Himmler

Excellent bio of the most misunderstood of the Nazi hierarchy which details the multitude of secret and not so secret programs that were created by him. Best bio on Himmler yet.

I wanted to read a book about Himmler, but wasn't sure I wanted to read one as hefty as this tome . . . but I quickly changed my mind as soon as I began to read Padfield's work. It immediately pulls you in and keeps the reader intrigued throughout. Padfield does an excellent job of penetrating Himmler's warped mind and makes fine use of resource material that I didn't even know existed.

This is an excellent book, and indispensable to the library of anyone with a serious interest in Nazism or the Holocaust. Padfield has clearly done an enormous amount of research and he uses it with with great skill and perspicacity. He clearly explains Nazi ideology (as espoused by Himmler) and the projects which gave it shape and meaning. He presents plainly both the realpolitik of Nazi government, and the public policy under which it hid it's corruption. He chronicles the growth and spread of the SS both as Himmlers personal fiefdom and the power base he used to rise to the top. His portraits of the major 'players' both within the SS and in the broader regime are drawn from eyewitness accounts and are skillfully woven into the narrative in a way which empahasises both their personalities and their importance in the history of the period.Padfield creates a narrative of Himmler's life that takes the reader on a first class tour of the Third Reich, the upper echelons of the SS heirarchy, and the 'hell on earth' of the Holocaust created by Nazi ideology. It is particularly gratifying that Padfield never succumbs to the temptation of 'adjectival' history. He never describes events or people as 'evil' or 'monstrous', preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. He is free to do so because of the extraordinary clarity with which he presents the facts for the reader.A particularly brilliant example is the juxtaposition of Himmler's outrage at the brutality of a hunting party he took part in in October 1941 - "Nature is so wonderfully beautiful, and every animal has a right to live." which is followed by an account of the clearing of the Riga Ghetto in November of that year (just two weeks later) carried out under his orders. "it is not a Weltanschauungs-question to rid oneself of lice; it is a matter of cleanliness." (pages 351ff)His presentation of the micro-processes of Einsatzgruppen mass-murder is probably the best I've ever read. The methodology of dehumanising both victim and murderer by a series of incremental steps, coupled to a 'normalising' tempo which leads inevitably to the pit is vital to understanding both the brutality of the crime, and it's essentially human, militarist, 'technically dispassionate' character. As an Organisational Development consultant I find this particularly fascinating given the extent to which corporations seek to 'normalise' human behaviours to suit their own goals. Padfield is equally clear in tracking the larger history of the Holocaust as it developed over time. He deftly avoids falling into the 'intentionalist' or 'functionalist' camps by sticking to the facts available and presenting the series of orders, actions, refining of methods, and further orders in the context of both the organisations and individuals involved, and in the tempo of the times.The book is weakest in it's attempts to psycho-analyze Himmler which come across as Freudian psycho-babble when set against the scale of Himmlers crimes, but

This is an excellent book, and indispensable to the library of anyone with a serious interest in Nazism or the Holocaust. Padfield has clearly done an enormous amount of research and he uses it with with great skill and perspicacity. He clearly explains Nazi ideology (as espoused by Himmler) and the projects which gave it shape and meaning. He presents plainly both the realpolitik of Nazi government, and the public policy under which it hid it's corruption. He chronicles the growth and spread of the SS both as Himmlers personal fiefdom and the power base he used to rise to the top. His portraits of the major 'players' both within the SS and in the broader regime are drawn from eyewitness accounts and are skillfully woven into the narrative in a way which empahasises both their personalities and their importance in the history of the period.Padfield creates a narrative of Himmler's life that takes the reader on a first class tour of the Third Reich, the upper echelons of the SS heirarchy, and the 'hell on earth' of the Holocaust created by Nazi ideology. It is particularly gratifying that Padfield never succumbs to the temptation of 'adjectival' history. He never describes events or people as 'evil' or 'monstrous', preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. He is free to do so because of the extraordinary clarity with which he presents the facts for the reader.A particularly brilliant example is the juxtaposition of Himmler's outrage at the brutality of a hunting party he took part in in October 1941 - "Nature is so wonderfully beautiful, and every animal has a right to live." which is followed by an account of the clearing of the Riga Ghetto in November of that year (just two weeks later) carried out under his orders. "it is not a Weltanschauungs-question to rid oneself of lice; it is a matter of cleanliness." (pages 351ff)His presentation of the micro-processes of Einsatzgruppen mass-murder is probably the best I've ever read. The methodology of dehumanising both victim and murderer by a series of incremental steps, coupled to a 'normalising' tempo which leads inevitably to the pit is vital to understanding both the brutality of the crime, and it's essentially human, militarist, 'technically dispassionate' character. As an Organisational Development consultant I find this particularly fascinating given the extent to which corporations seek to 'normalise' human behaviours to suit their own goals. Padfield is equally clear in tracking the larger history of the Holocaust as it developed over time. He deftly avoids falling into the 'intentionalist' or 'functionalist' camps by sticking to the facts available and presenting the series of orders, actions, refining of methods, and further orders in the context of both the organisations and individuals involved, and in the tempo of the times.The book is weakest in it's attempts to psycho-analyze Himmler which come across as Freudian psycho-babble when set against the scale of Himmlers crimes, but

An extremely informative, accurate and unbiased account of one of Hitler's closest ranks. Peter Padfield does an excellent job of capturing, and often analyzing, the life of Himmler from his Catholic childhood, through his initial failures of military life, through his rise to become one of Hitler's inner circle and the most powerful person in the Third Reich. Padfield is consistent with his documentation of what is fact, his conclusions based on historical documentation, to what cannot be known with any level of certainty. It is particularly interesting to delve into Himmler's rationalizations for his actions. Padfield also gives insight into many of the additional cast of characters within the Nazi regime, including Hitler, Donitz, and Goebbels as well as the thoughts and strategies of those both inside and outside Germany during this particular period in history.

This compendium of the life of the very personification of evil, Heinrich Himmler, is astounding. The amount of detail, not only concerning Himmler, but of other high ranking Nazi officials, such as Heydrich, Canaris, Mueller, Eichmann, and so forth is incredible. This book belongs alongside Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and "Speer's "Inside the Third Reich." A more unlikely figure to assume the position of head of the SS could not possibly be imagined; how could this weakling of a farmer who raised poultry reach the god-like status he attained, holding the power of life and death over eighty million Germans and later hundreds of millions more in the occupied nations under German domination? And yet he was not a sadist, he lived frugally and did not derive pleasure from reducing millions to human beings to expendable slaves and annihilation, he was largely apathetic to it all. The irony that he himself did not even remotely qualify for the racial characteristics he adamantly required of his subordinates, and would not even pass his own screening test for accepting SS applicants, is something to consider. His devout belief in God, perhaps eclipsed only by his belief in his Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, and the fact that he considered himself a Catholic, are interesting to note. His lack of emotion and impersonal disregard for the sanctity of human life would seemingly suggest the characteristics of a sociopath, someone who could hear a hideous scream of agony, acknowledge it, and calmly resume paperwork activity and proceed to complete it at his leisure. Although Himmler appears to be a harmless, pedantic crank, he is undoubtedly one of the most chilling personages of history, more so since he himself could never understand why his own name caused people to recoil in horror and terror, for reasons that were plain to anyone else.