R Merle tried in 1952, shortly after the second world war, to answer this question through an imaginary biography of Rudolf Hess, based on the confessions and testimony gathered during the Nuremberg trials. The book begins with the childhood R Hess, giving some hints in psychoanalytic novel and continues with his career, his rise in the SS unit, detached his obedience, his manic attention to detail and efficiency. By step, inhumanity nibbles the officer to make the symbol of barbarism.
R Merle chose a cold writing, analytical, to make the psychology of his character which gives a style a bit poor compared to his other novels.
If the book was a landmark and upset at the time, others have illuminated from the banality of evil, the horror of the camps, the tilting of the military torturer. The V Grossman Drive, E or P Wiesel Levi is not a discovery but reading Death is my trade is a necessity for others, especially younger
