of those huts which we're all very aware of was put on there. And a very high water table, there were a large number of ponds, a lot of the villages had

used the area for raising ducks, wild fouling, game hunting, huge areas of reed beds, which of course they would have used for patching and other purposes. But this was an area teaming with birds before they constructed Ashford's two Birkenhall. And he started exploring this in his spare time, started writing down all the birds that he saw. He went out with a bicycle and a rifle.

Nicholas Milton (24:30.521)
because in those days you shot the birds and then to identify...

Waitman Beorn (24:35.118)
was going to say that as someone who's not an expert in one ethology, it seemed interesting that the way that he studied birds was he would shoot them and then bring them back and skin them and then put them into a taxidermy.

Nicholas Milton (24:38.633)
you

Nicholas Milton (24:44.861)
Yeah.

Nicholas Milton (24:48.725)
Yes, that's that. But that was that was not unique. mean, you know, natural history museums across Europe, across the world, you know, particularly during the Victorian era, but all the way up to the sort of middle of the 20th century. But that was what that was what you did. So he starts he starts doing this sort of survey and in particularly starts shooting game birds and bringing back game birds for his fellow guards. And of course, they would have looked on him not only as a nerdy academic, but as an ornithologist, you can well imagine.

reaction he might have got. That changed, I think, when he started bringing back partridges and pheasants and quails, birds that they could eat. This brought him to the attention of Rudolf Hoss, who summoned him to the house and quizzed him on what he was doing. As a result of that, the two had a friendship and Hoss gave him special, took him

exempt him from guard duties and put him on these special duties to carry out this bird survey of the zone of interest, to put up bird boxes, which he did around the barracks and in Hoss's walled garden, and to shoot game to order for the commandant who would use it to influence people in his orbit, other Nazis, particularly high ranking ones. And so, Nietzsche Hammer would have been somebody who

would have been well known to Hoss. He would have gone round to his house. A lot of your listeners will have seen the film Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazier's very good film. I thought that explored the relationship very well. Interestingly, there was a role written for Neat Hammer which never made it through to the final cut. But what the film did show was Hoss taking his eldest son Klaus out.

Waitman Beorn (26:31.015)
wow.

Nicholas Milton (26:41.681)
on the horses and hunting and identifying birds. We know that Neat Hammer did that. Neat Hammer spent a lot of time with his eldest son, Klaus. So you can imagine the two were sort of close. And for Hoss, Neat Hammer, he can't have had very many PhD doctors among the guards. Must have been a pleasant change to talk about birds and...

you know, other than, you know, to all of his other senior sort of officers who were always bringing in problems. So the two struck up a friendship. And Hoss, who was a very cynical, very manipulative man, very aware of what was happening, said to Nietzchammer, I want you to write this up as a scientific paper. He was well aware of, you know, of what was actually going on at Auschwitz. But of course, it was brilliant cover.

And that scientific paper, which was published in 1942, the same year that he published the third and final volume of the Handbook of German Ornithology, was a masterclass in disguising genocide, in my opinion. It's a scientific paper, it's a paper on birds, it's quite dry, it's quite academic paper in lots of places, but there are hints, really important hints in there about what was happening.

Waitman Beorn (28:07.916)
And I wonder also if, you know, because I think one of things that's always struck me about Hess is that, he sort of, he's one of these, one of these people that, the bound in the Nazi world who are elevated to a position of authority and so-called prestige that they would never have been able to reach in a normal society, right? It's just the fact of.

of the kinds of people that the Nazis are looking for, that they're able to do this, but they, they're aware of it too. And they're also aware of, their, um, their position. And oftentimes are, are trying to imitate or ape what they think people of a, you know, upper middle-class background would be doing. And I can sort of imagine that, you know, Hus is one of these guys who

you know, when you read his memoirs, you know, obviously that you have to take those with a truckload of salt, you know, but he very much enjoyed being a, the sort of master of life and death and sort of the, the, the King in his little kingdom. And I could also see him thinking, how erudite that I have, I have this guy who's doing a bird study in my, in my area. know if that makes sense, but you know, it sort of, it helps to, to, to build up his prestige as well.

Nicholas Milton (29:09.513)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Milton (29:14.782)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Milton (29:33.091)
completely yes, helps to build up his prestige and helps him to say look, know, this is a prison camp, this is a place of incarceration, but it's also a place of scientific research. That paper, you know, sort of which was 10 pages long was published in a very prestigious academic journal, you know, the Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, which was then where

Neat Hammer was based. was promoted just before he joined the Waffen SS on the 1st of April 1940. He became head of Ornithology at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. That was very prestigious role. He got a palatial sort of house. He had four children in Vienna. The original woman owner was ironically was sent to Auschwitz.

