"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...

In Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum investigates the meanings and motivations people have attached to Hitler and his crimes against humanity. What does Hitler tell us about the nature of evil? In often dramatic encounters, Rosenbaum confronts historians, scholars, filmmakers, and deniers as he skeptically analyzes the key strains of Hitler interpretation. A balanced and thoughtful overview of a subject both frightening and profound, this is an extraordinary...

In Nazi Germany, they were called the Schutzstaffel. The world would know them as the dreaded SS-the most loyal and ruthless enforcers of the Third Reich… It began as a small squad of political thugs. Yet by the end of 1935, the SS had taken control of all police and internal security duties in Germany-ranging from local village "gendarmes" all they way up to the secret political police and the Gestapo. And by 1944 the militarized Waffen SS had...

The story of the Nazis, their extravagant spectacles, and their extreme cruelty.

"The first-ever biography of SS Overseer Maria Mandl, the highest-ranked woman in the Nazi killing machine and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust. With new details and previously unpublished photographs, this gripping, unflinching examination charts her transformation from engaging country girl to "The Beast" of Auschwitz. By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in...

Fueled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma. Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines...

"The dramatic story of the Third Reich--how Adolf Hitler and a core group of Nazis rose to power and plunged the world into a horrific war, perpetrating the genocidal Holocaust while sacrificing the lives of millions of ordinary Germans. In The Third Reich, Thomas Childers shows how the young Hitler became passionately political and anti-Semitic as he lived on the margins of society. Fueled by outrage at the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty...