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Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
A major contribution to the history of the Holocaust from the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb .
In Masters of Death , Richard Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the part played by the Einsatzgruppen--the professional killing squads deployed in Poland and the Soviet Union, early in World War II, by Himmler's SS. And he shows how these squads were utilized as the Nazis made two separate plans for dealing with the civilian populations they wanted to destroy.
The first plan, initiated in July 1941, condemned the Jews of eastern Europe to slaughter by the Einsatzgruppen, who went on to execute 1.5 million men, women and children between 1941 and 1943 by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar--massive crimes that have been underestimated or overlooked by Holocaust historians. Rhodes documents the organizing and carrying out of this program and introduces the professional men--economists, architects, lawyers--who were the program’s commanders and officers, as well as the "ordinary men" who did most of the actual killing.
The second plan, initiated in December 1941, was directed at the Jews of western Europe. By then, Rhodes shows, the face-to-face killing of hundreds of thousands had so brutalized the SS that even Himmler was shocked into ordering the development of a less "personal" means of murder--the notorious gas chambers and crematoria of the Holocaust’s second wave. Rhodes shows, further, that Hitler and Himmler intended the Jews to be only their first victims; their plan was to open up Russia to German colonization by destroying more than 30 million Slavs and members of other ethnic groups.
Drawing on Nuremberg Tribunal documents largely ignored until now, and on newly available material from eyewitnesses and survivors, Richard Rhodes has given us a book that is essential reading on the Holocaust and World War II.
In Masters of Death , Richard Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the part played by the Einsatzgruppen--the professional killing squads deployed in Poland and the Soviet Union, early in World War II, by Himmler's SS. And he shows how these squads were utilized as the Nazis made two separate plans for dealing with the civilian populations they wanted to destroy.
The first plan, initiated in July 1941, condemned the Jews of eastern Europe to slaughter by the Einsatzgruppen, who went on to execute 1.5 million men, women and children between 1941 and 1943 by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar--massive crimes that have been underestimated or overlooked by Holocaust historians. Rhodes documents the organizing and carrying out of this program and introduces the professional men--economists, architects, lawyers--who were the program’s commanders and officers, as well as the "ordinary men" who did most of the actual killing.
The second plan, initiated in December 1941, was directed at the Jews of western Europe. By then, Rhodes shows, the face-to-face killing of hundreds of thousands had so brutalized the SS that even Himmler was shocked into ordering the development of a less "personal" means of murder--the notorious gas chambers and crematoria of the Holocaust’s second wave. Rhodes shows, further, that Hitler and Himmler intended the Jews to be only their first victims; their plan was to open up Russia to German colonization by destroying more than 30 million Slavs and members of other ethnic groups.
Drawing on Nuremberg Tribunal documents largely ignored until now, and on newly available material from eyewitnesses and survivors, Richard Rhodes has given us a book that is essential reading on the Holocaust and World War II.
335 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
190 people are currently reading
4289 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rhodes
114 books617 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
July 8, 2018
They are ripping children out of the arms of their mothers down at the Mexican border, putting them in cages with little warm clothing. Where is the outrage? I know it is there because it has to be, but is it enough? Isn’t this illegal? What happened to humanity? To America?
Hitler tested the people of Germany by first shooting Jews on the streets, letting them fall dead into trenches. Where was the outrage? There was none. Some cheered. He continued. Later he took them away, put them in camps and let them starve, with little food or clothing. And as they weaken, and maybe even before, he gassed them.
Who are these people who do such things, and who are the men who follow? They are the ones who want a fight, who have been physicall abused by one of their parents; they are the men who have been trained to kill. These are the men that Hitler wanted in his military and in his government. It picked the violent ones, and the ones he could train. They are the loyal ones, but even they were afraid of him, as they should be, for he could turn on anyone one them at any given moment, because unlike they, he had no loyalties.
Is this the country we want?
Am I wrong to compare? Some yes, but then there are Jews, those who have studied history, who say that I am not. They are the ones who can see into the future, so to speak.
Update: I spoke too soon about the lack of interest in helping the children at the border, and while Trump had his mind changed as to taking children away from their
parents, they have not been returned to them. He now keeps devising other ways to deal with the border, with the Hispanics.
In the beginning, in Germany, the Jews were killed on the streets. They made Russian prisoners of war dig long trenches, and then they grabbed the children out of their parent’s arms and lined them up with the women and men. I know, I am repeating myself here, just as history repeats itself.