And to give you an idea of the size of it, it's now the Libyan Embassy in Vienna. So the Libyan Embassy was where Nietzcham lived with his family. that's, and as well as going out and shooting all these birds, he created this sort of macabre museum, natural history museum at Auschwitz.

Sadly, none of the birds that he shot there sort of have survived. But what have survived, this is quite incredible, it's in the book, is he also sent birds back to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. And there in their archives are over 100 birds that were shot and meticulously identified at Auschwitz. They include birds like, I won't bore your listeners with too much ornithology, but there's a bird.

Wonderful bird called the black red star, which is quite rare in this country, which looks like a black bird, but it's got red in its tail. And when it's sort of is startled, you see the red on the tail. And Neat Hammer records this bird nesting around the barracks and notes that its nest is made from human hair. And of course it was the human hair that being shaved off the inmates. He notes some curlew again. Yes. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (31:53.866)
Is this in the paper he notes this? Wow. Because that's not a normal, it wouldn't be using human hair in like a normal situation. this is, yeah.

Nicholas Milton (31:57.761)
He notes some... No. No, it'd be not grass and moss and normal sort of, yeah. And there are little hints throughout the paper. As I say, mean, it's quite a dry, orthological text. goes through the species according to the classification that he'd developed in the handbook.

He comments on each, but there are little hints within, if you take the time and trouble to go through it. He finds some curlews flying over one of the crematorium during the, as you said, when the first prisoners were gassed there, who of course, as you know, were Russian. And there are hints as well. He comes across a lek of a sort of bird called a black.

Black Grouse. And he sort of says that the village was dissolved, of course, that's because, you know, there was a whole series of villages in that Auschwitz zone of interest, which, as you know, know, the Nazis sort of just basically took everybody and put them in the concentration camp or expelled them from those villages. So they're...

this sort of ornithological paper has a very dark undertone to it, which I think is, from a historical perspective, is fascinating. And you're right. I one of the things that you said at the outset was there are a lot of books on Auschwitz. And a lot of them are based on not much sort of evidence, a lot of hearsay, some of it. This book is based on solid scientific evidence, because those papers

those papers still exist. The third volume of the Handbook of German Ornithology, which is still a primary source material, which you can still buy and is still used by ornithologists and academics, which I find incredible, has him signing himself off as a member of the Waffen SS.

Waitman Beorn (34:11.766)
Yeah, I mean, that's the other really interesting thing, you know, that you note is that not only does he publish this paper that explicitly says, you know, my study of birds in the Auschwitz area, he dedicates it, right, to the commandant of Auschwitz.

Nicholas Milton (34:32.253)
He does, yes, there's a glowing testimony and he wrote sort of a personal commendation on it as well. And when the Russians were liberating Auschwitz in January 1945, they found a copy of the paper in Hoss's safe. So Hoss valued it, Hoss valued the relationship. Niethammer doesn't feature in his biography, Commandant of Auschwitz.

I believe that's because he wanted to protect him. think he wouldn't. names all sorts of people in the biography, mainly the people that he wanted to point the finger at. And as you know, as you said, you have to take it with a huge pinch of salt. But it's there to try and deflect from his role and in particular to try and exempt his family from any sort of connection with his crimes. But yes, there is no doubt that

they had a close sort of, I would call it, sort of friendship. And, you know, he allowed his son Klaus to go out regularly with Neathammer. I can't imagine there are many guards that came round, you know, had access to his back door, would sort of turn up there and would have a relationship with his family. At its peak, Auschwitz had over 7,000 people working there, most of them guards.

I believe that probably Hoss knew a handful of them. Obviously he would have known his senior officers much, much more, but he wouldn't have had a relationship with many guards.

Waitman Beorn (36:09.486)
And also, mean, you know, there's two other points that I think you come out of the book and the, of the relationship between the two that, for him as a guard, you know, even if he never sort of. Parallels his relationship in this way, you know, other guards are going to kind of give him a wide berth and be very nice to him. Presumably. Right. Because I mean, he's, he's literally hanging out with the commandant. Right. And so like this is for him, it's, it's also prestige, you know, that, that he's able to.

Nicholas Milton (36:33.971)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (36:39.47)
have this sort of special relationship. Though it's interesting, and I think you pointed out kind of well how this works, you know, that there wasn't necessarily, or doesn't seem to be, and again, without sort of lots of ego documents from him, we're not really sure. But you know, I guess the fact that he's bringing back game also for the other guards, you know, they're less likely to...

be upset that he's basically getting special treatment and basically getting paid to not do his job, which I could see people would be very sort of think that's very unfair that I have to go stand at the gate all day and this guy gets to go hunt birds and boar and deer and whatever else he's bringing back.

