Himmler: Reichsfuhrer S.S. (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

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Format: Paperback
Pages: 688
Edition: Revised
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 31 Jan 2001
ISBN 10: 0304358398
ISBN 13: 9780304358397
Book Overview: Looking for all the world like a benevolent and myopic clerk, Heinrich Himmler was nonetheless one of the Third Reich's most determined mass murderers. By the end of the Second World War, this tortured, sexually perverted individual who had always worried that he lacked both the appearance and martial values befitting to a member of the master race had more than made up for any such deficiencies. He had displayed extraordinary guile to outmanoeuvre his rivals in the Fuhrer's inner circle and maintain his grip on the reins of power in the Reich. He had driven himself to be ever more ruthless and had duly earned his reward. Himmler was chief of both the SS and Gestapo. He supervised the Nazi intelligence services, was war minister in all but name and chief of the Home Army and Armaments. He controlled a vast industrial empire based on imported slave labour. He also, of course, ran the death camps where millions were liquidated. Peter Padfield's Biography of Himmler was the first full-scale book on its subject. It remains a penetrating psychological and political study. It is also an enthralling if disturbing portrait of evil.