Scope and content: "Any scholar of history will have recognized the similarities between Ancient Rome and the National Socialist movement of the 20th century. Aside from the obvious expansionist policies of empire governed by a single autocratic leader, the Nazis adopted the Roman style extended arm salute, the verbal greeting of hailing the leader and the eagle adorned banners and standards. Another parallel was the introduction of the SS--a modern Praetorian Guard, easily recognizable by the unique attire and consisting of the largest, strongest and fittest men available. Never before has an organization engendered wide-ranging emotion as on the scale of Hitler's SS--lead by Heinrich Himmler, who found his true metier upon his appointment by Hitler in 1929 with his natural organizational and administrative skills. This remarkable book ... turns the spotlight upon those characters at the pinnacle of the pyramid that formed the SS. Illustrated with well over 1000 photographs, these ... volumes are the author's life's work, and present an unique perspective on this feared organization"--Publisher description

The SS of the title is presented as the runic insignia of the Schutzstaffel.

No dictator can effectively govern a nation on his own. This was certainly the case with Adolf Hitler, who had little time for or interest in the day-to-day regional administration of the Nazi Party. For that purpose, he appointed his most loyal, charismatic, and brutal subordinates: The Little Hitlers , officially known as Gauleiters. In this third volume of a series begun in 2012, Michael Miller and Andreas Schulz present, in meticulous detail, the lives, careers, and crimes of 37 such men. Included are several whose wartime career paths took them outside of their home provinces and led to widespread oppression and terror outside the borders of the Reich. Among these were Fritz Sauckel, who presided over the roundup of millions for slave labor in the Reich, Josef Terboven who oppressed the people of Norway with uncompromising brutality for five years, and Gustav Simon who ruthlessly Germanized Luxembourg. Perhaps most notorious of all was Julius Streicher, whose virulent attacks- in writing and at the podium- made him the unofficial face of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.

"I was following orders." The answer most commonly quoted by SS men accused of atrocious crimes after Germany had surrendered in 1945. But who gave those orders? Who was the mastermind behind the sophisticated machinery which allowed men from normal family backgrounds to kill on such a scale? The right man at the right time, fate steered Heinrich Himmler to take control of an organization destined to carry out Hitler's racial policies. This study not only sets out in detail how Heinrich Himmler's daily routine allowed him to implement Nazi strategy, but it also provides illustrations of the man behind much of it, both at work and at home. Of all the personalities of history demonized by postwar writers, Heinrich Himmler ranks among the most reviled. His legacy is one of hatred, violence and cold blooded murder on a vast scale. A Jekyll and Hyde character, variously described by his generation and those who followed as charming, loyal, polite, a pedant, an eccentric, an organizational genius, a fool, a desk killer and a loving father. The camera allows us into his world, albeit temporarily, and we can equate his busy, but mostly mundane schedule with contemporary images frozen in time.REVIEWS "text as engaging as the illustrations, and highly recommend this marvelous book to all who think they've seen everything about Heinrich Himmler.Military Advisor

Every phase of the Third Reich s foreign policy was determined by its authoritarian leader, Adolf Hitler. Following his rise to power, his political acuity and utter lack of scruple enabled him to achieve numerous diplomatic successes against the well-intentioned but largely ineffectual Anglo-French democracies. First by duplicity, then by bluff and bluster, and finally by brinkmanship, Hitler succeeded in establishing a strengthened and united Greater Germany (Grossdeutschland) in preparation for a Second Great War. This book examines in depth the revanchist foreign policy of Hitler s Germany from 1933 to 1939: the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations, German rearmament, the introduction of compulsory military service and the enlargement of the German Armed Forces, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the notorious Hossbach Conference, the Austrian Anschluss , the Munich Conference, the brazen seizures of Bohemia-Moravia and the Memel District, the Danzig crisis, the cynical brokering of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the German invasion of Western Poland.

German leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was one of the most controversial politicians and military commanders in all recorded history. As such, his life was conspired against by all manner of enemies, both foreign and domestic: German and Russian Communists, political and military opponents, rival Nazi leaders, and the intelligence services of the Allied powers, among them the British SOE. Dozens of attempts were made on his life over the course of two decades, including a bomb explosion in his own headquarters and yet, he survived them all. This is the story of how he did so, as told via the exciting sagas of Sepp Dietrich and his SS, as well as of German government security leader Johann Rattenhuber and his Reich Security Service, the RSD. Here we see the measures used to protect Hitler in public, his cars, planes, trains, homes, military headquarters scattered across conquered Europe, and during personal appearances. Ironically, of course, in the end Hitler decided to take his own life in the infamous Berlin bunker, but this is the story of how a man that so many people wanted dead managed to stay alive for so long in volatile circumstances.

Outside of the Nazi hierarchy, Odilo Globocnik is the most culpable in the planned and almost successfully executed attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe. The crime of mass murder far outweighs the less significant, but nevertheless considerable, offenses of robbery and human trafficking, for obvious reasons. Globocnik was guilty of them all.

In almost every army in the world, the military police rank amongst those who are least liked by other soldiers despite the essential duties that they carry out, often being amongst the first in and last out in any theatre of war. In the German armed forces, opinions of the military police were those of fear and distrust, so great were the powers held by these troops. Germany created a plethora of different branches of what were termed 'Ordnungstruppe' ('Troops for Maintaining Order'). Many wore a distinctive metal plate around the neck, leading to their nickname 'Kettenhund' or 'Chain Dogs'. Despite being involved in the brutal treatment of partisans, their skills were so much appreciated by the Allies that on Germany's surrender, Wehrmacht military police units were allowed to remain in post to assist in controlling the vast number of disarmed German troops. Supplemented with previously unpublished photographs, Kettenhund! - The German Military Police in the Second World provides a detailed study of the organisation of these units and the distinctive uniforms and insignia they wore.

This landmark study, first published by Cornell University Press in 1966, shows how Hitler's elite army grew from a praetorian guard of barely 28,000 men at the beginning of the Second World War to a combat-hardened army of more than 500,000 in 1945. George H. Stein examines in detail the structure and organization of the Waffen SS and describes the rigid personnel selection and intensive physical, military, and ideological training that helped to create the tough and dedicated cadre around which the larger force of the later war years was built.