Nicholas Milton (37:28.169)
Absolutely, I think that his relationship would have been transformed. I think when he'd arrived there, I mean, you he would have been a professor, an academic, a nerd, somebody interested in ornithology, you you can well imagine the of reception he would have got from some of the other guards. I think that changed pretty rapidly when he established a relationship with the commandant. But also seemed to be useful for them as well, you're right.

Waitman Beorn (37:58.058)
There's an interesting masculinity piece here, as a random aside, which is that he doesn't really fit the bill of our standard normative masculinity, where...

Nicholas Milton (37:58.174)
Well.

Waitman Beorn (38:13.696)
Or someone who, who was an ornithologist and a bird watcher, right? We might think again, stereotypically is obvious isn't true, but you know, they're, they're kind of a nerd and they're kind of sort of precious and that kind of stuff. But he's actually hunting too, which is the other end of that spectrum, right? You know, like a guy who was gotten hunts with a, with a gun and, kills, kills game and brings it back is like a hyper-masculine figure. So these, these two things are sort of like in, in his context, they're, sort of.

Nicholas Milton (38:28.19)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (38:42.094)
They're atypical, guess, against stereotyping. mean, present company most clearly excluded. But one usually doesn't equate birdwatching with big game hunting or game hunting for making a tasty meal. These are two different things.

Nicholas Milton (38:47.763)
Haha!

Nicholas Milton (39:03.049)
That's right. you know, I think that what I bring it back to all the time is that he was an academic and that's to him, you know, an interest in, you know, he, I think he could have probably been a leading scientist in any field. His particular passion was ornithology. And he became sort of, I think he took on the special duties and he did the scientific paper. He finished off the handbook there.

And he realized that a friendship with the commandant was the best way out of Auschwitz as well. And that's why I he, I think when he finished the third volume, he wrote off to all his ornithological contacts. They included some people very high up in the Nazi hierarchy, people with direct access to Göring. Erwin Streismann worked for Göring.

And I think he said, look, you know, I want, you know, I want to do further studies, you know, in the, you know, in the new conquered territories. And I also think he was, by that, you're right, by the end of 1941, he would have been desperate to get out of Auschwitz.

Waitman Beorn (40:15.694)
Thank

Waitman Beorn (40:24.59)
Yeah, I mean, and this is sort of the next the next phase. I mean, again, it's also it's also quite interesting. That first of all, that has let him go, you know, because I could very easily imagine, you know, Camp Commodon. It's like I've got this guy who, you know, provides me with game and makes me look good in front of visiting dignitaries, et cetera, et cetera. There's no way I'm going to let him let him take off.

Nicholas Milton (40:42.441)
Mm. Mm.

Waitman Beorn (40:51.246)
Especially since I've already been so kind to him as to basically not let him, basically not make him work, but he lets him go. So maybe you talk a little bit about how he gets transferred and then where he goes to after he's transferred.

Nicholas Milton (41:04.105)
Okay, so you're right. I'm not sure how much say actually Hoss would have had in it. think if, surprisingly, maybe Nietzchhammer's contacts were good enough and were a high enough level in the Nazi party that he was specifically asked to join this expedition to Crete by a leading ornithologist called Wettstein.

who was very high up in the research institute of Wehrmacht. And people forget that the Nazis conquered these territories. Of course, they exploited them for their resources. They obviously exploited them in terms of their people, for slave labor and things. They also wanted to exploit them scientifically. And certainly when the war was going well, and you've got to remember...

End of 1941, the war is still going well for... He applied for a transfer at exactly the right time, in my opinion. The tanks were probably stalling to a halt just outside Stalingrad in that particular winter. And that was, as we all know, that was a big turning point. But up to that point, I think the war was going very well for Germany and Hoss would have been sorry to see him go, but...

would have understood that the next, you know, would have been told by Wettstein, by somebody from the research council that he was required to go on this next expedition and would have probably wished him well.

Waitman Beorn (42:45.738)
And so he ends up in Crete. And again, what I think is fascinating about about Niedhammer story is how he, you know, he's I mean, it just goes to show how sort of intertwined Nazi crimes are with literally everything else in the Third Reich, because he ends up on Crete, you know, doing this bird surveys, but there's problems with local partisans and then

Nicholas Milton (43:04.361)
Hmm.

Nicholas Milton (43:13.321)
Mm.

Waitman Beorn (43:15.03)
with reprisals, know, and again, Nazi war crimes taking place and he's sort of right in the middle of it. You're not not taking part, but he's, you know, clearly knows they're going on. Maybe he talked a little bit about what's going on in Crete and sort of how he's, you know, how he's maneuvering around through these two things simultaneously.

