Hitler's Hangman

Hitler's Hangman PDF Author: Robert Gerwarth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300177461
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
A chilling biography of the head of Nazi Germany’s terror apparatus, a key player in the Third Reich whose full story has never before been told. Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe. “This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous.”—Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal “[A] probing biography…. Gerwarth’s fine study shows in chilling detail how genocide emerged from the practicalities of implementing a demented belief system.”—Publishers Weekly “A thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.”—The New Republic

Hitler's Hangman

Hitler's Hangman PDF Author: Robert Gerwarth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300177461
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
A chilling biography of the head of Nazi Germany’s terror apparatus, a key player in the Third Reich whose full story has never before been told. Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe. “This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous.”—Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal “[A] probing biography…. Gerwarth’s fine study shows in chilling detail how genocide emerged from the practicalities of implementing a demented belief system.”—Publishers Weekly “A thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.”—The New Republic

The Assassination of Heydrich

The Assassination of Heydrich PDF Author: Jan G. Wiener
Publisher: Hodder Christian Books
ISBN: 9781617203725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
"Jan Wiener's fascinating, well-documented book tells of the heroic exploits of various Czech men and women, most of whom paid for their resistance with their lives. Above all it gives a detailed, documented account of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the most gruesome of the Nazi murderers, by Czech resisters parachuted from London but aided in their task by the Czech underground." William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich If you only read one book about what it felt like to be present during the worst time in modern human history, a time when your life could be snuffed out for having the mere thought of opposition against the Nazi regime, this should be the book because it is told by survivors and by one of the greatest survivors of them all, Jan Wiener.

The Hangman and His Wife

The Hangman and His Wife PDF Author: Nancy Dougherty
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0593534131
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil: a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler’s Nazi elite—Reinhard Heydrich, the designer and executor of the Holocaust, chief of the Reich Main Security, including the Gestapo—interwoven with commentary by his wife, Lina, from the author's in-depth interviews. He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac. In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, masterfully explore who Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarefied musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command—from SS major, to colonel to brigadier general, before he was thirty, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution." And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of thirty-eight, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.

Heydrich

Heydrich PDF Author: Mario R. Dederichs
Publisher: Greenhill Books
ISBN: 1784388874
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A comprehensive biography of the Nazi mastermind behind the Holocaust and his military career, featuring interviews with his surviving family. Adolph Hitler praised Reinhard Heydrich as ‘the man with the iron heart’. He admired Heydrich so much that, despite rumors about Jewish ancestry, he considered him a potential successor. Reinhard Heydrich was undeniably one of the Führer’s most enthusiastic, brutal, and ambitious henchmen and one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Nazi party and became one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. Indeed, after his 1942 assassination, the murder of more than 2 million people at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblina was code-named ‘Action Reinhard’. In this critically acclaimed biography, which includes interviews with some of his surviving family, Mario Dederichs creates a complete and compelling portrait of Heydrich’s life. Dederichs details his short-lived naval career, to his work under the SS chief Himmler, his appointment as Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, and his assassination by Czech agents and the terrible reprisals exacted on the town of Lidice. Praise for Heydrich: The Face of Evil “A chilling study of the man who masterminded the Holocaust . . . Heydrich was inhumanely cruel, ruthless, devious, shameless, a sixteen hour a day workaholic who was feared and loathed even by his closest colleagues.” —The Daily Telegraph “An impressive mix of psychological analysis, biography and historical reporting . . . Dederichs descends into Heydrich’s personal abyss and describes it in a captivating and intelligible manner while not rejecting the scientific approach.” —Die Rheinische

Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler PDF Author: Peter Longerich
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199592322
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1053

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Book Description
A biography of Henrich Himmler, interweaving both his personal life and his political career as a Nazi dictator.

The Hangman and His Wife

The Hangman and His Wife PDF Author: Nancy Dougherty
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0394543416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil: a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler’s Nazi elite—Reinhard Heydrich, the designer and executor of the Holocaust, chief of the Reich Main Security, including the Gestapo—interwoven with commentary by his wife, Lina, from the author's in-depth interviews. He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac. In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, masterfully explore who Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarefied musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command—from SS major, to colonel to brigadier general, before he was thirty, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution." And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of thirty-eight, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.

