Odilo Globocnik

Odilo Globocnik, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million people in three Nazi camps in occupied Poland: Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Along with Rudolf Hoss, Globocnik may be named as one of the first industrial-style killers in history. Betraying his homeland by conspiring with Hitler to destroy Austria's independence, he then launched the Generalplan-Ost, which was to expel over 100 million Slavs into Western Siberia, and played a pivotal role in Aktion Reinhardt, directing the entire program from early 1942 until September 1943, and writing letters to Himmler detailing goods looted from his victims. Globocnik's Lublin Distrikt gulag was not merely a vehicle for a well-organized pogrom; it also involved creating a highly organized network of ghettos and forced labor camps. By the winter of 1943 nearly all of the Jews of the Lublin Distrikt had been exterminated, leaving only skilled laborers used in Globocnik's industrial conglomerates. His ethnic cleansing teams, assisted by Ukrainian policing units, also cleared the Polish peasant farmers from the Zamosc Lands. Very little has been published on Globocnik, most especially the four years he spent in Lublin. This authoritative biography details every aspect of his life from his ancestry to his suicide after being captured. Information has been researched from more than thirty international archives, Globocnik's SS file, extensive interviews with his lover Irmgard Rickheim and others, a wealth of letters both personal and formal, internal memos and official reports of the SS, diaries, and the reminiscences of survivors. Includes rare photographs, many from the collection of Irmgard Rickheim.

Outside of the Nazi hierarchy, Odilo Globocnik is the most culpable in the planned and almost successfully executed attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe. The crime of mass murder far outweighs the less significant, but nevertheless considerable, offenses of robbery and human trafficking, for obvious reasons. Globocnik was guilty of them all.

A key player in the annexation of Austria in 1938, Odilo Globocnik was made Gauleiter of Vienna for seven months until the Nazi party forced him to resign because of his abrasive manner, murky financial dealings, and blatant incompetence. Due to a close personal relationship with Heinrich Himmler, however, Globocnik was named to the seminal post of Lubin SS and Police Chief from 1939 to 1943, where he built and was in charge of some 150 camps, including the Majdanek camp and the killing centres of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

About the participation of German women in World War II and in the Holocaust.

Under the code name Operation Reinhard, more than one and a half million Jews were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the concentration camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Unlike more well-known camps, which were used both for slave labor and extermination, these camps existed purely to murder Jews. Few victims survived to tell their stories, and the camps were largely forgotten after they were dismantled in 1943. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps bears eloquent witness to this horrific tragedy. This newly revised and expanded edition includes new material on the history of the Jews under German occupation in Poland; the execution and timing of Operation Reinhard; information about the ghettos in Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, Radom, and Galicia; and updated numbers of the victims who were murdered during deportations. In addition to documenting the horror of the camps, Yitzhak Arad recounts the stories of those courageous enough to struggle against the Nazis and their "final solution." Arad's work retrieves the experiences of Operation Reinhard's victims and survivors from obscurity and exposes a terrible chapter in humanity's history.

Examines the Business Administration Main Office of the SS, which built up the slave-labor system in Nazi concentration camps.

The SS of the title is presented as the runic insignia of the Schutzstaffel.

Looks at the individuals who influenced every aspect of life in Nazi Germany, covering a representative cross-section of German society from 1933-1945.