SOURCE: A review of Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, in America, Vol. 120, No. 15, April 12, 1969, pp. 454-55.

Muhlen was a German-born American journalist and historian. In the following mixed review of Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, he faults Friedländer for his facile psychoanalysis of his subject and for the moralistic tone of his conclusions.

The hero of this historical study [Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good] is one of the most enigmatic figures of the Nazi years. In an era characterized by tragedy on a mass basis, his tragedy was unique. A devoutly Lutheran Christian, the son of an old-fashioned Prussian middle-class family, a promising 27-year-old mining engineer when Hitler came to power, Kurt Gerstein joined the Nazi party. Though he had not broken with it, he soon was banned from his occupation and briefly sent to a concentration camp because he tried to defend the...