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

"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"--

"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.

Odilo Globocnik, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million people in three Nazi camps in occupied Poland: Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Along with Rudolf Hoss, Globocnik may be named as one of the first industrial-style killers in history. Betraying his homeland by conspiring with Hitler to destroy Austria's independence, he then launched the Generalplan-Ost, which was to expel over 100 million Slavs into Western Siberia, and played a pivotal role in Aktion Reinhardt, directing the entire program from early 1942 until September 1943, and writing letters to Himmler detailing goods looted from his victims. Globocnik's Lublin Distrikt gulag was not merely a vehicle for a well-organized pogrom; it also involved creating a highly organized network of ghettos and forced labor camps. By the winter of 1943 nearly all of the Jews of the Lublin Distrikt had been exterminated, leaving only skilled laborers used in Globocnik's industrial conglomerates. His ethnic cleansing teams, assisted by Ukrainian policing units, also cleared the Polish peasant farmers from the Zamosc Lands. Very little has been published on Globocnik, most especially the four years he spent in Lublin. This authoritative biography details every aspect of his life from his ancestry to his suicide after being captured. Information has been researched from more than thirty international archives, Globocnik's SS file, extensive interviews with his lover Irmgard Rickheim and others, a wealth of letters both personal and formal, internal memos and official reports of the SS, diaries, and the reminiscences of survivors. Includes rare photographs, many from the collection of Irmgard Rickheim.

Describes the life of Juan Pujol, a poultry farmer who opposed the Nazis and concocted a series of staggering lies that lead to his becoming one of Germany's most valued spies, while actually acting as a double-agent for the Allies.

“An intriguing account of two of Nazi Germany’s top architects” and how their work prolonged the war for months—includes hundreds of photos (WWII History). A Selection of the Military Book Club. While Nazi Germany’s temporary ascendancy owed much to military skill, the talent of its engineers not only buoyed the regime but allowed it to survive longer than would normally be expected. This unique work focusing on Fritz Todt and Albert Speer is based on many previously unpublished photographs and artwork from captured Nazi records. Todt was the brilliant builder of the world’s first superhighway system, the Autobahn, and the architect of the German West Wall, the Siegfried Line, that predated the later Atlantic and East Walls. The builder of each of the wartime “Führer Headquarters,” as well as the submarine pens, Todt was killed in a still-mysterious airplane crash that may well have been a Nazi death plot, though he was given a state funeral by Hitler. Todt was succeeded as German Minister of Armaments and War Production by the Führer’s longtime personal architect, Albert Speer, who was described by the Allies after the war as having prolonged the conflict by at least a year. Called a genius by Hitler, Speer designed and built the prewar Nuremberg Nazi Party Congress rally stands and buildings. More importantly, amid the constant rain of Allied bombs and the Soviet advances from the East, Speer managed to keep the German industrial machine running until the spring of 1945, though it was driven ever further underground. He also allocated resources to fortifications and counterattacks, like the V-missile installations, against both West and East, in attempts to stave off defeat. Convicted as a war criminal at Nuremberg, Speer served twenty years at Spandau Prison and remained a Nazi apologist who died in London in 1981 on the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland. Together, Todt and Speer were the pillars that propped up the Third Reich through the vicissitudes of battlefield fortune. With over three hundred photographs, this is the first work that examines their role in history’s most terrible war.

“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

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.

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

THE MAN WITH THE IRON HEART Hitler called him “The man with the iron heart”—yet Reinhard Heydrich was utterly different from those other iron men who served the Führer. Gifted with intellect, charm and great courage, Heydrich used his outstanding talents to create the Nazi Security Service, the notorious SD (Sicherheitsdienst), thereby becoming one of the most powerful figures—perhaps the most evil influence of all—in Nazi Germany. Charles Wighton, through unprecedented co-operation on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has had access to top secret Nazi Party files, to official sources in East Germany, to highly secret records in Czechoslovakia—and to the frank recollections of Heydrich’s widow. The result is a fascinatingly detailed revelation of the rise of this diabolical genius. Through Heydrich’s racial campaigns, which gathered their own momentum after his death, six million Jews were murdered by 1945. And yet this son of a cultured, upper-middle-class Roman Catholic family, who became the real power behind Himmler, was himself blackmailed by the Führer for possessing non-Aryan blood. In addition to clarifying this aspect of Heydrich’s astonishing career, the author throws new light, too, on “Plan Ost”, the blueprint for the extermination of thirty million Slavs, and on the mystery surrounding Heydrich’s assassination in 1942. Here, then, is the full story of the man with the iron heart—Heydrich, Hitler’s most evil henchman.