Hitler’s SS men sometimes had nervous breakdowns due to having killed and watched and the killings of the women and children. Listening to the wailing, seeing death, and knowing that some had been buried alive, and some had crawled out of their grave but had died a few feet away. A few escaped in the night and lived to tell. So many people had been buried in the trenches that poisonous gases formed and the drinking water was being polluted. There had to be a better way, even a way to prevent the mental breakdowns of the SS men.
How could people kill others so easily? First, it took demonizing the Jews, calling them “animals’ just as Trump has called the Hispanics “animals,” “rapists” and “criminals.” It is that easy. Make them the enemy. Next, train your men well, and try to get men who have been abused as children, just as I have said, for they are the easiest to train, to make violent. Then the other men would just have to follow orders or else. Those who just did as told were often the ones who had nervous breakdowns. So they devised a way to gas the Jewish people, a way that would distance Hitler’s men from the killings. The Jews would go quietly into a truck where gas was then released; the same with the death camps. I thought of the drones that we are producing now, the buttons that men have to push, the not seeing. And Hitler then had the bodies burned instead of polluting the land.
“’People must be motivated to kill others, or else they would not do so.’ In fact, motivation is not sufficient by itself to produce serious violence; people must also have undergone prior violent experiences: they must have learned to be violent and must have come to identify themselves as violent. Otherwise their intense hatreds will emerge as ugly but nonviolent behaviors.”
Himmler, the head of the SS had said, “For him (Hitler) I could do anything. Believe me, if Hitler were to say I should shoot my mother, I would do it and be proud of his confidence.”
Yet, to be in Hitler’s presence, and to hear unfavorable comments by Hitler towards him, caused even Himmler to become so upset as to produce violent reactions, which took the form of severe stomach pains. To watch people be murdered upset him as well, and I think he suffered a breakdown as well. He chose not to watch, to just give orders. After all, like Hitler, he wanted to make Germany great.
“About ninety children packed together into two small rooms in filthy state. Their whimpering could be heard in the vicinity of the house. Some of the children, mainly infants, were completely exhausted and almost lifeless.”
Nobody came for them.
Hitler tested the people of Germany by first shooting Jews on the streets, letting them fall dead into trenches. Where was the outrage? There was none. Some cheered. He continued. Later he took them away, put them in camps and let them starve, with little food or clothing. And as they weaken, and maybe even before, he gassed them.
Who are these people who do such things, and who are the men who follow? They are the ones who want a fight, who have been physicall abused by one of their parents; they are the men who have been trained to kill. These are the men that Hitler wanted in his military and in his government. It picked the violent ones, and the ones he could train. They are the loyal ones, but even they were afraid of him, as they should be, for he could turn on anyone one them at any given moment, because unlike they, he had no loyalties.
Is this the country we want?
Am I wrong to compare? Some yes, but then there are Jews, those who have studied history, who say that I am not. They are the ones who can see into the future, so to speak.
Update: I spoke too soon about the lack of interest in helping the children at the border, and while Trump had his mind changed as to taking children away from their
parents, they have not been returned to them. He now keeps devising other ways to deal with the border, with the Hispanics.
In the beginning, in Germany, the Jews were killed on the streets. They made Russian prisoners of war dig long trenches, and then they grabbed the children out of their parent’s arms and lined them up with the women and men. I know, I am repeating myself here, just as history repeats itself.
Hitler’s SS men sometimes had nervous breakdowns due to having killed and watched and the killings of the women and children. Listening to the wailing, seeing death, and knowing that some had been buried alive, and some had crawled out of their grave but had died a few feet away. A few escaped in the night and lived to tell. So many people had been buried in the trenches that poisonous gases formed and the drinking water was being polluted. There had to be a better way, even a way to prevent the mental breakdowns of the SS men.
How could people kill others so easily? First, it took demonizing the Jews, calling them “animals’ just as Trump has called the Hispanics “animals,” “rapists” and “criminals.” It is that easy. Make them the enemy. Next, train your men well, and try to get men who have been abused as children, just as I have said, for they are the easiest to train, to make violent. Then the other men would just have to follow orders or else. Those who just did as told were often the ones who had nervous breakdowns. So they devised a way to gas the Jewish people, a way that would distance Hitler’s men from the killings. The Jews would go quietly into a truck where gas was then released; the same with the death camps. I thought of the drones that we are producing now, the buttons that men have to push, the not seeing. And Hitler then had the bodies burned instead of polluting the land.
