Download or read book Hitler s Hangman written by Robert Gerwarth and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Hitlers Hangmen written by Brian Lett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before and after the outbreak of the Second World War there were sizeable Fascist groups active in Britain, working to overthrow the British government. Most of the Fascist leaders were interned in 1940 as soon as Churchill came to power, but were freed in the better times of 1944, all the more embittered and just as intent on installing a Fascist government and taking revenge on Churchill. By late 1944 there were hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war in Britain, many of them in camps brutally dominated by the SS and other Nazi fanatics. When Hitler tried to restore Germany’s position with his massive Battle of the Bulge offensive he gave orders for this to be supported by a break-out from all of the POW camps under Nazi control. Some of the escapers were to head for London to assassinate Churchill, with the help of the British Fascists. It was only by chance that the plot was foiled. This is the incredible, disturbing story of how close British Fascists came to impacting the outcome of the Second World War. It is also a comprehensive investigation of the break-out plot as it unfolded across Britain: how it came to fruition and how it was quashed, its repercussions and the many little-known stories of escape and recapture which took place throughout the country.

Download or read book A Hangman s Diary written by Franz Schmidt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1573 to 1617, Master Franz Schmidt was the executioner for the towns of Bamberg and Nuremberg. During that span, he personally executed more than 350 people while keeping a journal throughout his career. A Hangman’s Diary is not only a collection of detailed writings by Schmidt about his work, but also an account of criminal procedure in Germany during the Middle Ages. With analysis and explanation, editor Albrecht Keller and translators C. Calvert and A. W. Gruner have put together a masterful tome that sets the scene of execution day and puts you in Master Franz Schmidt’s shoes as he does his duty for his country. Originally published more than eighty years ago, A Hangman’s Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Schmidt’s executions, which include hangings, beheadings, and other methods of murder, as well as explanations of each crime and the reason for the punishment. An incredible classic, A Hangman’s Diary is more than a history lesson; it shows the true anarchy that inhabited our world only a few hundred years ago. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book The Hangman and His Wife written by Nancy Dougherty and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil: a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler’s Nazi elite—Reinhard Heydrich, the designer and executor of the Holocaust, chief of the Reich Main Security, including the Gestapo—interwoven with commentary by his wife, Lina, from the author's in-depth interviews. He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac. In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, masterfully explore who Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarefied musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command—from SS major, to colonel to brigadier general, before he was thirty, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution." And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of thirty-eight, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.

Download or read book The Assassination of Heydrich written by Jan G. Wiener and published by Hodder Christian Books. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

Download or read book Martin Bormann written by Volker Koop and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born on 17 June 1900, Martin Ludwig Bormann became one of the most powerful and most feared men in the Third Reich. An obsessive bureaucrat, it was Bormann who helped steer Hitler’s apparatus of terror so effectively that he became the clandestine ruler of Nazi Germany. After joining the Nazi Party in 1927 Bormann rose through its ranks. Indeed, by July 1933 Bormann had maneuvered himself into the position where he became the Chief of Cabinet in the Office of the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess. In this role Bormann gradually consolidated his power base, so that when Hess carried out his infamous flight to the United Kingdom in 1941, Bormann stepped into his shoes. As the head of the Party Chancellery, Bormann duly took control of the Nazi Party. By the end of 1942, he was in effect Hitler’s deputy and his closest collaborator. With the Führer increasingly preoccupied with military matters, Hitler came to rely more and more on Bormann to handle Germany’s domestic affairs. On 12 April 1943, Bormann was appointed Personal Secretary to the Führer. Feared by ministers, Gauleiters, civil servants, judges and generals alike, Bormann identified strongly with Hitler’s ideas on racial politics, destruction of the Jews and forced labor and made himself indispensable as the Führer’s executioner. Cold as ice, he decided the fate of millions of people. In January 1945, with the Third Reich collapsing, Bormann returned to the Führerbunker with Hitler. Following Hitler’s suicide on 30 April, Bormann was named as Party Minister, thus officially confirming his rise to the top of the Party. Late the following day he fled from the bunker in an attempt to escape the encircling Red Army; his fate remaining a mystery for many years. In October 1946 he was found guilty in absentia by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. Drawing heavily on recently declassified documents and files, the historian and journalist Volker Koop reveals the full story of the most faithful member of Hitler’s inner circle, an individual who, whilst little known to the German people, became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich.