Speer

Speer PDF Author: Martin Kitchen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300216009
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
“Sets the record straight on Albert Speer’s assertions of ignorance of the Final Solution and claims to being the ‘good Nazi.’”—Kirkus Reviews In his bestselling autobiography, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and chief architect of Nazi Germany, repeatedly insisted he knew nothing of the genocidal crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich. In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer’s lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well. Kitchen reconstructs Speer’s life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years. The result is the first truly serious accounting of the man, his beliefs, and his actions during one of the darkest epochs in modern history, not only countering Speer’s claims of non-culpability but also disputing the commonly held misconception that it was his unique genius alone that kept the German military armed and fighting long after its defeat was inevitable. “A devastating portrait of an empty, narcissistic and compulsively ambitious personality.”—The Wall Street Journal “Kitchen’s exhaustively researched, detailed book nails, one by one, the lies of the man who provided a thick coat of whitewash to millions of old Nazis. Its fascinating account of how the moral degradation of the chaotic Nazi regime corrupted an entire nation is a timely warning for today.”—Daily Mail (“Book of the Month”) “[An] excellent new biography . . . Kitchen has taken a wrecking ball to Speer’s mendacious and meticulously created self-image. And about time, too.”—History Today

Stormtroopers

Stormtroopers PDF Author: Daniel Siemens
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
The first full history of the Nazi Stormtroopers whose muscle brought Hitler to power, with revelations concerning their longevity and their contributions to the Holocaust Germany’s Stormtroopers engaged in a vicious siege of violence that propelled the National Socialists to power in the 1930s. Known also as the SA or Brownshirts, these “ordinary” men waged a loosely structured campaign of intimidation and savagery across the nation from the 1920s to the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, when Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and many other SA leaders were assassinated on Hitler’s orders. In this deeply researched history, Daniel Siemens explores not only the roots of the SA and its swift decapitation but also its previously unrecognized transformation into a million-member Nazi organization, its activities in German-occupied territories during World War II, and its particular contributions to the Holocaust. The author provides portraits of individual members and their victims and examines their milieu, culture, and ideology. His book tells the long-overdue story of the SA and its devastating impact on German citizens and the fate of their country.

The Private Heinrich Himmler

The Private Heinrich Himmler PDF Author: Katrina Himmler
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466870893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
The English translation of the letters of Heinrich Himmler and his wife, recently authenticated by the Bundesarchiv and serialized in Die Welt At the end of World War II, it was assumed that the letters of Heinrich Himmler were lost. Yet sixty years after Himmler's capture by British troops and subsequent suicide, the letters mysteriously turned up in Tel Aviv and, in early 2014, excerpts were published for the first time by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot providing a rare, if jarring, glimpse into the family life of one of Hitler's top lieutenants while he was busy organizing the mass extermination of the Jews. It was generally held that Himmler, once appointed head of the SS, blended seamlessly into the Nazi hierarchy. The image that emerges, however, is more subtle. Himmler is seen here as a man whose observations can often be characterized by their unpleasant banality; a man whose obsession with family life ran alongside a brutal detachment from all things human, a serial killer who oversaw the persecution and extermination of all Jews and other non-Aryans, and those opposed to the regime. His letters remove any doubt that he was the architect of the Final Solution, and a man who was much closer to Hitler than many historians previously thought. The letters in this edition were arranged by Katrin Himmler, the great-niece of Heinrich and Marga Himmler, and Michael Wildt, a renowned expert on the Nazi regime, who also provide historical context to the letters and their author. The entire work was translated by Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen.

In the House of the Hangman

In the House of the Hangman PDF Author: Jeffrey K. Olick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226626385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
The central question for both the victors and the vanquished of World War II was just how widely the stain of guilt would spread over Germany. Political leaders and intellectuals on both sides of the conflict debated whether support for National Socialism tainted Germany's entire population and thus discredited the nation's history and culture. The tremendous challenge that Allied officials and German thinkers faced as the war closed, then, was how to limn a postwar German identity that accounted for National Socialism without irrevocably damning the idea and character of Germany as a whole. In the House of the Hangman chronicles this delicate process, exploring key debates about the Nazi past and German future during the later years of World War II and its aftermath. What did British and American leaders think had given rise to National Socialism, and how did these beliefs shape their intentions for occupation? What rhetorical and symbolic tools did Germans develop for handling the insidious legacy of Nazism? Considering these and other questions, Jeffrey K. Olick explores the processes of accommodation and rejection that Allied plans for a new German state inspired among the German intelligentsia. He also examines heated struggles over the value of Germany's institutional and political heritage. Along the way, he demonstrates how the moral and political vocabulary for coming to terms with National Socialism in Germany has been of enduring significance—as a crucible not only of German identity but also of contemporary thinking about memory and social justice more generally. Given the current war in Iraq, the issues contested during Germany's abjection and reinvention—how to treat a defeated enemy, how to place episodes within wider historical trajectories, how to distinguish varieties of victimhood—are as urgent today as they were sixty years ago, and In the House of the Hangman offers readers an invaluable historical perspective on these critical questions.