“’People must be motivated to kill others, or else they would not do so.’ In fact, motivation is not sufficient by itself to produce serious violence; people must also have undergone prior violent experiences: they must have learned to be violent and must have come to identify themselves as violent. Otherwise their intense hatreds will emerge as ugly but nonviolent behaviors.”
Himmler, the head of the SS had said, “For him (Hitler) I could do anything. Believe me, if Hitler were to say I should shoot my mother, I would do it and be proud of his confidence.”
Yet, to be in Hitler’s presence, and to hear unfavorable comments by Hitler towards him, caused even Himmler to become so upset as to produce violent reactions, which took the form of severe stomach pains. To watch people be murdered upset him as well, and I think he suffered a breakdown as well. He chose not to watch, to just give orders. After all, like Hitler, he wanted to make Germany great.
“About ninety children packed together into two small rooms in filthy state. Their whimpering could be heard in the vicinity of the house. Some of the children, mainly infants, were completely exhausted and almost lifeless.”
Nobody came for them.
October 3, 2015
Completely overwhelming account of nazi atrocities by nazi Germany throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
May 2, 2021
This was a very good book on the atrocities committed by the SS-Einsatzgruppen. These were 'Task Force' groups that operated joint and independently of the Wermarcht Army. They deployed into Eastern Europe as a uniformed paramilitary force conducting cleansing operations. Most people are educated on the German Regular Army, the SS-Waffen, and the SS-run concentraion camps (Konzentrationslager) during the Holocaust. Yet most are not educated on the death-squad tactics of the SS-Einsatzgruppen.
The author details the formation, the structural organization of the units, and murderous killings committed in their geographic areas of responsibility:
Group A - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia
Group B - Belarus
Group C - northern and central Ukraine
Group D - southern Ukraine, Crimea, Caucasus
Group E - Croatia
This was well-written and powerful. I never knew of these units until now and they definitely had a deep impact in the atrocities of the Holocaust. I would recommend it. Thanks!
The author details the formation, the structural organization of the units, and murderous killings committed in their geographic areas of responsibility:
Group A - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia
Group B - Belarus
Group C - northern and central Ukraine
Group D - southern Ukraine, Crimea, Caucasus
Group E - Croatia
This was well-written and powerful. I never knew of these units until now and they definitely had a deep impact in the atrocities of the Holocaust. I would recommend it. Thanks!
February 2, 2018
This had a few useful details for me, but mostly provided the kind of horrific examples of German criminal brutality that I have decided not to repeat in my current novel, since it has been covered often by people far more knowledgeable than me, including some who experienced it directly and survived. I will write about my characters reaction to those horrors, and their attempts to get Churchill and FDR to do something to save the Jews, which of course they never did.
September 26, 2020
In the spring of 1941, a police academy in Pretzch, a town on the Elbe river about fifty miles southwest of Berlin, became the site of a sinister assembly. Several thousand men from the ranks of the SS – the Nazi party's defense echelon, a police and security service that answered directly to Hitler and wasn't confined to the German law – were ordered to report to Pretzch for training and assignment. They weren't told what the assignment would be, but their commonalities gave a clue: many of them had served in SS detachments in Poland when Germany occupied it in 1939, and preference was given to those who spoke Russian.
Soon the men learned that they would be assigned to an Einsatzgruppe – a task force. Einsatz units had followed the German army into Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. They secured occupied territories in advance of civilian administrators, confiscated weapons, gathered incriminating documents, and arrested people the SS considered politically unreliable. They also brutally and systematically murdered the occupied country's political, educational, religious and intellectual leadership.
Since Germany had signed a non-agression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, the candidates in Pretzch believed they would be assigned to follow the Wermacht into England; some of them had previously trained to just that end.
When the Nazi forces attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, five Einsatzgruppen that Heydrich, a tall, horse-faced, sneering former naval officer whom even his own subordinates called "the blonde beast", had organized followed behind, each group subdivided into four Einsaztkommandos of 100 to 150 men. These advance cadres were reinforced with Order Police battallions, Totenkopf concentration-camp guard regiments and Waffen-SS, producing a combined SS force approaching twenty thousand men. Bruno Streckenbach, the commander of one of the Polish Einsatzgruppen, would become the head of the SS personnel responsible for recruiting the new Einsatzgruppen forming in Pretzch in 1941.
