Hitler And His Inner Circle

The Nazis kept extensive files on practically everybody in the Third Reich. Now author Paul Roland turns the tables with this brilliant new exposé - a fascinating psychological profile of the leading Nazis and their lesser-known associates. Examples include: • Adolf Hitler had 'terrible' table manners, gorged on cake in his bunker and Allied psychologists considered him a neurotic psychopath. • When Hermann Goering surrendered to the Americans, he had a gold-plated revolver and a stash of drugs in his luggage. • Franz Stangl loved his job so much (as commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka concentration camps) that he tried to make his places of work seem as normal as he could by planting flowers and shrubs everywhere and creating a fake railway station with fake painted clocks to welcome new arrivals. Accompanied by over 50 images, this concise yet revealing chronicle of Hitler's henchmen and their horrifying crimes is presented in a fresh and accessible way.

This revelatory history examines the loyal inner circle that followed—and enabled—Hitler’s rise to power and continued on after WWII. Hitler was not a lonely, aloof dictator. Throughout his rise in the NSDAP, he gathered a loyal circle around him, and was surrounded by people who celebrated, flattered and intrigued him. Who belonged to this inner circle around Hitler? What function did this court fulfill? And how did it influence the perception of history after 1945? Using previously unknown sources, Heike Görtemaker explores Hitler’s private environment and shows how this inner circle made him who he was. Hitler’s inner circle, the Berghof Society, was his private retreat. But the court was more than that. It provided him with the support he needed to take on the role of “Führer” at all, while at the same time allowing him to use its members as political front men. Most of all, it represented a conspiratorial community whose lowest common denominator was anti-Semitism. In this book, Heike Görtemaker asks new questions about the truth behind Hitler’s inner circle and, for the first time, also examines the “circle without leaders”; the networking of the inner circle after 1945.

In the early- and mid-1880s, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the forerunner of the modern IRA, waged a bombing campaign that terrorized the citizens of London for more than four years. Explosives were detonated in such places as the Tower of London, the House of Commons, Victoria station and at the London Bridge. The bombings were carried out in an attempt to secure Ireland's freedom from England. The Fenians, as they were called, hoped citizens would put pressure on the government to resolve the dispute. Implored by the government to end the reign of terror, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson take up residence in a doss house in Whitechapel, which would achieve even greater notoriety a few years later courtesy of Jack the Ripper, posing as dock workers in order to learn more about the shadowy group and ingratiate themselves with its members. When Holmes learns a new bomb-maker is on the way and the bombings will increase in frequency, he understands time is running out. Despite proving his bona fides by bombing 10 Downing Street, Holmes is still held at arm's length by the group's leader Michael. As plans for the extensive new bombing campaign are formulated, Holmes realizes that he must act quickly in order to stop the terror. However, as clever as Holmes is, Michael is his match. The Devil's Disciples pits Holmes against an adversary who is every bit as cunning as he - but far more ruthless.

This thrilling account of WWII espionage by the former French secret service chief chronicles an Allied spy’s actions in the German Cipher Office. A spy for the French Secret Service during World War II, Hans-Thilo Schmidt was embedded in the nerve center of the Third Reich. From deep within Hitler’s most sensitive operations, Schmidt created an intelligence network between France, Poland, and England. In The Spy in Hitler’s Inner Circle, France’s former secret service chief, Paul Paillole, offers a revealing chronicle of how Schmidt helped the Allies infiltrate German agencies and crack their encryption system, the Enigma machine. Paillole details how Schmidt delivered intelligence to France right from the source of the German Cipher Office. Revealed here are the most secret aspects of the so-called war of numbers that led to Alan Turing’s historic codebreaking achievement at Bletchley Park. From information about Germany’s rearmament and the reoccupation of the Rhineland to fundamental technical intelligence about the Enigma machine, Schmidt’s contributions were key to the Allied victory in the intelligence war.

Read presents a fresh perspective on the Third Reich: the deadly contests among Hitler's lieutenants, and their disastrous consequences."The Devil's Disciples" is the first major book for a general readership to examine those lieutenants, not only as individuals but also as a group.

The Nazi regime was essentially a religious cult, relying on the hypnotic personality of one man, Adolf Hitler, and it was fated to die with him. But while it lasted, his closest lieutenants competed ferociously for power and position as his chosen successor. This deadly contest accounted for many of the regime's worst excesses, in which millions of people died, and which brought Western civilisation to its knees. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES is the first major book for a general readership to examine those lieutenants, not only as individuals but also as a group. It will focus on the three Nazi paladins closest to Hitler - Goring, Goebbels and Himmler - with their nearest rivals Bormann, Speer and Ribbentrop in close attendance. Others who were removed in various ways - like Gregor Strasser, Ernst Rohm, Heydrich and Hess - will play supporting roles. While there will of course be a fair amount of analysis, THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES will be a powerful chronological narrative, showing how their personalities developed and how their jealousies and constant intrigues affected the regime, the war, and Hitler himself. In doing so, it will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the Nazi period.

A fresh perspective on the Third Reich: the deadly contests among Hitler's lieutenants, and their disastrous consequences. The Nazi regime was essentially a religious cult relying on the hypnotic personality of Adolf Hitler, and it was fated to die with him. But while it lasted, his closest lieutenants competed ferociously for power and position as his chosen successor. This peculiar leadership dynamic resulted in millions of deaths and some of the worst excesses of World War II. The Devil's Disciples is the first major book for a general readership to examine those lieutenants, not only as individuals but also as a group. It focuses on the three most important Nazi paladins—Göring, Goebbels, and Himmler—with their nearest rivals—Bormann, Speer, and Ribbentrop—in close attendance. Perceptive, illuminating, and grandly ambitious, The Devil's Disciples is above all a powerful chronological narrative, showing how the personalities of Hitler's inner circle developed and how their jealousies and constant intrigues affected the regime, the war, and Hitler himself.

A groundbreaking World War II narrative wrapped in a riveting detective story, The Devil’s Diary investigates the disappearance of a private diary penned by one of Adolf Hitler’s top aides—Alfred Rosenberg, his “chief philosopher”—and mines its long-hidden pages to deliver a fresh, eye-opening account of the Nazi rise to power and the genesis of the Holocaust An influential figure in Adolf Hitler’s early inner circle from the start, Alfred Rosenberg made his name spreading toxic ideas about the Jews throughout Germany. By the dawn of the Third Reich, he had published a bestselling masterwork that was a touchstone of Nazi thinking. His diary was discovered hidden in a Bavarian castle at war’s end—five hundred pages providing a harrowing glimpse into the mind of a man whose ideas set the stage for the Holocaust. Prosecutors examined it during the Nuremberg war crimes trial, but after Rosenberg was convicted, sentenced, and executed, it mysteriously vanished. New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Wittman, who as an FBI agent and then a private consultant specialized in recovering artifacts of historic significance, first learned of the diary in 2001, when the chief archivist for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum contacted him to say that someone was trying to sell it for upwards of a million dollars. The phone call sparked a decade-long hunt that took them on a twisting path involving a pair of octogenarian secretaries, an eccentric professor, and an opportunistic trash-picker. From the crusading Nuremberg prosecutor who smuggled the diary out of Germany to the man who finally turned it over, everyone had reasons for hiding the truth. Drawing on Rosenberg’s entries about his role in the seizure of priceless artwork and the brutal occupation of the Soviet Union, his conversations with Hitler and his endless rivalries with Göring, Goebbels, and Himmler, The Devil’s Diary offers vital historical insight of unprecedented scope and intimacy into the innermost workings of the Nazi regime—and into the psyche of the man whose radical vision mutated into the Final Solution.