The overwhelming impression is of professionals transformed into psychopaths - morally blinded, perhaps, by their narrow specialisms (that, at least, was the historian Friedrich Meinecke's theory). Whether collecting rail fares, conducting experiments, devising slogans, writing theses or designing ovens, it was thousands of people like Scholz, Pru fer, Fischer and Oberhauser who turned Hitler's deranged dream of genocide into reality. They, just as much as the sadistic SS-men described by Rudolf Reder, were the real perpetrators.