Three weeks after invading Poland, the Wehrmacht washed its hands of further responsibility for the 714 mass executions, leaving the field to the specialists of the SS. Heydrich met with Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner to agree on an SS "cleanup once and for all" of "Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobolity". Heydrich then wrote the Einsatzgruppen commanders specifically concerning the "Jewish question in the occupied territory", distinguishing between the "ultimate aim" ("which would take some time") and "interim measures". The interim measures were the "clearing" of Western Poland from Jews and the concentrating of the Jews in ghettos in the remainder of the country. Although Heydrich's letter did not specify what the "ultimate aim" was, Rhodes reveals that it embodied the "basic conception" of the "order concerning the physical extermination of Jews" of the occupied territories. Basically, Heyndrich was assigning – at this early point in time – to Einsatzgruppen the transitional task of bringing the Jewish population of Poland under SS control.
In October, the SS brutality descended to unadorned slaughter when Himmler extended executions to the mentally and physically disabled. This so-called euthanasia program was just beginning in Germany, to be directed initially against children, but the first SS killings preceded any euthanasia murders: the SS's victims were German, removed from hospitals in the Prussian province of Pomerania and transported by train across the border to the occupied Poland. While the euthanasia program in Germany had to proceed by stealth, occupied terriory was no-man's-land, beyond law and public scrutiny. Just as it would be easier to murder Jews in the subjugated lands east of Germany, so it was easier to kill the disabled there, including German citizens.
A large SS regiment had resided in the Free City of Danzig before the war, commanded by SS Sturmbannführer Kurt Eimann. Late in October 1939, the Pomeranian disabled were shipped into Poland. The Eimann Batallion met the train at the station. In the nearby forest, Polish political prisoners labored to dig killing pits to serve as mass graves. Trucks delivered the disabled to the forest. The first victim was a woman about fifthy years old; Eimann personally dispatched her with a Genickschluss, a shot in the neck from behind at the point where the spinal cord enters the skull...
Richard Rhodes’ book is almost unrelievedly grim, shocking, and brimming with hideous details. Yet, the author gives full weight to the largely ignored by concetration-camp studies role the Einsatzgruppen played in the murder of approximately 1.5 million innocent civilians – mainly Soviet Jews – early in WWII. To prove his case, Rhodes – a Pulitzer Prize winning author – draws upon postwar memoirs, Nuremberg Trial interrogations, and the Nazi's fanaticism for statistic detail to create a very graphic account of the appaling genocidal murder on the Eastern front beginning with Operation Barbarossa in July 1941. By January 1942, when the Wansee Conference implicitly authorized the death camps, more than a million Jews already crowded the killing pits, some of them later torched to destroy evidence of the massacres.
Rhodes masterfully organizes the book in such a fashion as to show the escalation of violence and mass murder that the troops quickly embraced in the early months of the war and that ultimately culminated in Auschwitz and the rest of KL. What distinguishes his book is exactly that focus on the initial phase of mass murder, on the brutal tasks carried out by the four SS Einsatzgruppen on the orders of SS leaders Himmler and Heyndrich before the death camps became the main killing apparatus.
A painful, tough but very important and well-researched history. Five stars.
Soon the men learned that they would be assigned to an Einsatzgruppe – a task force. Einsatz units had followed the German army into Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. They secured occupied territories in advance of civilian administrators, confiscated weapons, gathered incriminating documents, and arrested people the SS considered politically unreliable. They also brutally and systematically murdered the occupied country's political, educational, religious and intellectual leadership.
Since Germany had signed a non-agression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, the candidates in Pretzch believed they would be assigned to follow the Wermacht into England; some of them had previously trained to just that end.
When the Nazi forces attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, five Einsatzgruppen that Heydrich, a tall, horse-faced, sneering former naval officer whom even his own subordinates called "the blonde beast", had organized followed behind, each group subdivided into four Einsaztkommandos of 100 to 150 men. These advance cadres were reinforced with Order Police battallions, Totenkopf concentration-camp guard regiments and Waffen-SS, producing a combined SS force approaching twenty thousand men. Bruno Streckenbach, the commander of one of the Polish Einsatzgruppen, would become the head of the SS personnel responsible for recruiting the new Einsatzgruppen forming in Pretzch in 1941.
Three weeks after invading Poland, the Wehrmacht washed its hands of further responsibility for the 714 mass executions, leaving the field to the specialists of the SS. Heydrich met with Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner to agree on an SS "cleanup once and for all" of "Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobolity". Heydrich then wrote the Einsatzgruppen commanders specifically concerning the "Jewish question in the occupied territory", distinguishing between the "ultimate aim" ("which would take some time") and "interim measures". The interim measures were the "clearing" of Western Poland from Jews and the concentrating of the Jews in ghettos in the remainder of the country. Although Heydrich's letter did not specify what the "ultimate aim" was, Rhodes reveals that it embodied the "basic conception" of the "order concerning the physical extermination of Jews" of the occupied territories. Basically, Heyndrich was assigning – at this early point in time – to Einsatzgruppen the transitional task of bringing the Jewish population of Poland under SS control.