Nicholas Milton (43:35.305)
Absolutely. You'll remember that I mentioned earlier, Dr. Owen Streisman, the so-called Pope of Ornithology, who worked directly for Gorig. This was an expedition he was also extremely keen on. And one of the things that Neat Hammer did when he first went there is he took out the commandant of Crete and took out him and all of his senior officers on a massive duck hunt. And this was his way of...

of currying favour with the common land. And then he undertook this amazing bird survey of Crete. He was given a kugelwagen and an armed escort, which is amazing in a time of war. And he would have had to have gone out some of the more remote parts of the island to carry out this survey. But while he was there, the security situation was deteriorating. We know that

It wasn't the comprehensive survey that he wanted. He spent a long time sort of in the mountains looking for a particularly rare bird called the black vulture, which they did manage to establish was breeding there. Still, it's still one of the rarest birds in Europe. And that was the sort of thing that he was very much motivated in. But yes, while he was there, the situation with the population got worse and worse. Reprisals got more extreme.

And he would have had to have again, just like Auschwitz, he did this sort of bird survey, but the war would have increasingly come to sort of limit its scientific breadth and its scientific credibility. But again, in terms of ornithology, the paper that he produced, obviously wrote it up in a scientific paper, which was published the next year. It is still a benchmark of...

of the birds that were there during that period. And what's fascinating about all the surveys that Neat Hammer does from a historical, from an anthropological and from an academic perspective is there a snapshot in time. And since then, we've had, you we've got biodiversity crisis, we've got a climate crisis, a lot of the species that he recorded during his surveys in Auschwitz, in Crete, in Bulgaria and in Italy have now disappeared.

Nicholas Milton (45:59.027)
And one of the things I'm really keen to do, I'd really love to repeat the bird survey he did at Auschwitz. We know exactly where he went. We know the transects that he walked. We know the species that he recorded. He did a very good job. It would be fascinating to go back there and to do that to see how. Because a lot of those species were exterminated by the Nazis. They destroyed that internationally important wetland. They poisoned the solar river for miles down with the

raw effluent and the ashes of the people who they cremated, the million plus people, a lot of them did end up in the solar river. But since then, as I say, we've had a crash in bird populations across Europe. And it would be fascinating to see which ones that he recorded as being quite common had now disappeared.

Waitman Beorn (46:56.84)
It's quite interesting too because, again, that's why studying history is so rewarding because I never would have thought to think about something like this. For example, I know that this is a different kind of example, but in the demilitarized zone in Korea, between North and South Korea, it's actually like an amazing ecological zone, right? Because it's so heavily mined that nobody goes in there. So it's been like completely undisturbed.

Nicholas Milton (47:17.385)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman Beorn (47:25.23)
the most part by humans. so there's like a, if I remember correctly, there's like a very rare kind of frog that lives there, et cetera, et cetera. And you could imagine that the Oxford zone of interest potentially, or least parts of it, you know, could have been this way. And, you know, but on the other hand, as you point out, the Nazis are also changing the environment, you know, by polluting it and building and that kind of thing, you know? And so there's this, on the one hand, you know, it would have been closed to sort of

general population going in and hunting and that kind of stuff. On the other hand, as you point out, it's being destroyed in different ways by the Nazis. But that is fascinating to sort of see what you could reconstruct of what... And also to sort of see what he comes across because one of the things that's perhaps not as clear to everybody else, but the zone of interest

and includes lots and lots and lots and lots of other sub camps and little little little working areas. But the prisoners are the the the visibility of Auschwitz prisoners and guards is massive throughout this area. You know, I mean, there's there's a place where they raise rabbits and there's a place where they raise plants and, you know, all these little sites in addition to sort of Birkenau where they are living, you know, and be interesting to see sort of if you overlaid the transects that he's walking.

Nicholas Milton (48:26.665)
Yeah.

Nicholas Milton (48:38.739)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Waitman Beorn (48:51.406)
sort of see what is he coming across as he's going through Auschwitz. And of course, the Creed example is great as well, because on the one hand, you have, I need to have armed guards. Why is that? Well, it's because everyone hates the Nazis here, because we've murdered a lot of people and they're really angry. These two things are existing.

Nicholas Milton (49:14.825)
I'll see.

Waitman Beorn (49:23.702)
simultaneously, but he seems to be sort of trying to shut them out and say, I'm just interested in birds. That's just my thing. I'm not interested in the rest of it.

