The SS Officer's Armchair
In Search of a Hidden Life
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The SS Officer's Armchair
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Narrated by:
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Alex Wyndham
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By:
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Daniel Lee
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
It began with an armchair. It began with the surprise discovery of a stash of personal documents covered in swastikas sewn into its cushion. The SS Officer’s Armchair is the story of what happened next, as Daniel Lee follows the trail of cold calls, documents, coincidences and family secrets, to uncover the life of one Dr Robert Griesinger from Stuttgart. Who was he? What had his life been – and how had it ended?
Lee reveals the strange life of a man whose ambition propelled him to become part of the Nazi machinery of terror. He discovers his unexpected ancestral roots, untold stories of SS life and family fragmentation. As Lee delves deeper, Griesinger’s responsibility as an active participant in Nazi crimes becomes clearer.
Dr Robert Griesinger’s name is not infamous. But to understand the inner workings of the Third Reich, we need to know not just its leaders, but the ordinary Nazis who made up its ranks. Revealing how Griesinger’s choices reverberate into present-day Germany, and among descendants of perpetrators, Lee raises potent questions about blame, manipulation and responsibility.
A historical detective story and a gripping account of one historian’s hunt for answers, The SS Officer’s Armchair is at once a unique addition to our understanding of Nazi Germany and a chilling reminder of how such regimes are made not by monsters, but by ordinary people.
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Critic reviews
Beautiful and gripping, it unfolds like a detective story as an obscured past emerges into the light. (Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family)
Memorable and chilling... As well as a brilliant researcher, Lee proves himself to be an insightful narrator - of both the life of a Nazi "desk murderer", and the continuing attempts of Griesinger's family to come to terms with the long shadow his role as an SS officer has cast over their lives. (PD Smith)
What listeners say about The SS Officer's Armchair
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Hannah
- 19-12-21
Brilliant - but a useless reader
Fascinating story. But I think the creepy sounding reader was some kind of automated system. Almost every sentence had the inflection in the wrong place. It sounded like someone who could read and pronounce English perfectly without understanding a word of it.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Hannah Olsen
- 27-09-24
Very interesting story but...
... a bit put off by the performer and his reading. It is ok to start with but his voice and tendency to end of an upward tone on each sentence is a bit grating and takes away from the story itself.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 04-12-20
Great Story, Weird Narration
I was very much excited for this book and it’s a great story, but I couldn’t get over the weird voice the narrator puts on when he does the parts of the women in the story. I couldn’t help but think of Alan Partridge and then that’s all I could hear from then on.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Alan Wilson
- 09-03-21
Terrible narrator
An interesting story, though much of it based on speculation. However the terrible narration - with an odd, high-pitched breathy voice for all the characters, and constant mispronounciation, made this a poor download.
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