In October, the SS brutality descended to unadorned slaughter when Himmler extended executions to the mentally and physically disabled. This so-called euthanasia program was just beginning in Germany, to be directed initially against children, but the first SS killings preceded any euthanasia murders: the SS's victims were German, removed from hospitals in the Prussian province of Pomerania and transported by train across the border to the occupied Poland. While the euthanasia program in Germany had to proceed by stealth, occupied terriory was no-man's-land, beyond law and public scrutiny. Just as it would be easier to murder Jews in the subjugated lands east of Germany, so it was easier to kill the disabled there, including German citizens.
A large SS regiment had resided in the Free City of Danzig before the war, commanded by SS Sturmbannführer Kurt Eimann. Late in October 1939, the Pomeranian disabled were shipped into Poland. The Eimann Batallion met the train at the station. In the nearby forest, Polish political prisoners labored to dig killing pits to serve as mass graves. Trucks delivered the disabled to the forest. The first victim was a woman about fifthy years old; Eimann personally dispatched her with a Genickschluss, a shot in the neck from behind at the point where the spinal cord enters the skull...
Richard Rhodes’ book is almost unrelievedly grim, shocking, and brimming with hideous details. Yet, the author gives full weight to the largely ignored by concetration-camp studies role the Einsatzgruppen played in the murder of approximately 1.5 million innocent civilians – mainly Soviet Jews – early in WWII. To prove his case, Rhodes – a Pulitzer Prize winning author – draws upon postwar memoirs, Nuremberg Trial interrogations, and the Nazi's fanaticism for statistic detail to create a very graphic account of the appaling genocidal murder on the Eastern front beginning with Operation Barbarossa in July 1941. By January 1942, when the Wansee Conference implicitly authorized the death camps, more than a million Jews already crowded the killing pits, some of them later torched to destroy evidence of the massacres.
Rhodes masterfully organizes the book in such a fashion as to show the escalation of violence and mass murder that the troops quickly embraced in the early months of the war and that ultimately culminated in Auschwitz and the rest of KL. What distinguishes his book is exactly that focus on the initial phase of mass murder, on the brutal tasks carried out by the four SS Einsatzgruppen on the orders of SS leaders Himmler and Heyndrich before the death camps became the main killing apparatus.
A painful, tough but very important and well-researched history. Five stars.
March 20, 2015
I've had this book for a while now,I really didn't know what to expect.More facts that we already know, some one else's take on the facts.I was very surprised by this book,the content of this story is truly disturbing,We all know about the executions the starvation,beatings etc.
What it contains is a true and detailed history of the final solution from the planning to it's implementation and near success.Of course 6 million dead is not trivial.The shear scope of Himmler and Hitlers plans boggles the mind.And how people followed this plan puzzles me.If your studying this period in time or this event check this book out !!
What it contains is a true and detailed history of the final solution from the planning to it's implementation and near success.Of course 6 million dead is not trivial.The shear scope of Himmler and Hitlers plans boggles the mind.And how people followed this plan puzzles me.If your studying this period in time or this event check this book out !!
February 20, 2009
This book is definitely not for the faint of heart! Little has been written about the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis' mobile killing squads, in large part because their story is so gruesome. One passage that stood out particularly in my mind was a story about how a bunch of Jews, including women and children, were pushed into a pit and then slaked lime was poured over them. Slaked lime is a powerful corrosive and these people essentially dissolved while fully alive. Their sufferings were so awful that not even the Einsatzgruppen tried that again.
This is a very well-researched and -written book, thorough but fairly short, and the author has some interesting theories about how "ordinary men" were driven to kill unarmed civilians over and over. I would recommend, but with the caveat that it's not for the squeamish.
This is a very well-researched and -written book, thorough but fairly short, and the author has some interesting theories about how "ordinary men" were driven to kill unarmed civilians over and over. I would recommend, but with the caveat that it's not for the squeamish.
January 13, 2019
This is a necessary book, but not a very "uplifting" read. We walk through the eastern front as the SS-Einsatzgruppen murder innocent people. The descriptions and accounts are horrible. They come from first and second hand accounts of the massacres. People that witnessed and escaped the atrocities.
