Visar resultat för..."Himmlers"

Shortly after their rise to power, the Nazis established specific Arbeitslager (labour camps) which housed Ostarbeiter (eastern workers), Fremdarbeiter (foreign workers) and other forced labourers who were rounded up and brought in from the east. These were distinct from the SS-run concentration camps.The use of forced labour grew significantly in 1937 due to rearmament requirements and again after the outbreak of warThe invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 further heightened demands for labour and the availability of new workers in areas under Nazi occupation. Vast numbers were deported to forced labour camps, where they worked either producing war materials or on construction projects.As in the Nazis’ view, inmates were slaves pure and simple and replaceable with others, there was a complete disregard for the health of prisoners. Required to work long hours with little or no time for rest or breaks they were subject to insufficiencies of food, equipment, medicine and clothing. As a result of these conditions and brutal treatment, death rates were shockingly high.By 1945, more than fourteen million people had been exploited in the network of hundreds of forced labour camps that stretched across Nazi-occupied Europe. In true Images of War series style, this superbly illustrated book graphically describes the growth of the slave camp system and the conditions inflicted on the luckless labour force.

The gripping story of the fall of Heinrich Himmler--the man who sought to perfect genocide and who ultimately became the most hunted war criminal in history—during the convulsive final days of the Third ReichHeinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Gestapo, and Waffen-SS, rose to all but supreme power as architect of the concentration camps and commander of the murderous deportations, the mass sterilizations, and the gas chambers. In Himmler’s Last Days, acclaimed historians Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos deliver an acutely revealing story of the psychic and physical unraveling of the ultimate mastermind of the Nazi terror apparatus.Himmler leaves the Führerbunker just days before Hitler’s April 1945 suicide, now aspiring to be his successor, and flees a Berlin under siege. The book tracks Himmler’s desperate movements, never before reconstructed, in cinematic detail, to a series of outposts and hiding spots in the north of Germany.Even as the camps are liberated—and the depth of Nazi genocidal evil is revealed through the testimony of living skeletons—Himmler schemes delusionally and in ill faith to parlay concentration camp prisoner releases into a deal with General Eisenhower for a partial German surrender.The capture by the British of a disguised Himmler, his interrogation, his suicide by hidden cyanide capsule, and his consignment to an unmarked grave are vividly illuminated through eyewitness accounts and photographs.A definitive telling that casts light on the universal fate of genocidaires--and puts to rest far-right conspiracy theories regarding Himmler’s supposed murder by the Allies.Finally, through his own desperate acts and words, Himmler is revealed as clearly as we have ever seen him. A stunning and reverberating account.Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s Reichsführer, rose to all but supreme power as ultimate mastermind of the murderous deportations, the mass sterilizations, and the gas chambers.In HIMMLER’S LAST DAYS, acclaimed historians Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos deliver a tightly focused, acutely revealing story of the physical and psychic unraveling of the man who sought to perfect genocide.Himmler leaves the Führerbunker just days before Hitler’s suicide and flees in disguise, now as the most hunted war criminal in history. The book tracks his movements, never before reconstructed, to a series of outposts and hiding spots in the north of Germany. Even as the camps are liberated—and the depth of Nazi genocidal evil is revealed through the testimony of living skeletons—Himmler schemes to work a deal with General Eisenhower for a self-serving partial surrender.The authors draw on new archival documentation--including photographs and contemporary accounts--to tell the story of Himmler’s capture by the British, his interrogation, and his suicide by hidden cyanide capsule. The book’s definitive account of Himmler’s final days puts to rest still-circulating conspiracy theories regarding his supposed murder at the hands of the Allies.A stunning and reverberating story.

German scholars were early pioneers in folklore and historical linguistics. As the Nazis rose to power, however, these disciplines were distorted into racist pseudoscience. Under the direction of Heinrich Himmler's SS-Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Inheritance), folklore became a tool for constructing a unified German realm and a manufactured lineage from ancient and ""pure"" Germanic and Nordic blood.Drawing on extensive research in public and private archives and interviews with family members of fieldworkers, James R. Dow uncovers both details of the SS cultural commissions' work and the continuing vestiges of the materials they assembled. Teams of poorly qualified and ideologically motivated collectors were sent to South Tyrol in Italy and Gottschee in Slovenian Yugoslavia, from which ethnically German communities were to be resettled in the German Reich. Although a mass of information on narratives, songs and dances, beliefs, customs, local clothing and architecture, and folk speech was collected, the research was deeply tainted and skewed by racialist and nationalist preconditions. Dow sharply critiques the continued use of these ersatz archives.

