As head of the SS, chief of police, "Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness", and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name
has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich. His wide-ranging powers meant that he bore equal responsibility for the repression of the German people on the home front and the atrocities perpetrated by the SS in the East. Yet, in spite of his
central role in the crimes of the Nazi regime, until now Himmler has remained a colourless and elusive figure in the history of the period.
In this, the first-ever comprehensive biography of the SS-Reichsführer, leading German historian Peter Longerich puts every aspect of Himmler's life
under the microscope. Masterfully interweaving the story of Himmler's personal life and political career with the wider history of the Nazi dictatorship, Longerich shows how skilfully he exploited and manipulated his disparate roles in the pursuit of his far-reaching and grandiose objectives. In the
process, he illuminates the extraordinary degree to which Himmler's own personal prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and predilections made their mark on the organizations for which he was responsible - especially the SS, which in so many ways bore the characteristic hallmarks of its leader, and whose
history remains both incomplete and incomprehensible without a detailed and intimate knowledge of its deeply sinister commander-in-chief.
Abbreviatons and Glossary
Prologue
Part I: The Young Himmler
1. Childhood and Youth
2. The Student of Agriculture
3. Struggle and Renunciation
4. A New Start in Lower Bavaria
5. The Party Functionary
6. Reichsführer SS
Part II: In the Third
Reich
7. The Take-Over of the Political Police
8. From Inspector of the Prussian Gestapo to Chief of the German Police
9. The State Protection Corps
Part III: The Order
10. Ideology and Religious Cult
11. Himmler's Leadership Style
12. Himmler the
Educator
13. The SS Family
Part IV: Ambition and Disappointment
14. War Preparations and Expansion
15. War and Settlement in Poland
16. A New Racial Order
17. Repression in the Reich
18. Shifting Borders: The Year 1940
Part V: The Greater Germanic
Reich: Lebensraum and Ethnic Murder
19. An Ideological War of Annihilation
20. From Mass Murder to the 'Final Solution'
21. The Murder of the European Jews
22. Settlement Policy and Racial Selection
23. The 'Iron Law of Ethnicity': Recruitment for the Waffen-SS
24.
A Europe-wide Reign of Terror
Part VI: Downfall in Stages
25. Can a Turn in the War Present an Opportunity?
26. Collapse
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Comments on Sources and Literature
Bibliography
Index
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Peter Longerich is Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London and founder of the College's Holocaust Research Centre. He has published widely on the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including Holocaust: The Nazi Murder and Persecution of the Jews, also
published by Oxford University Press, which is widely recognized as the standard account of the Nazi machinery of mass murder and the steps by which it unfolded.
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