Nicholas Milton (49:32.585)
That's absolutely right. He again comes back to this sort of academic sort of blindness that he had to what was going on around him. The bird server that he did of Auschwitz is a wonderful record of the incredible bird life and other plant life and mammals and things that he recorded there. Not all of that has gone, they drained it.

They poisoned it, they shot what was there and now you've got that huge, you you've got the huts there which stand as a memorial to genocide. And it's very hard to see what it would have been like before that, but you're absolutely right. It would have been like the ooze washes in this country. It would have been a huge wetland area, rich in birds. You're also right about, you know, the...

In Britain, a country which has destroyed much of its natural habitat, some of the best areas that are left are Salisbury Plain and other places which are MOD land. Those are some of the best places left for wildlife in this country. And again, they give you a snapshot of what our countryside could have been like had we not have sought to mostly build over it or plough it all up for farming.

Waitman Beorn (50:52.946)
Yeah, I mean, and then he ends up, again, going to, I think, to Caucasus or to that area of, to do another expedition.

Nicholas Milton (51:00.873)
Thank you.

Nicholas Milton (51:05.129)
Yes, so he's allocated special command K and the caucuses. was this was again another expedition that was that was there. But this time, though, the military situation has turned decisively against Germany. You know, we're into into 1942. And because of the security situation, this was all about securing the caucus or fields for and the Nazis. By that time, we're coming up against, you know,

lot of resistance and their efforts to try and create an offensive war which they had waged so successfully early on in the war had grown to a halt and the Soviet army were increasingly getting the upper hand. So that expedition never took place and he joins the Hygiene Institute at the Waffen SS.

where he works on vaccines, biological warfare and some of the experimentation that they were doing there. But amazingly, given the war by 1944 turned decisively against Germany, he has two more expeditions before the end of the war to Bulgaria and Trieste in Italy. Just incredible that he was able to do that. And before finally, in April 1945,

And this is the interesting thing about him is he finally had to fight. He finally had to do what every other German soldier had been doing for quite a long time. And he was all sorts of things. What Nietzch Hammer probably wasn't was a soldier. But in the final days of the Second World War, he joined the 269th Division. his rank, he would have had to face the marauding Russian army.

He survived that and like a lot of them afterwards went on the run. was a little...

Waitman Beorn (53:06.38)
And he did end up before that, before we get to the end, he did end up back in Auschwitz for a short period of time. Right.

Nicholas Milton (53:12.967)
He did, yeah, this is really important. So his war record and his court record showed that he went back there in the autumn of 1942. And this for me is pivotal. think we might have looked on him slightly differently had he not. And by that time, the Holocaust was happening in earnest. Mass transports of Jews.

were arriving on a regular basis, he would have been on the platform there, you know, sort of getting people off the cattle trucks and seeing whether they went right or left. He would have seen the crematorium working at Full Pearl. He would have seen screaming, you know, women and children on the platform there as families were separated. He would have seen all of that.

Waitman Beorn (54:05.902)
Yeah. mean, and again, and even if he wasn't sort of, you know, physically involved, mean, you know, he's, he's going to know, I mean, you, simply cannot, cannot be in that place. Um, and not know what's going on, you know, and even though at that point, you know, we still don't have the, you know, we, know, the, the gassings are still taking place in these little cottages, um, you know, in New American now, but you know, he's, he's going to know this, right.

Nicholas Milton (54:20.915)
Absolutely.

Nicholas Milton (54:30.791)
Mm. Mm.

Waitman Beorn (54:33.388)
And then guess after that is when he ends up going back to these expeditions. And then at the end of the war, yeah, let's pick it up there at the end of the war. He sort of knows that he that there's a target on his back, right?

Nicholas Milton (54:47.273)
Absolutely, yes. you know, any German prisoners that were caught by the Russians who had the tattoo, which of course he had as a member of Waffen SS, which sort of shot on sight. And he would have been very aware. There was a big, you know, before things turned very difficult with the Russians, there was a was a there was a big effort to try and the perpetrators from the Holocaust to

to justice. The most famous trial was of his big boss, was of Hoss. But he would have been very aware that as a concentration gambit card who had served at Auschwitz that he was going to be brought to trial and he would have feared for his life. So that's why he went, like a lot of them, he went on the run. was given a false identity and he worked on a farm for the best part of a year.

Waitman Beorn (55:43.842)
And then what's interesting is that he, I guess, of through intermediary, he decides to sort of get ahead of this by turning himself in. Is that what happened?