What is missing is the death camps and how they actually came to be. The immediacy of them is described, but there is no talk of the construction or running of them. There aren't accounts of conditions of the camps such as Dachau or Auschwitz where many many people were slaughtered. What this book covers is the early stages of the murders and how the Holocaust came into being. Murder pits and slaughter. Again, not uplifting, but quite necessary.
What is missing is the death camps and how they actually came to be. The immediacy of them is described, but there is no talk of the construction or running of them. There aren't accounts of conditions of the camps such as Dachau or Auschwitz where many many people were slaughtered. What this book covers is the early stages of the murders and how the Holocaust came into being. Murder pits and slaughter. Again, not uplifting, but quite necessary.
September 28, 2008
WARNING! This book is very graphic and disturbing. It is truly a horror story of a different sort.
After reading this book, I once told someone, "If a movie were made about this book, without being edited for content, it would be very difficult to watch. It is that graphic and horrifying." MASTERS OF DEATH begins innocently enough, drops you right in the middle of the Holocaust, and shows you the true face of evil.
After reading this book, I once told someone, "If a movie were made about this book, without being edited for content, it would be very difficult to watch. It is that graphic and horrifying." MASTERS OF DEATH begins innocently enough, drops you right in the middle of the Holocaust, and shows you the true face of evil.
August 6, 2023
An incredibly sobering read by the Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Rhodes. Honestly it would have been better if there had been more personal stories but nonetheless the Einsatzgruppen are a part of history that everyone should know so that it can't be repeated. We should never forget or underestimate human beings capability to perpetrate horrors.
The author starts off the book with the stages of violence that could have led the Germans and the Nazi leaders to have done such evil deeds. This was the most insightful part of the book.
Some chapters stand out. The chapter on the Einsatzgruppen led massacre of 33,471 Jews at Babi Yar in Kiev on September 29-30, 1941 was particularly gruesome and heartbreaking.
Finally there was also discussion of how non-violent and civilized societies are at the highest risk to be victimized by regimes like the Nazis.
Solid 4 stars. The details are gruesome.
The author starts off the book with the stages of violence that could have led the Germans and the Nazi leaders to have done such evil deeds. This was the most insightful part of the book.
Some chapters stand out. The chapter on the Einsatzgruppen led massacre of 33,471 Jews at Babi Yar in Kiev on September 29-30, 1941 was particularly gruesome and heartbreaking.
Finally there was also discussion of how non-violent and civilized societies are at the highest risk to be victimized by regimes like the Nazis.
Solid 4 stars. The details are gruesome.
October 12, 2017
Anyone who considers themselves a Holocaust historian--or anyone who enjoys reading of the Holocaust for knowledge and remembrance's sake--needs to pick up this book at some point in their life. This book is both easy to read yet nearly unbearable to get through. Rhodes makes a clear argument of how the Einsatzgruppen were able to kill as many people as they did--using Lonnie Athens' theory of violent-socialization--through mass shootings and other executions. He draws from a historical record comprising of Nazi documentation from pre-, during, and post-World War II, perpetrator confessions, and survivor testimonies that have largely been unexplored in Holocaust historiography. It is these quoted accounts that make the book so hard to read due to their stark imagery of violence, cruelty, and brutality--words that are, honestly, not strange or new terms attributed to the Holocaust. It is exactly for these reasons that this book should be read thoroughly by any reader who can handle it--and I urge you to at least try even if you think you cannot.
The book especially explores Reinhard Heydrich (the head of the Reich Security Main Office and the second most powerful man in the SS)'s psyche as well as that of Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, particularly noting the fact that, for two men who ordered the deaths of millions of people, they never killed any of these people themselves. As a result, the psychological damage endured by Einsatzgruppen leaders and soldiers are also explored here, such damage taking place only a verification of how wrong killing these people were--and how aware they were of that fact, as well.
So, yes, give it a read, and be prepared to think on the text long after you've turned the final, grueling page.
The book especially explores Reinhard Heydrich (the head of the Reich Security Main Office and the second most powerful man in the SS)'s psyche as well as that of Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, particularly noting the fact that, for two men who ordered the deaths of millions of people, they never killed any of these people themselves. As a result, the psychological damage endured by Einsatzgruppen leaders and soldiers are also explored here, such damage taking place only a verification of how wrong killing these people were--and how aware they were of that fact, as well.
So, yes, give it a read, and be prepared to think on the text long after you've turned the final, grueling page.
November 25, 2017
I have no idea what to say about this book other than it’s well written, and it further opened my eyes to the dreadful, ghastly, unspeakable horror of the holocaust.
