Heinrich Himmler

.
Nice middle class Catholic boy. Nerdy teen. Cheating husband. Loving father. Thoughtful boss. Manipulative, micromanaging monster. Truth is always stranger than fiction, and the story of Heinrich Himmler is no exception.

Peter Longerich is a superb scholar. The book is long but interesting. The writing is compelling and carefully footnoted. "Heinrich Himmler" could be used as a textbook in any number of graduate-level courses. A business course based on Himmler's management style would probably be well-attended. An ethics course based on Himmler's decisions would be equally well-attended. A psychology course based on Himmler's dispassionate path to social engineering, mass murder, and suicide would be fascinating.

New material to me was Himmler's antipathy towards the Catholic Church and his desire to revive Germany's ancient pagan religion; his almost voyeuristic scrutiny of the the family lives of his men; the government-sanctioned kidnapping and redistribution of ethnic German children; and the sheer scope of power Hitler granted to Himmler.

Longerich presents fact after fact in this carefully-footnoted 1,031 paged book, until the reader is almost numbed to the magnitude of Himmler's evil. One could gag on Himmler's never-ending emphasis on decency and courage.

Side note: The binding of this volume is of poor quality. A book of this size should be produced in a two volume set or designed with a larger font and sewn signatures. The smaller than usual type face is tiring to read and pages keep falling out of this newly-purchased book.

Good book. Worth reading.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

This book is an exhausting read but not for the obvious reasons. This book has to be the main source for the SS and for Himmler. The book is written well. It is easy to pick up on what the author has to say. It isn't encased in academic language like a lot of these books. That academic view tends to lose the story. You won't get that feel from this book. The story is alive from page one to the last page. However after you read this you will feel exhausted. It will be like Heinrich moved in with you. The exhausting piece comes from the "evil" that was Heinrich and the SS.

This book does cover Heinrich from day one to his last day. When I say day one I mean his growing up years. However once the Nazis come to power the story grows to be a history of the SS. The personal side of Heinrich tends to get lost. However as the author says Heinrich's life becomes the professional piece. There isn't any margin between the two. Himmler really was the backbone for Hitler. He was the one that brought his evil rhetoric to life. His skills in a way helped the movement come to life.

This story of the SS is very enlightening. No matter what level of WWII knowledge you have I think you will learn new things in this book. He lies out things in minute detail. You can see how the Nazi movement was bad from the start. It did not grow that way. They all had anti-Jewish motive from the 20s. I learned a great deal about the program. Their Jewish genocide program really trumped the war movement in priorities. The SS grew to be more than just the Jew killers in the camp. They had their own Army for example. The SS grew to capture businessmen into their cause. The SS by the end of the war was running everything, to include the Army.

Heinrich Himmler is an interesting figure to study. He is the ultimate power politician. He was great at seeing opportunities and making the most of them. He was at Hitler's right hand guy who jumped at anything that came up. Heinrich grew up catholic but later became a big anti-christian. You learn from the book how much Himmler was into the occult. He even went so far as to try to create his own religion that had elements of the occult in it. That was a major part of his world view. One has to think all of that had some sort of influence on his actions. You will also see how the final solution did not come over night. The author takes you through the growth of the program page by page. It seemed once the Nazis got away with one thing they doubled down, and so on and so on. I also found it interesting in how the SS wasn't all brutes. They had a large number of people from the educated occupations. A large number of the officers in their Eitzengroppen squads, the killers in the field were lawyers. I wonder how people drift into such movements?

The bad side of the book is there isn't much analysis. That is only in the last chapter. Most of what you get comes from the actions themselves. If you are a WWII buff you should read this.

This is the very best book that I have ever read about Nazi leaders! It is a masterpiece worth keeping in your own library. It is a massive volume, and contains hundreds of names of leading Nazi SS criminals. You may need to google many of these names to get their biographies, and especially those convicted of war crimes and were executed by the Allies after the war. There are no maps and again you would have to use the internet to locate where the major concentration camps were located. Each of the major camps had many sub-camps. Himmler had a gigantic terror network starting in 1933.

If you want to know the author's opinion about Himmler's personality, it is neatly summarized in the Conclusion (final chapter.) To look at early 1924 photographs, Himmler is the last person you'd imagine who could be head of Hitler's terror networks. He was a survivor of Nazi politics who was willing to do everything possible to carry out Hitler's extermination of European Jews and build his own power base in the process.

Professor Longerich could prepare another massive companion book full of maps and locations of all concentration and extermination camps in German occupied areas, and listings of the key SS commanders and police officials, and what happened to them after May 8, 1945.

This book was phenomenal. Plain and simple. The other reviewers have done a great job with their thoughts on the work so I just want to point out some personal highlights:

The extensive discussion of Himmler's role in settlement policy and Germanization was incredible. I found myself shaking my head a few times at the thought process behind it all.

The gradual escalation of genocide from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union to the Endlösung der Judenfrage - chilling to read!

The sense of a clan that Himmler was attempting to forge within the SS and his micromanagement of his people.

I find the concept of Schutzhaft ("protective custody") fascinating as it strongly resembles something one can find at a base in Cuba.

I thought the end of the war was covered adequately but it did feel a bit rushed. As this was translated from German there are some patches of odd grammar and the author clearly loved using "vis-à-vis"!

Anyone interested in this time period will find this book engrossing and informative. For example, who doesn't want to know that by 1944 the SS controlled 75% of mineral water manufacturing?

as a student of the ss this is like the bible of himmlers life and actions from 1923 to 1945 I see now why he was like this the way he thought being next to the most powerfull man on the planet in the twentieth century next to stalin, Himmler can and did what he wanted created a legendary group of men who will never leave the reality bof history a fascinating person to read about the bes book ive read in ten years

Longerich provides rich detail of a "normal" man who becomes one of the worst killers in modern history. Seeing the amount of initiative taken shows that Hitler was far from alone in perpetration of the Holocaust.

I'm not going to go into all the detail of the book since other reviewers have done such a good job covering these. I found this book intense & engaging. Hard to put it down! Himmlers life is covered from the beginning to the end. How could a good Catholic youth turn into one of the biggest mass murders in history? It's answered here. His intense disappointment at missing combat in ww1 & his joining the freicorps then battling in the streets of Germany. His attempts at farming & joining the Nazi Party are covered. I didn't know that he traveled all over on a motorcycle preaching the Nazi's poison. He was a man who loved & doted on his children, but would order the murder of millions of other children. A person who would be physically sick to see animals suffer & die. But again would murder millions. The book covers all of this & much more. If you want to add to your understanding of the Third Reich then this book is a good addition to a library if you have one from this time in history.

A detailed biography of the man who brought geonocide to it's ultimate forms.....terifying! 250 pages of notes and annotations to back up the assertations put forth in the book.

Excellent condition

Exhaustively researched. Long reading project, but that's good for us who like long books. I read this along with Hitler, KL and The Hoax to help me study and come to my own self conclusion with the Holocaust/Holocaust Revision controversy. I have not read any other books on Himmler, however I feel confident believing and suggesting that this book could possibly be the "definitive" biography.