Nicholas Milton (55:56.819)
Well, slightly more complicated than that. He uses his connections all the time throughout Nietzsche's career. It's his connections with some of the other scientists, people very highly placed in the Nazi party that keeps him sort of going on this quite amazing trajectory. And so they start making the case that people like Streisman, Kermelow write to the authorities

the British authorities, funny enough, and say he was just a guard, he was following orders, he's a scientist, and they come to some sort of deal with the British that if he gives himself up he will be treated leniently. During that period the British sign an important memorandum with the Polish government that anybody who committed war crimes on Polish soil will be tried in Poland.

which is why he ends up at a Polish prison. And he feels very betrayed by this. He thought he was going to be tried by the British. He ends up in a Polish prison. His wife sort of starts a campaign on his behalf. But again, all of his old contacts come in and originally he's tried with a series of other guards and he's...

He's given eight years in prison, which probably doesn't seem that much for us these days. But following this concerted campaign on behalf of his fellow scientists, it's reduced to three years. So he spends just three years in prison before he's allowed out. And then his career, he picks up his career again at the Koenig Museum in Bonn. And his career flourishes, although he was never made director of that museum. I think they probably didn't want somebody who had Auschwitz on their...

on their academic record. But his career flourishes. He becomes general secretary of the German Ornithological Society. He goes on expeditions around the world. He discovers new species to science. has species named after him.

Waitman Beorn (58:07.758)
And as you note, in his obituary, they do this amazing thing. it's not just that. mean, like if you look at business history in Germany, oftentimes, you know, it'll say, you know, this business was founded in 1872 and in 1885, did this. And in 1910, did this. And then it'll be like 1939 to 1945 war. And then, you know, it doesn't talk about anything. so with him as well, you know, it sort of said,

Nicholas Milton (58:30.813)
Yeah, yeah. No.

Waitman Beorn (58:37.186)
all the things he did and then served in the military and then sort of this blank space where what he did is sort of erased.

Nicholas Milton (58:46.601)
The word Auschwitz was erased from his wartime record. I'll give you an example of that in the obituary that was published in his own scientific journal in the Natural History Museum in Bonn. Unlike a lot of the very dry papers in there, this was a very personal tribute to a man who had taken forward the university and the museum.

What's interesting is the, and the word Ashwitz was erased. So instead of the paper, which we know the observations of bird life in Ashwitz, Eastern Upper Silesia, which he published in 1942, instead, there's a deliberate deception, which as you know, from a scientific point of view is as bad as it gets, isn't it? He's credited with writing a paper in 1940 on observations of the bird life in Eastern Upper Silesia, which of course is the area.

Waitman Beorn (59:46.368)
Right.

Nicholas Milton (59:46.81)
The word Auschwitz is erased from his past.

Waitman Beorn (59:52.13)
Yeah, I mean, so this sort of brings us to sort of the, history becomes memory. And I think this is often equally fascinating. Where are we today? I mean, you mentioned that the German Ornithological Society was sort of deeply Nazified. You know, has there been any, you know, public recognition or, you know, it's

Nicholas Milton (01:00:10.557)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman Beorn (01:00:20.334)
Because I noted that he has several, as you said, several subspecies named after him. And, you know, there are other examples of things like Asperger's, for example, which has lost, you know, we don't use that word anymore, partially because, you know, Asperger was kind of a Nazi, that kind of stuff. Has there been any sort of public recognition of him as, you know, this sort of compromised character?

Nicholas Milton (01:00:28.745)
Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Milton (01:00:48.317)
Not really, no, there was a book that was a Polish book that was produced a few years before me. There's definitely, I'm within the German Anthological Society. He's a well-known figure. They've produced a sort of a scientific paper on him, which gives the bare facts. But I find it sort of, it's interesting that nobody in Germany had published a book on him.

You would have expected a German ornithologist probably to produce a book like this. And I think that his legacy is one that still divides people. When I first got in contact with the Ashford State Memorial Museum, I spoke to the director of research there and he said that, to coin a phrase, that Neithammer was one of the good guys. Now I don't.

I try hard not in the book not to come down with a definitive verdict. I just present the evidence to people. I think there is a huge amount of evidence that he was an accessory to genocide, that he played a part in the greatest crime in human history. And I think what makes that sort of worse is that he was an academic, he was a scientist, he was somebody who you would have thought.

A lot of academics and scientists, as you know, did not throw their lot in with the Nazis. And I think had he not have been an ornithologist, which I think that's the reason, know, ornithology today doesn't have the academic standing that perhaps it did even in the Second World War, know, had he not have put his time and effort into what a lot of people would sort of, you know...

described as quite a sort of subject. I think he would have had a lot more focus on him.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:46.254)
Well, I mean, and this is also, you know, it's not just limited to ornithology. there are, it's came out, I think in the last 10 or 15 years that it was discovered that a sort of very, very famous, very, very often used book of anatomical drawings in a medical school in like Germany or Austria. You know, it was like, it's like a Grey's Anatomy, the German or Austrian version, that many of these drawings had been done from

you know, organs of, of concentration camp inmates, right? And so like, so like these things in a certain way, the Nazi period has contaminated like large swaths of, of, knowledge and of, of scholarship. But I think, you know, the, Neenheimer, you know, case is, is, is quite interesting because he's, you know, somebody said that, forget which historian it was, but they mentioned that, you know,

Nicholas Milton (01:03:19.005)
Have a seat.

