our special mobileunits of the SS known as Einsatzgruppen were formed andtrained in the late spring of 1941. The core of these units camefrom Heydrich's Security Police (Gestapo and Kripo) as well ashis intelligence apparatus (Security Service, or SD).

In a brief two years between the autumn of 1939 and the autumn of1941, Nazi Jewish policy escalated rapidly from the prewar policy of forcedemigration to the Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic at-tempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp.

Around 1941, Barzun took on a larger classroom, becoming the moderator of the CBS radio program “Invitation to Learning,” which aired on Sunday mornings and featured four or five intellectual lights discussing books. From commenting on books, it was, apparently, a short step to selling them. In 1951, Barzun, Trilling, and W. H. Auden started up the Readers’ Subscription Book Club, writing monthly appreciations of books that they thought the public would benefit from reading. The club lasted for eleven years, partly on the strength of the recommended books, which ranged from Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” to Hannah Arendt’s “The Human Condition,” and partly on the strength of the editors’ reputations.