Himmler S Hostages

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.

Dachau to the Dolomites is the dramatic but little-known story of a group of prominent Nazi SS hostages transported from various concentration camps to a remote Alpine valley in the final days of the Third Reich. Five Irishmen were among the 160 prisoners whom Himmler and other SS leaders attempted to use as barter to save the regime or, as a final resort, themselves. As well as eminent international statesmen, aristocrats and clergy, the group contained opposition German generals and civilian relatives of those who had plotted against Hitler, including the family of Claus von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb in Hitler's Wolf's Lair. Among the hostages were a number of British officers, survivors of the famous 'Great Escape', and also Colonel John McGrath from Roscommon, a World War I veteran who had left his job as manager of Dublin's Theatre Royal to rejoin the British Army in 1939. They had been held with Russian, Italian and Polish special prisoners as 'Nacht und Nebel' - Night and Fog - prisoners, whose existence was a state secret. They lived in constant danger of execution, a fate some did not escape, including Stalin's son, who died following a fracas with Irish prisoners. It is an astonishing and epic tale encompassing heroic endurance, escape, betrayal, tragedy and love.

Arrested because her father was involved in the anti-Hitler bomb plot, the author was torn from her two little boys, and sent off to various concentration camps.

Himmler's Diary 1945: A Calendar of Events Leading to Suicide is an exceptional work with unpublished diary entries made by Himmler that shows in detail how The Third Reich fell to ruin in its final bloody year. Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was instigator of the largest programme of racial mass murder in history. 1 January 1945 saw Heinrich Himmler at his peak in Nazi Germany, controlling the entire German police force (including the Gestapo), all SS organisations and Nazi Minister of the Interior. His powers extended into the German Army and included Commander of the Replacement Army and two Army Groups. Two field commands revealed his limitations and failure as army commander. Between January and May 1945, Heinrich Himmler vacillated, showing a lack of vision, action and decision. At least he was able to gain control of V-2 rocket production and their launch against Britain. He ordered all concentration camp inmates be shot, before rescinding the order. When his SS generals asked for instructions, Himmler ordered them to show backbone as their commands had few bounds. The Swedes and Swiss negotiated with Himmler who allowed over 10,000 concentration camp prisoners taken to safety before Hitler intervened. Himmler conducted peace feelers via the Swedes before the German surrender in May 1945, while trying to make contact with British Field Marshal Montgomery. These contacts went unanswered. Himmler was captured by the British and then committed suicide on 23 May 1945.

This volume is part of a comprehensive effort by Professor Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder-what is herein called Democide. It is the third in a series of volumes in which Rummel offers a comprehensive analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention. Curiously, while we have a considerable body of literature on the Nazi Holocaust, we do not have a total accounting-at least not until now with the issuance of Democide. In addition to the quantitative lacunae, there remains a paucity of theoretical information distinguishing the historical descriptive and the anecdotal accounts. This study of Nazi killings in cold blood is a path-finding effort in political psychology. While Rummel does not claim to give a definitive accounting, his explanation for the numbers reached-and they are high-is compelling. In addition, we now have a correlation of information on the murder of diverse groups: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Ukranians, and even Germans themselves. It is now possible to fathom the Nazi genocidal poiicies-which were collective and which were selective. Rummel's volume is a clear guide to a murky past. It offers the first systematic effort to ascertain the nature and the extent of the Nazi genocide from the point of view of the perpetrator's aims rather than the victims' consequences. This is not a pretty picture, but it is not a partisan one either. The materials are presented in a clinical as well as a systemic fashion. Rummel has a deep sense of the life-saving instincts of individuals and the life-taking propensities of impersonal state machinery. It is thus, a humanistic effort, one that plumbs the effects of the Nazi war-machine on innocents in order to better understand present conditions. Professionals ranging from social scientists to demographers will find this a quintessential effort at political reconstruction.

This book marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Hostage Case in which a US military tribunal in Nuremberg acquitted General Lothar Rendulic of devastating Northern Norway on account of his honest factual error. The volume critically reappraises the law and facts underlying his trial, the no second-guessing rule in customary international humanitarian law (IHL) that is named after the general himself, and the assessment of modern battlefield decisions. Using recently discovered documents, this volume casts major doubts on Rendulic’s claim that he considered the region’s total devastation and the forcible evacuation of all of its inhabitants imperatively demanded by military necessity at the time. This book’s analysis of court records reveals how the tribunal failed to examine relevant facts or explain the Rendulic Rule’s legal origin. This anthology shows that, despite the Hostage Case’s ambiguity and occasional suggestions to the contrary, objective reasonableness forms part of the reasonable commander test under IHL and the mistake of fact defence under international criminal law (ICL) to which the rule has given rise. This collection also identifies modern warfare’s characteristics—human judgment, de-empathetic battlespace, and institutional bias—that may make it problematic to deem some errors both honest and reasonable. The Rendulic Rule embodies an otherwise firmly established admonition against judging contentious battlefield decisions with hindsight. Nevertheless, it was born of a factually ill-suited case and continues to raise significant legal as well as ethical challenges today. The most comprehensive study of the Rendulic Rule ever to appear in English, this multi-disciplinary anthology will appeal to researchers and practitioners of IHL and ICL, as well as military historians and military ethicists and offers ground-breaking new research. Nobuo Hayashi is affiliated to the Centre for International and Operational Law at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm, Sweden. Carola Lingaas is affiliated to the Faculty of Social Studies at VID Specialized University in Oslo, Norway.

Shortlisted for the 2018 RBC Taylor prize for literary nonfiction “A riveting tale of the previously unknown and fascinating story of the unsung angels who strove to foil the Final Solution.”—Kirkus starred review On November 25, 1944, prisoners at Auschwitz heard a deafening explosion. Emerging from their barracks, they witnessed the crematoria and gas chambers--part of the largest killing machine in human history--come crashing down. Most assumed they had fallen victim to inmate sabotage and thousands silently cheered. However, the Final Solution's most efficient murder apparatus had not been felled by Jews, but rather by the ruthless architect of mass genocide, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. It was an edict that has puzzled historians for more than six decades. Holocaust historian and New York Times bestselling author Max Wallace--a veteran interviewer for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation--draws on an explosive cache of recently declassified documents and an account from the only living eyewitness to unravel the mystery. He uncovers an astounding story involving the secret negotiations of an unlikely trio--a former fascist President of Switzerland, a courageous Orthodox Jewish woman, and Himmler's Finnish osteopath--to end the Holocaust, aided by clandestine Swedish and American intelligence efforts. He documents their efforts to deceive Himmler, who, as Germany's defeat loomed, sought to enter an alliance with the West against the Soviet Union. By exploiting that fantasy and persuading Himmler to betray Hitler's orders, the group helped to prevent the liquidation of tens of thousands of Jews during the last months of the Second World War, and thwarted Hitler's plan to take "every last Jew" down with the Reich. Deeply researched and dramatically recounted, In the Name of Humanity is a remarkable tale of bravery and audacious tactics that will help rewrite the history of the Holocaust.