Waitman Beorn (01:03:45.26)
The only way for you to have lived in Nazi Germany and not known about the Holocaust is if you intentionally chose to not know about it. And I'm thinking that Niedhammer is kind of an example of this in a certain sense. I mean, thought, you know, when you mentioned when you mentioned the the the Villa that he lived in, I did a really quick I just looked it up really quickly. Right. And so he's living in this massive which is which is beautiful, by the way.

Nicholas Milton (01:04:06.355)
Hmm. Hmm.

Nicholas Milton (01:04:12.851)
Mm.

Waitman Beorn (01:04:14.662)
And it's taken from a Jewish family and the architect who built it in the 20s was Jewish and committed suicide in 1938. And he's well known enough that again, you could imagine that Niedhammer might have, living in Vienna, might have known this guy who was a very, very wealthy person, had committed suicide. And you just wonder,

Nicholas Milton (01:04:18.27)
Okay.

Waitman Beorn (01:04:45.454)
What were the reflections about like, where did we get this house and how did we get this house? And, you know, why might this person be committing suicide? know, again, if you had any, sorry, if you had any, if you had any, most, and of course, he's a smart guy, right? So like, like, you know, he can't have missed this stuff unless he really just kind of wanted to miss it.

Nicholas Milton (01:04:55.977)
That would deflect.

Nicholas Milton (01:05:07.325)
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a phrase in the book, isn't there, that the only thing that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. I said, you know, it's for good men to look the other way and, you know, pursue their own narrow interests. he chose not to, but that's the, you know, he chose to focus in on his research, on his scientific expeditions, on his, you know, he did the monumental guide, every single German book on ornithology draws on.

research that Neat Hammer did today. All of those subspecies are no longer recognised, but if you research the history, you'll see a huge number of birds were named after him.

Waitman Beorn (01:05:49.934)
Are they not recognized because they're just not biologically recognized or because they took his name off it?

Nicholas Milton (01:05:55.785)
Probably a bit of both. think scientific reclassification based on we've got a much better understanding now of genetics, which they didn't have. So you can see that a lot of it. On Crete, he was very keen on trying to identify birds that had evolved separately there. He put forward a number of those. We now know that none of those are subspecies. not distinct species that have evolved. But that was very much what he

Waitman Beorn (01:05:57.486)
out.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:04.28)
Right.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:22.51)
All right.

Nicholas Milton (01:06:25.725)
what wanted to do. And his legacy, I think, continues to this day. It's fascinating that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has never had an exhibition on Niethammer or on the specimens that they have in their archive. I would say that there would be huge interest in that. They have all sorts of specimens on display there.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:51.022)
And are these specimens from some of them from Auschwitz?

Nicholas Milton (01:06:53.737)
They're on the front cover. They've got over 90 birds that came from Auschwitz. He sent them back there, each one meticulously labeled, as you could imagine the Nazis would do. And these things have never seen the light of day. But they put on exhibitions all the time of all sorts of interesting subjects to do with biodiversity. Yet in their archive, they've got these birds. And that to me,

Waitman Beorn (01:06:58.69)
Right.

Nicholas Milton (01:07:23.069)
doesn't signify a profession or a museum or indeed even a government that's completely come to terms with its past.

Waitman Beorn (01:07:33.518)
Yeah. And there would be, I mean, what you brought up, I think is really, really insightful because there could be a very, very interesting exhibit that doesn't have to simply be, you know, recognizing our complicity in the Holocaust, but can also be about, you know, the environmental history of, of the zone of interest, as you point out, you know, like what is, what has happened? What, what, what,

Nicholas Milton (01:07:56.179)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:07:59.788)
What did the Holocaust, obviously it's not as important, obviously, as people being murdered. But, you know, what does, what does, what did the Nazi development of this area and its use, you know, in a genocide due to the, to the region and to the, to the life. mean, I think that, that would be a really, really cool exhibit that could go in lots of different directions and also talk about the birds and when what's there, you know, I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be sort of a hundred percent sort of self, you know, flagellation session.

but it'd be releasing.