Download or read book Hitler s Willing Executioners written by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

Download or read book The Assassination of Heydrich written by Jan G. Wiener and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unable to compete with her friends' fancy clothes and running ability, irrepressible six-year-old Junie B. finds her own way to make the new boy at school like her.

Download or read book Reinhard Heydrich written by Historical Biographies and published by Historical Biographies. This book was released on with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinhard Heydrich: The Evil Life, Holocaust Plans, and Assassination of Hitler's Hangman" is a gripping, brief biography that delves into the dark and sinister life of one of the most notorious figures of the Nazi regime. This compelling account explores the early influences, rise to power, and tragic downfall of Reinhard Heydrich, known as "Hitler's Hangman" and one of the architects of the Holocaust. In the first sections of the book, readers are taken back to Heydrich's formative years, where they witness the political landscape in Germany and the emergence of far-left political groups that shaped his ideologies. From his involvement in a local Freikorps unit to his tumultuous career in the German Navy and subsequent dismissal, the reader gains insight into the experiences that molded Heydrich's character and propelled him toward his destiny. As Heydrich rises through the ranks of the Nazi Party, the narrative intensifies, exploring his role in establishing and leading the dreaded Gestapo. The book reveals Heydrich's key contributions to Hitler's regime, including the Night of the Long Knives and the unification of Austria. It also examines his expanding responsibilities, his instrumental involvement in the invasion of Poland, and his significant impact on Germany's war efforts. Furthermore, the biography provides a chilling examination of Heydrich's plans for the Holocaust. It delves into the criteria for Jewish classification, the implementation of the Final Solution, and the horrific segregation of Jews in Poland. The detailed analysis of Heydrich's insidious strategies offers a haunting glimpse into the mind of a man responsible for the deaths of millions. The book climaxes with the audacious assassination attempt on Heydrich's life by Czechoslovakian resistance fighters, the aftermath of the attack, and the brutal Nazi reprisals that followed. It concludes with an exploration of Heydrich's legacy and a poignant tribute to the victims of his atrocities. "Reinhard Heydrich: The Evil Life, Holocaust Plans, and Assassination of Hitler's Hangman" is a harrowing, short biography that exposes the darkest depths of Nazi Germany. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, this book offers an unflinching examination of one man's pursuit of power and the devastating consequences it unleashed upon the world.

Download or read book The Kindness of the Hangman written by Henry Oster and published by Higgins Bay Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young German boy's true story of tragedy and triumph, from the depths of despair in Auschwitz and Buchenwald to an extraordinary life in America.

Download or read book Hitler s Henchmen written by Helmut Ortner and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2022-11-04 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helmut Ortner reveals a staggering history of perpetrators, victims and bystanders in Hitler’s Germany. He explores the shocking evidence of a merciless era – and of the shameful omissions of post-war German justice. Johann Reichhart was a state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria from 1924 until the end of the war in Europe. During the Nazi era, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for resisting National Socialism, including many of those involved in the 20 July 1944 bomb plot on Adolf Hitler. As a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the SS organisation responsible for administering the concentration and extermination camps, Arnold Strippel served at a number of locations during his rise to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. These included Natzweiler-Struthof, Buchenwald, Majdanek, Ravensbrück and Neuengamme, where he was responsible for murdering the victims of a series of tuberculosis medical experiments. Like Reichhart, Erich Schwinge was also involved in the legal sphere during the Third Reich. A German military lawyer, in 1931 he became a professor of law and, from 1936, wrote the legal commentary on German military criminal law that was decisive during the Nazi era. Aside from the part they played in Hitler’s regime, these three men all had one further thing in common – they survived the war and restarted their careers in Adenauer’s Federal Republic of Germany. In Hitler’s Henchmen, Helmut Ortner uncovers the full stories of Reichhart, Strippel, Schwinge and others like them, Nazi perpetrators who enjoyed post-war careers as judges, university professors, doctors and politicians. Had they been gutless cogs in the machinery of the Nazi state, or ideologized persecutors? Ortner reveals that it was not only their Nazi pasts that were forgotten, but how the suffering of the victims, including resistance fighters such as Georg Elser and Maurice Becaud, and their relatives was suppressed and ignored.