In 1938, on the eve of war, a Nazi expedition set out through British India on a mission sponsored by Himmler himself. Its aim was to trace the origins of the Aryan race, high in the sacred mountains of Tibet. The expedition was led by two complex individuals - Ernst Schäfer, a swashbuckling, gun-toting naturalist for whom Nazism promised a short-cut to personal glory, and Bruno Beger, an anthropologist whose racial theories were taken to their logical conclusion in Auschwitz.Schäfer and Beger soon found themselves battling hostility from the British, being manipulated by the Tibetans and struggling with the primitive conditions in the holy city of Lhasa. Every detail of the expedition was recorded in diaries, letters and secret reports. It was also documented in thousands of extraordinary photographs (some of which are reproduced here for the first time in decades) and on film.Despite this abundant documentation, the full story of Schäfer's ill-fated expedition has never been told. This encounter between the British and the Nazis so close to the Second World War forms a 'picture in little' of the conflict to come. HIMMLER'S CRUSADE explores the ideological roots of the Nazis' obsession with racial theory and the occult. Using the wealth of primary material as well as his own interviews with Bruno Beger, Christopher Hale has written a fascinating and thought-provoking book that brilliantly evokes this little-known prelude to the unimaginable horror of war.

Lumans studies the relations between Nazi Germany and the German minority populations of other European countries, examining these ties within the context of Hitler''s foreign policy and the racial policies of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. He shows how the Reich''s racial and political interests in these German minorities between 1933 and 1945 helped determine its behavior toward neighboring states.Originally published in 1993. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Lumans studies the relations between Nazi Germany and the German minority populations of other European countries, examining these ties within the context of Hitler's foreign policy and the racial policies of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. He shows how the Reich's racial and political interests in these German minorities between 1933 and 1945 helped determine its behavior toward neighboring states.Originally published in 1993.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The Nazis’ dream was to populate their future Greater-German Reich exclusively with ‘racial valuable’ people and Himmler became the main executor of this gruesome and unimaginable plan. For this purpose, millions of ‘inferior’ people had to be expelled or killed, while as many men, women and children of Germanic descent as possible had to be brought together in the territory of the Third Reich.Children were the key players in Himmler’s sinister plans, and the  Lebensborn programme exploited luxurious maternity homes, led by SS-officers, for selected women with the required Aryan features. The pregnant women, often not married, and the fathers of their future children, usually members of the SS, had to comply with very strict racial requirements: Himmler considered their offspring as the future nobility of the Germanic empire.Obsessed with racial purity and birth rates, the Lebensborn programme fell directly under Himmler's personal control, and arguably became his favourite project. He spent hours drawing up selection criteria, regulations and dietary requirements, personally studying the files of mothers and children and using his private aircraft to transport them to other Lebensborn establishments. The organization was active throughout Germany and the occupied Western European countries, and was also involved in the abduction of 'Aryan' children from Eastern and Central Europe. On Himmler’s orders, tens of thousands of blond, blue-eyed children in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and other countries were abducted for ‘Germanisation’, partly in Lebensborn children’s homes. Himmler was so absorbed by the racial delusion, he was convinced this policy served a dual purpose: by abducting the ‘superior’ children, he robbed the subjected countries of their future leaders, while at the same time, strengthening the ‘Germanic race’.

In 1938, on the eve of war, a Nazi expedition set out through British India on a mission sponsored by Himmler himself. Its aim was to trace the origins of the Aryan race, high in the sacred mountains of Tibet. The expedition was led by two complex individuals - Ernst Schäfer, a swashbuckling, gun-toting naturalist for whom Nazism promised a short-cut to personal glory, and Bruno Beger, an anthropologist whose racial theories were taken to their logical conclusion in Auschwitz.Schäfer and Beger soon found themselves battling hostility from the British, being manipulated by the Tibetans and struggling with the primitive conditions in the holy city of Lhasa. Every detail of the expedition was recorded in diaries, letters and secret reports. It was also documented in thousands of extraordinary photographs (some of which are reproduced here for the first time in decades) and on film.Despite this abundant documentation, the full story of Schäfer's ill-fated expedition has never been told. This encounter between the British and the Nazis so close to the Second World War forms a 'picture in little' of the conflict to come. HIMMLER'S CRUSADE explores the ideological roots of the Nazis' obsession with racial theory and the occult. Using the wealth of primary material as well as his own interviews with Bruno Beger, Christopher Hale has written a fascinating and thought-provoking book that brilliantly evokes this little-known prelude to the unimaginable horror of war.

A mysterious secretive Foundation, perhaps middle European, has funded a project in a luxurious resort on a Caribbean Island where highly intelligent couples have been lured to come to begin the breeding of more intelligent offspring in a Eugenics program hoping to have a generation that has a statistically significant greater intelligence. Word has leaked out about the project leading to the Foundation's arranging with three cable news networks to send supposedly naïve reporters to visit the resort and report on the project, which will be edited, to correct the supposed misconceptions about the project. One reporter, not quite as naïve as the Foundation thinks she is, uncovers disturbing aspects of the project. With the help of the project's Clinical Psychologist, they blow the lid off the project in a nationwide cable news broadcast.

The murderous activities of Himmler's Einsatzgruppen - or death squads - rank high among the horrors of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. These hand-picked groups followed in the wake of Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units advancing intro Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia.Their mass murder of civilians in the occupied territories will never be accurately quantified but is likely to have exceeded two million people, including some 1.3 million of the 6,000,00 Jews who perished in the Holocaust.The graphic and shocking photographs in this Images of War book not only show the hunt for and rounding up of civilians, communists, Jews and Romani people but the active support given to the Einsatzgruppen by SS units and Wehrmacht units. The latter strenuously denied any collusion but the photographic evidence here refutes this.