Nicholas Milton (01:08:29.225)
One of the most enduring bits of folklore, you'll know this, Waikman, about Ashwits is that birds don't sing there. That nature is holding its breath because of the atrocities that happen there. That isn't true. The truth is that very few birds sing there because the habitat no longer supports them. And a lot of them were killed. So it is an eerily silent place.

Waitman Beorn (01:08:36.684)
All right, yep, yep.

Nicholas Milton (01:08:58.825)
But that's a big, you know, that's something that I think, again, I think as a society we need to explore. But no, I mean...

Waitman Beorn (01:09:07.138)
Yeah, I mean, if you go there in the summertime, you know, I've seen, I've seen deer running through there and, and rabbits and, know, I mean, again, because it's, it is, it is all the awful things that it is, but it is also a habitat, you know.

Nicholas Milton (01:09:12.957)
Hmm. Yeah.

Nicholas Milton (01:09:23.209)
It is, but it's a shadow of its former self. And this is the whole point. What happened to humans, in particular to the Jewish population, was mirrored in what happened to the bird life of what was once would have been an absolutely spectacular sight. It would have been, as I say, a world-class area, rather like the Uziwashi's or the Norfolk Broads in this country, a spectacular wetland reserve.

Waitman Beorn (01:09:26.338)
Yes. Yep.

Waitman Beorn (01:09:53.598)
Yeah, it's just a lot to think about, you know, and I think there is, I would really like to see that environmental, because environmental history obviously is a more recent discipline in a certain sense, but it's very, important and it would be very interesting to see sort of an environmental history of the sort of interest. Maybe there is one and I'm just not familiar with it, which is also possible. But, you again, just a really interesting

another way, another lens to look at complicity, both sort of institutional and organizational, well as individual, you know, and the ways in which, from my perspective, right, the ways in which sort of aggressive conquest, is driven by racism and, you know, provides opportunities for

You know, like a guy who wants to go look at birds. It's like, I can now, I now have access to this entire region, whether it's the Caucasus or Crete or whatever. And I can go, I can go do my work there. And then I wouldn't have had access to it except that the Wehrmacht conquered it.

Nicholas Milton (01:11:09.865)
Absolutely, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:11:11.638)
That's fascinating. So again, I recommend everyone take a look. It's called The Birdman of Auschwitz, The Life of Gunter Niedhammer, the ornithologist seduced by the Nazis. And it gives it gets my stamp of approval as an acceptable blank of Auschwitz book. Whereas most of them are are getting to be ridiculous at this point. But this one is a fantastic book of history. And it's a really interesting story. And I think it it.

It gives us a lot to think about and it makes me, I want to interview him. He's not here anymore, obviously, but or his family and sort of see, how do you how do you fit this into your sort of family narrative as well? Because it's something that for those who've been listening to the podcast for a while, I'm kind of interested in as well. This idea of, you know, a Nazi in the family, a guy who was gone for three years in prison. You know, you can't just sort of say that that dad was gone.

for missing for three years. How does this fit into the... Did you get a chance to talk to his family or his family's around or...

Nicholas Milton (01:12:19.173)
Yes, he had four sons and I was able to trace three of them and the fourth one I wasn't. he none of them had grandchildren as far as I'm aware. So that so his son Jochen was was took after him. He was again very famous zoologist. He specialized in mammals. So

Apart from the fourth son who I couldn't trace, I'm not sure that there are living grandchildren, which is a shame because it would be nice to talk to them about the issues that you've raised.

Waitman Beorn (01:13:01.326)
Well, Nicholas, thank you so much for coming on. I will close with what we always ask, which is, is one book about the Holocaust that you found engaging or insightful or thought provoking?

Nicholas Milton (01:13:15.977)
Okay, well, there's Viktor Frankl's book, which I'm sure you'll be very aware of, Man's Search for Meaning. And there's a small bit about Frankl in the book, The Birdman of Auschwitz, on the death march. And he has a very sort of close relationship with his wife. His wife dies in a concentration camp. And it's a bird that...

conveys that message of Robin comes down to him, I think on the death march and that's the bird that tells him that his wife has died. And as you know, he went on to become one of the greatest sort of psychoanalysts of his generation. So I think that's a really good book.

Waitman Beorn (01:14:06.262)
Excellent. We'll put that in the show notes along with Nicholas's book as well. And for everybody else, again, thanks so much for listening. We are back on a regular basis now every two weeks. So fortnightly, if you're British. And like I said, if you're finding the podcast to be engaging, interesting, thought provoking, giving you good...

suggestions, please leave us a comment or send me an email or like and subscribe, all those things that drive the infamous algorithm. And again, Nicholas, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Nicholas Milton (01:14:45.363)
Thank you, Waichman, I've enjoyed it. Thank you.