Heinrich Himmler and the Final Solution - Head of Hilter's Elite Guard

Heinrich Himmler
Although Adolf Hitler held the ultimate responsibility for what became the Holocaust, it was Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, who essentially laid the plans and devised the schemes that led to the killings of six million Jews.

The Architect of Genocide:
Himmler and the Final Solution
by Richard Breitman
Paperback (1992)

An important and engrossing book that makes evident why Heinrich Himmler should be regarded as the master planner of the "Final Solution." Shows Himmler as a most gruesome crusader. Not a biography of the Reichsfuhrer, but a carefully researched and annotated analysis of his role in the final solution. Himmler's own office logs and appointment books, where extant, are convincingly used. The most thorough account to date of the so called Madagascar proposal which preoccupied the Nazis in the late 1930s as a way of exiling Jews. Himmler's often mutually suspicious dealings with underlings such as Heydrich and Eichmann are particularly well portrayed, although his relationship with Hitler is sometimes sketchy. The years 1944 and 1945 are treated rather briefly, presumably because Himmler's initiatives were mainly restricted to trying to arrange coverup of the atrocities. But Breitman has done a first rate job in showing us how Himmler's bureaucratic mind ticked. The book illustrates that you don't need to be a personal sadist to organize murder on a massive scale.

Himmler's Black Order;
A History of the SS, 1923-45
by Robin Lumsden
Hardcover (1997)

Heinrich Himmler:
Platoons and Flies
by W.D. Snodgrass
Hardcover (1985)

Heinrich Himmler and the Waffen-SS Commanders

Waffen-SS Commanders:
The Army, Corps and Divisional Leaders of a Legend: Augsberger to Kreutz
by Mark Yerger
Hardcover (1997)

Pictorial biographies of Waffen SS commanders. Like other works by Yerger, "Waffen SS Commanders" is primarily a picture history. It also has nice 2+ page biographies of the military careers of senior Waffen SS officers. There are occasional passing references to their lives after the war, but nothing beyond 1-liners. Some of the biographies are of well known figures such as Dietrich and Hausser whom you can read of elsewhere, but this is probably the only place you will find biographies of minor figures such as Jungkuntz and Hampel.

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