Download or read book Conversations with an Executioner written by Kazimierz Moczarski and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1981 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Relying largely on Stroop's own words ... Moczarski recreates the chain of events which caused a nondescript German youth, the son of a provincial policeman, to rise to the top of the Nazi hierarchy; become part of the inner circle of Hitler, Himmler, and Göring; wield ... power in Czechoslovakia, Soviet Russia, and Greece; and mastermind Warsaw's "Final solution"--Jacket.

Download or read book Hitler s Hangmen written by Brian Lett and published by . This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before and after the outbreak of the Second World War, there were a number of sizable Fascist groups active in Britain, all of whom were working towards a violent uprising to overthrow the British government. These groups included The Right Club, led by Captain Jock Ramsey MP, Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League and Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, Ramsay, Leese, Mosley and hundreds of their supporters were arrested and interned. They were released in 1943 and 1944, all the more embittered and just as intent on bringing about the installation of a Fascist Government in Britain, which Ramsay hoped to lead. Churchill was the man they hated most, under Chamberlain, they had remained free men, Churchill had interned them, and sworn to fight the Nazis to the bitter end, Britain under Churchill would never surrender. In the autumn of 1944, Adolf Hitler made his last attempt to achieve victory in the west, or at least a favorable peace. He would then be free to concentrate on defeating the Soviet Union. In the Ardennes, he launched a massive counter attack, using dirty tricks and murdering prisoners, that has become known as the Battle of the Bulge, in Italy he counter attacked down the Serchio valley, and in the UK he gave orders for an uprising or escape in all of the German Camps under Nazi control, and in at least one of the Italian Fascist prisoner of war camps. A part of Hitler's plan was the assassination, simultaneously, of both Churchill and Eisenhower. This was the opportunity Ramsay had been waiting for. Under the cover of a "Social" for all those who had been released from detention, a meeting was arranged for the day of the breakout. They would join and aid the uprising, providing invaluable support. An organization called the Prisoners of War Assistance Society, set up by members of Leese's organization, was to help the prisoners get out. Two Nazi camps were to lead the Break Out, Camps No.23, Devizes, and No.17, Sheffield. The plot was discovered by chance at Camp 23 and foiled. Nazi Vehmic Court murders of suspected informers followed in relation to Camp 23, and at Camp 17. The plan was been to seize US military ambulances in Devizes, and tanks and armored vehicles, and to advance on London. The ambulances would provide useful camouflage, in the same manner as captured US vehicles and uniforms were used in the Battle of the Bulge. Waiting and willing to help them at the House of Commons in London was Jock Ramsay MP. He continued to serve as an MP after his release from four years detention, and when he attended the House he would sit within yards of his greatest enemy, Winston Churchill. In December 1944, Churchill was in London, and addressed the House of Commons on 14 and 20 December. Ramsay had the right to attend the House of Commons at all times, and his Right Club had once boasted eleven MPS amongst its members. He could provide the German task force with assistance in their attempt to kill or capture Churchill and other Cabinet Ministers, thus leaving Britain without its leaders at a vital moment. A simultaneous plot to assassinate General Eisenhower was discovered during the Battle of the Bulge - it was known as "Eisenhower Aktion", and involved English speaking Germans disguised as US soldiers and driving US vehicles. This is the incredible, disturbing story of how close British Fascists came to impacting the outcome of the Second World War. It is also a comprehensive investigation into the Break Out Plot as it unfolded across Britain: how it came to fruition and how it was quashed, its repercussions and the many little-known stories of escape and recapture which took place throughout the country.

