The Last Nazis

The crimes committed by the Nazis will appall mankind forever. Since 2001 no less than 76 legal decisions have been won against Nazi war criminals and collaborators, half of them in the USA. Yet the author reveals that there are many more alive and free today and their stories are no less shocking for the passage of time.

The history of the shadowy Werewolf guerrilla bands formed at end of the Second World War as the last desperate defence of Nazis. Founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1944 when it became clear Germany would be invaded, the Werewolf guerrilla movement was given the task of slowing down the Allied advance to allow time for the success of negotiations or wonder weapons. Staying behind in territory occupied by the Allies, its mission was to carry out acts of sabotage, arson and assassination, both of enemy troops and of defeatist Germans. Perry Biddiscombe has researched the movement exhaustively, and details Werewolf operations against the British, Russians and fellow Germans, on the Eastern and Western Fronts and in the post-war chaos of Berlin. Giving the lie to the established story of a cowed German population meekly submitting to defeat, this is a fascinating insight into what has been described as the death scream of the Nazi regime.

A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” (The New York Times Book Review). In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history (Salon).

'I suppose you know who I am? I was in charge of the actions in Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia. I am prepared to sell you one million Jews: Goods for blood ... Blood for goods.' These were the chilling words uttered by one of the most notorious Nazi bureaucrats, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, to a young Jewish businessman called Joel Brand in the spring of 1944. Brand embarked on a desperate mission to persuade the Allies to barter with Eichmann – and failed. At the same time, the SS deported hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau packed in cattle trains. The majority were gassed, then incinerated. For decades after 1945, many blamed the Allies for callously abandoning a million Hungarian Jews to their fate. In Deception, Christopher Hale presents a new account of the 'Brand Mission' based on evidence in the national archives of Germany, Hungary, Britain and the United States. Hale reveals that Eichmann's offer formed one part of a monstrous deception designed to outwit the leaders of the last surviving Jewish community in Europe. The deception was more complex and – from the German point of view – more successful than any operation mounted by the secret services of the Allied governments.

An eminent psychiatrist delves into the minds of Nazi leadershipin “a fresh look at the nature of wickedness, and at our attempts to explain it” (Sir Simon Wessely, Royal College of Psychiatrists). When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders, using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. The findings were so disconcerting that portions of the data were hidden away for decades and the research became a topic for vituperative disputes. Gilbert thought that the war criminals’ malice stemmed from depraved psychopathology. Kelley viewed them as morally flawed, ordinary men who were creatures of their environment. Who was right? Drawing on his decades of experience as a psychiatrist and the dramatic advances within psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience since Nuremberg, Joel E. Dimsdale looks anew at the findings and examines in detail four of the war criminals, Robert Ley, Hermann Göring, Julius Streicher, and Rudolf Hess. Using increasingly precise diagnostic tools, he discovers a remarkably broad spectrum of pathology. Anatomy of Malice takes us on a complex and troubling quest to make sense of the most extreme evil. “In this fascinating and compelling journey . . . a respected scientist who has long studied the Holocaust asks probing questions about the nature of malice. I could not put this book down.”—Thomas N. Wise, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine “This harrowing tale and detective story asks whether the Nazi War Criminals were fundamentally like other people, or fundamentally different.”—T.M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real

Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodge-podge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world. How did he discover that ideology? How was it that cohorts of leaders, followers, and ordinary citizens adopted aspects of National Socialism without experiencing the "leader" first-hand or reading his works? They shared a collective desire to create a harmonious, racially select, "community of the people" to build on Germany's socialist-oriented political culture and to seek national renewal. If we wish to understand the rise of the Nazi Party and the new dictatorship's remarkable staying power, we have to take the nationalist and socialist aspects of this ideology seriously. Hitler became a kind of representative figure for ideas, emotions, and aims that he shared with thousands, and eventually millions, of true believers who were of like mind . They projected onto him the properties of the "necessary leader," a commanding figure at the head of a uniformed corps that would rally the masses and storm the barricades. It remains remarkable that millions of people in a well-educated and cultured nation eventually came to accept or accommodate themselves to the tenants of an extremist ideology laced with hatred and laden with such obvious murderous implications.

"Describes the small group of men and women who sought out former Nazis all over the world after the Nuremberg trials, refusing to let their crimes be forgotten or allowing them to quietly live inconspicuous, normal lives."--NoveList.

“[A] historian’s carefully researched work, based on a vast array of sources, documenting Hitler’s and Himmler’s responsibility for the murder of European Jewry. The book details the planning and the improvisations, but emphasizes the former and Himmler’s fanatical hatred of the Jewish race as the determinative cause of the Holocaust. Dealing with a charged controversy, Breitman makes a powerful case that by March 1941 ‘the Final Solution was just a matter of time — and timing,’ i.e., that the Holocaust was not a reflex of Hitler’s fear that the war in Russia could not be won. Breitman argues that the Wannsee Conference merely ratified the plans and instructed other agencies to cooperate. Breitman records the instances of resistance or opposition, but notes that of course the cooperation of thousands (many still alive and never tried) and the complicity or silence of millions were needed to carry out the murder... the book concludes that Himmler’s ‘brutality was more learned than instinctive or emotional’ — a methodical murderer impelled by racist dogma.” — Foreign Affairs “Breitman’s book is decisively important... [It] should serve for years to come as required reading for all who wish to make sense of the Holocaust.” — Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, The New Republic “Looking nothing like the Nordic ideal he advocated, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi SS, was short, flabby and balding — his dull, pedantic exterior disguising the caustic, cowardly, Machiavellian, immensely cruel master of deceit within. Breitman... presents compelling evidence that the extermination of Jews was an early goal of Himmler, a Bavarian and lapsed Catholic, and his boss Adolf Hitler. Drawing on previously untapped German records, as well as other source materials... this engrossing, detailed study constitutes a powerful refutation of revisionist scholars who claim that Hitler did not plan the Final Solution in advance but instead improvised it out of either military or political frustration.” — Publishers Weekly “A truly path-breaking book, one of the few that will have a lasting impact on historical research of the period. It shows both the primacy of Hitler as the motivating force in the mass murder, and the way in which his initiatives were accepted and internalized by the SS, on the basis of ideology.” — Holocaust and Genocide Studies “Chilling, expert history.” — Kirkus “[A]n eminently sensible and judicious study that could well serve as a textbook on the topic.” — The Historian “Breitman’s research [is] meticulous. Especially valuable are his novel insights into the full and frequent communication between Himmler and Hitler, who, it is known, seldom signed an order. Mr. Breitman presents his arguments cogently.” — Michael H. Kater, The New York Times “An absorbing, important book [that] addresses the sequence of steps leading to the Final Solution.” — Financial Times “As Breitman persuasively demonstrates, the situation kept changing, but Hitler was always in charge, and his goals always included ridding his empire of the Jews.” — Los Angeles Times “Breitman is on the hunt for smoking guns. He finds the goods littered throughout Himmler’s speeches and conversations... Breitman shows that people knew.” — Washington Post Book World “The book is chillingly good on the uses and abuses of language to mask atrocity.” — Newsday “Breitman’s study is an important addition to [the] literature [on the origins of the Nazi genocide], one that provides the most likely scenario and settles important disputed questions... Breitman’s study is a major step forward in our understanding of how the Nazis initiated mass murder.” — German Studies Review “[An] important book... I much admire this work, particularly for its resourceful combing of primary material... there is much to learn from this book about the Final Solution, its origins, its implementation, and its hate-inspired architect” — The American Historical Review