Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us as perplexed and stunned as the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire people were simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could lead an individual to carry out such inhumane acts to a large group of people. It delves into the life of Heinrich Himmler and investigates all the events that led him to join the Nazi party. In “Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms resulting from the plague and Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a structure with a tower at the center intended for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany during Himmler's childhood while Foucault explains these events better by describing how society works as a whole. Griffin spends a good portion of “Our Secret” writing about Himmler's childhood. It is through her family's history and educational practices that she hopes to find answers. When Himmler is only ten years old, his father tells him that "his childhood is over now" (236). Himmler must take himself seriously now and obey the watchful eye of his father. Everything Heinrich does from that point on is intended to directly influence his future and who he will become. This is a choice that the society he was born into makes for him, he has no choice. Gebhard, Himmler's father, is extremely domineering and controlling Himmler. Like many Germans of the time, he followed the advice of German child-rearing experts: “Cut down the will. . .Establish the domain. Do not allow any disobedience. Suppress everything in the child” (237). German parents are taught that children “should be imbued with the inability to close… middle of paper… to realize their purpose in life, making them an easy and simple target to influence. Heinrich found the structure and purpose that society told him he needed by “following Hitler with unswerving loyalty” (250). Griffin believes that each individual is shaped by forces beyond their control, starting from their childhood, and it is these particular events that shape and mold people into the person they later become. Hitler's Nazi Germany can be explained in part because of the child-rearing practices common during that time. While Griffin is not wrong, the events that led to the Holocaust can be traced back long before the childhood of an individual like Himmler. Events and attitudes in Nazi Germany bear a great resemblance and appear to be the product of the disciplinary mechanisms established by the plague. Germany was just another part of the Panopticon described by Foucault.