This WWII pictorial history offers an unsettling up-close account of the Nazi death squads committing mass murder on the Eastern Front.The murderous activities of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen – or death squads—rank high among the horrors of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. As the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht advanced into Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, these hand-picked groups followed in their wake, committing mass murder of civilians.Their killing in occupied territories will never be accurately quantified but is likely to have exceeded two million people, including some 1.3 million of the 6,000,00 Jews who perished in the Holocaust.The graphic and shocking photographs in this Images of War book show Einsatzgruppen operations, including the hunt for and rounding up of civilians, communists, Jews and Romani people. It also shows the active support given to the Einsatzgruppen by SS and Wehrmacht units. The latter strenuously denied any collusion, but the photographic evidence here refutes this.

The murderous activities of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen – or death squads – rank high among the horrors of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. These hand-picked groups followed in the wake of Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units advancing intro Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia.Their mass murder of civilians in the occupied territories will never be accurately quantified but is likely to have exceeded two million people, including some 1.3 million of the 6,000,00 Jews who perished in the Holocaust.The graphic and shocking photographs in this Images of War book not only show the hunt for and rounding up of civilians, communists, Jews and Romani people but the active support given to the Einsatzgruppen by SS units and Wehrmacht units. The latter strenuously denied any collusion but the photographic evidence here refutes this.

The notorious Nazi leader's attempt to take war prisoners hostage at the end of WWII is revealed in this lively and expertly researched history. During the final weeks of the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler assembled the most famous and noteworthy SS prisoners be taken hostage. Himmler's plan was to use these individuals as bargaining chips to save the Reich or, failing that, himself. Known as the Prominenten, this group included European politicians and former heads of state, five British survivors of the 'Great Escape,' two MI5 agents, and Irish born POWs. This meticulously researched study sheds new light on how the British prisoners came to be integrated with a multinational group of VIPs in Dachau concentration camp, including German family groups of men, women and children; relatives of those implicated in plot to kill Hitler. The lively narrative describes kidnapping, escape attempts, interpersonal conflict, betrayal and comradeship. It also reveals intrigues and love affairs among the prisoners, culminating in their dramatic attempt to free themselves from the SS.

The notorious Nazi leader’s attempt to take war prisoners hostage at the end of WWII is revealed in this lively and expertly researched history.During the final weeks of the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler assembled the most famous and noteworthy SS prisoners be taken hostage. Himmler’s plan was to use these individuals as bargaining chips to save the Reich—or, failing that, himself. Known as the Prominenten, this group included European politicians and former heads of state, five British survivors of the ‘Great Escape,’ two MI5 agents, and Irish born POWs. This meticulously researched study sheds new light on how the British prisoners came to be integrated with a multinational group of VIPs in Dachau concentration camp, including German family groups of men, women and children; relatives of those implicated in plot to kill Hitler.The lively narrative describes kidnapping, escape attempts, interpersonal conflict, betrayal and comradeship. It also reveals intrigues and love affairs among the prisoners, culminating in their dramatic attempt to free themselves from the SS.

Heinrich Himmler sent Valentina Schneider to a concentration camp for helping Jews and Allied soldiers to escape from Germany during WWII. Her sons and their father, Ivan, rescued her in the last month of the war.In this final book of the Romanov Legacy trilogy, Valentina returns to her home in Munich. Her sons go to Soviet territory to find their girlfriends, but the Soviets arrest both men. Ivan goes back to Moscow to free them.Valentina had attended many parties with Hitlers leadership, and rumors abounded that she had been Himmlers mistress. She owned a lens factory near Munich. Nazi administrators brought slave labor to the factory while she was in the death camp. Allied prosecutors believe she was responsible and charge her with war crimes. They incarcerate her with Goering and the Nazi leadership who await trial at Nuremberg.

Aged 105, Rose has endured more than her fair share of hardships: the Armenian genocide, the Nazi regime, and the delirium of Maoism. Yet somehow, despite all the suffering, Rose never loses her joie de vivre. As she looks back over her long life - one of survival and, sometimes, one of retribution - she recalls those unique experiences that added such spice to her life, whether it was being a confidante to Hitler, a friend to Simone de Beauvoir or cooking for Heinrich Himmler.

Under Himmler's Command addresses two areas of World War II hitherto neglected - Heinrich Himmler as a military commander, and the German staff officer corps during the last months of the war on the Eastern Front. The author, Hans-Georg Eismann, was the Operations Officer for Army Group Vistula, a German formation created in late January 1945 to which Heinrich Himmler was appointed as commander. Eismann's memoir of this period has remained unpublished for over fifty years, and its wider circulation is long overdue. Full of fascinating detail he recounts the disturbing and sometimes bizarre atmosphere that pervaded the German high command in the East during the final months of the war. Much light is thereby thrown on Himmler the military commander, and on the final climactic battles fought on the Eastern Front during 1945.