These words seem banal. And that only increases my esteem for the peerless (and apparently fearless) Richard Rhodes.
He devoted his career to wading into subjects such as this, and he (largely) succeeded in shedding light on this and other mind boggling historical events including the nuclear arms race.
One bit of (reverent) criticism. The psychology that much of this book is founded on e.g. the (somewhat obsolete) theories of criminologist Lonnie Athens, which Rhodes explored further in his book Why They Kill.
Athens’s work was state of the art when Rhodes wrote Masters Of Death, but it feels dated by today’s standards, and this detracts form the enduring value of the book.
That being said. The scholarship and rendition of the historical material still reads well and remains highly impactful. Particularly if you read the dated psychology with ‘loose hands’ i.e. with an understanding that the field has advanced, and that the model promoted isn’t fact, but is simply one way of conceptualizing violent behavior.
Stupendous!!!!!
These words seem banal. And that only increases my esteem for the peerless (and apparently fearless) Richard Rhodes.
He devoted his career to wading into subjects such as this, and he (largely) succeeded in shedding light on this and other mind boggling historical events including the nuclear arms race.
One bit of (reverent) criticism. The psychology that much of this book is founded on e.g. the (somewhat obsolete) theories of criminologist Lonnie Athens, which Rhodes explored further in his book Why They Kill.
Athens’s work was state of the art when Rhodes wrote Masters Of Death, but it feels dated by today’s standards, and this detracts form the enduring value of the book.
That being said. The scholarship and rendition of the historical material still reads well and remains highly impactful. Particularly if you read the dated psychology with ‘loose hands’ i.e. with an understanding that the field has advanced, and that the model promoted isn’t fact, but is simply one way of conceptualizing violent behavior.
Stupendous!!!!!
October 13, 2025
This is (obviously) a difficult read, but is valuable to read. It terrifies me to see the similarities in the rationalization for removal of human rights in the world today.
Triggers: everything
Triggers: everything
August 1, 2011
The most brutal book I have ever read in my life but the largest treasure trove of SS-Einsatzgruppen information I've yet to run across. If you're into history, particularly that of the Holocaust, I suggest this book - but please be warned that the violence is graphic, gruesome, and absolutely heartbreaking at best. It certainly gives a better understanding of how it all got going but it definitely leaves you feeling haunted by memories that are not your own.
April 26, 2025
An overview of everything the SS did throughout the Third Reich's existence, why the SS formed, how they were conditioned for violence, a biography of Himmler, why the SS was ordered to do what they did, and more.
It was written in an easy to read way. Gruesome things happen, but the descriptions aren't any more than needed.
I learned a lot, most horrible, but I'm glad I know now.
It was written in an easy to read way. Gruesome things happen, but the descriptions aren't any more than needed.
I learned a lot, most horrible, but I'm glad I know now.
August 27, 2018
I've seen Einsatzgruppen ('Task force,''task forces,' if you look at the Danish equivalent (as Danish is based on what is now German) you have 'action group' as well) mentioned many places - and I certainly had read snippets of their activities in many other books. This is the first longer history I've both seen and/or read of their setting up, their structure - though it became a free for all - their activities and their range.
But then, understanding. Why DO we feel the need to understand? We cannot, not if we're what you and I would consider 'normal.' These people were not normal in any way, not just one way. They were not all set off by one thing, so we can now say "look, that's what did it!" Just as then there isn't one thing we can do - and relax... We can make sure it doesn't happen again, by constantly working to remove as many of the prejudices against people we don't even pretend to be able to understand, as possible. As the author suggests, the conditioning the German people, the boys especially, the youth, had in the later 19th and early 20th Centuries, enabled what happened later, by conditioning them to violence both towards themselves and as a solution for many of the problems they might face with/from others. As I have tried to think before, the Nazis created a system where if someone was this way inclined, then he/she could be like this - and there were no limits, because they didn't want there to be any limits. To the hate. Once killing vast numbers of people you didn't like and blamed for all your perceived troubles, became talked about openly - by peoiple you respected, or thought you SHOULD respect because they were in positions of authority and you were conditioned to accept that you respected people in positions of authority absolutely, because whiule you may not understand, they most surely did - then it became normal, your new normal. Then, it just became a problem to be solved, and in came the problem solvers - like Eichman.