Download or read book Heinrich Himmler written by Peter Longerich and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 1053 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Henrich Himmler, interweaving both his personal life and his political career as a Nazi dictator.

Download or read book An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen s Hitler s Willing Executioners written by Simon Taylor and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Goldhagen's study of the Holocaust offers conclusions that run directly counter to those reached by Christopher Browning, whose book Ordinary Men is also the subject of a Macat analysis. As such, the two analyses make possible some interesting critical thinking exercises focused on evaluation of the evidence used by the two historians. For Goldhagen, a chief reason for German actions was not the mundane good comradeship stressed by Browning, but a longstanding hatred of Jews and Judaism specific to Germany that dated back well into the previous century. Debating which historian is right, which has made better use of the available evidence, which has most successfully written objectively 0́3 and which advances the most secure interpretation of contested documents 0́3 forces students to think critically about one of the most important and (on the surface at least) incomprehensible events of the past century.

Download or read book Hunting the Hangman written by Howard Linskey and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What an entire army couldn’t do, two men must: take out the Butcher of Prague. Operation Anthropoid has been engaged. 1941. The Third Reich is at its zenith. Its protector is Reinhard Heydrich, the most merciless senior figure in Hitler’s inner circle, and the Fuhrer’s eventual successor. Under Heydrich’s oppressive command, thousands of lives have already been erased in Czechoslovakia’s capital. It’s only Heydrich’s first ruthless step in service to the German people. Heydrich’s ultimate endgame is the Final Solution. But under the cloak of night, the resistance conspires as well. Trained in subterfuge by the British Special Operations, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis are unfailingly dedicated soldiers. Now, as committed allied agents they’ve been tasked with an audacious and seemingly impossible mission: parachute into an occupied city in lockdown, rally the remaining Czech rebels, and assassinate one of the most dangerous men alive. Outmanned against insurmountable odds, Gabcik and Kubis have no choice but to succeed. The fate of Europe and the world is in their hands. High Acclaim for Ungentlemanly Warfare “A stellar novel of high-octane action, adventure and suspense.” —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author “Reads like the new The Day of the Jackal—swift, deadly, game over!” —John Ellsworth, USA Today bestselling author of The Point of Light “A heart-pounding thriller from cover to cover. I couldn’t put it down.” —James D. Shipman, author of Task Force Baum “A perfect companion for fans of the great Ken Follett.” —Chuck Driskell, author of Final Mission: Zion

Download or read book Hitler s Executioner written by Helmut Ortner and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though little known, the name of the judge Roland Freisler is inextricably linked to the judiciary in Nazi Germany. As well as serving as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice, he was the notorious president of the 'People's Court', a man directly responsible for more than 2,200 death sentences; with almost no exceptions, cases in the 'People's Court' had predetermined guilty verdicts. It was Freisler, for example, who tried three activists of the White Rose resistance movement in February 1943\. Along with Christoph Probst, Sophie and Hans Scholl were arrested for their part in an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign which called for active opposition against the Nazi regime. Found guilty of treason, Freisler sentenced the trio to death by beheading; a sentence carried out the same day by guillotine. In August 1944, Freisler played a central role in the show trials that followed the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July that year - a plot known more commonly as Operation Valkyrie. Many of the ringleaders were tried by Freisler in the 'People's Court'. The proceedings were filmed, the intention being to use the images as propaganda in newsreels. Freisler could be seen alternating between clinical interrogations of the defendants through to his yelling of personalized and theatrically enraged abuse at them from the bench. Nearly all of those found guilty were sentenced to death by hanging, the sentences being carried out within two hours of the verdicts being passed. Roland Freisler's mastery of legal texts and dramatic courtroom verbal dexterity made him the most feared judge in the Third Reich. In this in-depth examination, Helmut Ortner not only investigates the development and judgments of the Nazi tribunal, but the career of Freisler, a man who was killed in February 1945 during an Allied air raid.