HENRY V. DICKS. Licensed mass murder; a socio-psychological study of some S.S. killers. London,  Sussex University Press in association with Heinemann Educational Books, 1972. pp.  xiii + 283. £3.

This book is one of a series emanating from a University of Sussex research centre concerned with collective psychopathology, later known as the Columbus Centre, which was set up in 1966. Its terms of reference were the investigation into the origins and structure of persecution and extermination, and Professor Norman Cohn, author of Warrant for genocide (1966) and The pursuit of the millennium , is the general editor of the series which, as he writes in a foreword, though consisting of individual authors’ works is yet ‘coloured by the experience of inter-disciplinary discussion and debate’.

The present study by an author with unique knowledge of the German scene, an unrivalled professional acquaintance with such psychopathic heroes of Nazi Germany as