Don't get caught up thinking it was Hitler who got the ball rolling. The whole of Europe, well the 'important,' those who can do something about it, part anyway, thought Eugenics was the way to go. It was commonly accepted, unless of course, you were one of the commoners at the wrong end of the eugenic stick. People like Hitler, were conditioned to believe that sort of nonsense and (amongst other things) link it with hundreds, maybe even two thousand years of hatred for what the You Know Whos, did to You Know Who (except they probably didn't, but that's a discussion for elsewhere). My thought is that Hitler had the power to do what in another life he should have just been muttering about in beerhalls.
After Hitler said this kind of thing out loud, the men who would do anything or stop at nothing, to please him and lived for catching crumbs of praise from his high table, did all and more of what they could. The main architect, I get from Masters of Death, was Heinrich Luitpold Himmler. And he was (partly) using power as compensation for his own failings, disappointments, inadequacies. And because he could.
But really, as we don't live in those times now, and there are surely only a handful of people left alive who did, we can never fully enter their minds again and 'understand' what and why. I doubt really if even the perpetrators could tell you the why. I say why do we feel we need to know? As I've said before in other reviews and above, our times seem to be all about the smoking gun. The desire to say "ahhh! it was that that caused it! Phew, that's that sorted, what's next?" The reasons are so many and varied and refuse to be tied into neat little packages. It is surely enough to keep repeating what happened to each new generation and be there to stand up and be counted if it looks like it's going that way again. Which it will, if it already isn't.
It is, as the blurb up top says, not easy to track down books on this period. Apart from this book, there aren't many I can find that are resonably priced and so aren't (I'm thinking) niche, textbooks. Certainly nothing much that the interested, but not that interested reader could commonly be expected to get hold of.
What Richard Rhodes manages to do, is not to numb with statistics. There are a lot of names, places and horrendous numbers of people killed documented here. Especially as there are a lot of Polish and Russian names, it is difficult for an English-born speaker to not rush over the difficult, bad Scrabble-hand town names. But, and I have no explaination for how, Rhodes manages to give them all individual emphasis. Each documented incident strikes home. Eash perpetrator or groups of perpetrators is identifiable and clear in my mind as I read. And there were some real bastards on the German side. I've always had an inkling that the Ukrainians and Latvians in particular, enjoyed doing this sort of thing, but they are really nothing compared to some of the mentally disturbed, civilised Nazi good old boys. They make ISIS look like Catholic schoolgirls.
The Einsatzgruppen were the percusers of the Holocaust. As the blurb suggests and the book develops, they were sent in to 'clear up' after the Wehrmacht, then seemed to turn into being a kind of testing ground for ideas of how to 'dispose' of so many people as they found there that they didn't like. How to kill them in the most efficient way? Because back in Berlin, they were worried what killing so many not fighting back people, was doing to previously 'normal' soldiers! Which meant that killing them individually - took too long, used too many bullets, not actually certain enough - or in groups - took too long, not certain enough, time consuming, difficult to keep the next group of people unaware of what they were in for, while killing the group before - wasn't going to be efficient enough to work. And then there was Russia, once that had been conquered. Killing by carbon monoxide in specially constructed vehicles was tried, people came from other areas - the killing of mentally ill and hospital patients - to add their expertise and gradually form a way of killing that might work in larger, specially set up work- and dedicated death-camps was developed. The commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, was in on the later stages and developed on the ideas used in Eastern Europe, for when he was in charge of the camp.
Maybe the book will prove to be too much for a lot of people. But just the fact that it is uncomfortable reading, shouldn't put you off reading it. Now you've heard of the book and what it covers, you owe it to the people who were killed and those who lived through horrors we can not even imagine, to read it.
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But then, understanding. Why DO we feel the need to understand? We cannot, not if we're what you and I would consider 'normal.' These people were not normal in any way, not just one way. They were not all set off by one thing, so we can now say "look, that's what did it!" Just as then there isn't one thing we can do - and relax... We can make sure it doesn't happen again, by constantly working to remove as many of the prejudices against people we don't even pretend to be able to understand, as possible. As the author suggests, the conditioning the German people, the boys especially, the youth, had in the later 19th and early 20th Centuries, enabled what happened later, by conditioning them to violence both towards themselves and as a solution for many of the problems they might face with/from others. As I have tried to think before, the Nazis created a system where if someone was this way inclined, then he/she could be like this - and there were no limits, because they didn't want there to be any limits. To the hate. Once killing vast numbers of people you didn't like and blamed for all your perceived troubles, became talked about openly - by peoiple you respected, or thought you SHOULD respect because they were in positions of authority and you were conditioned to accept that you respected people in positions of authority absolutely, because whiule you may not understand, they most surely did - then it became normal, your new normal. Then, it just became a problem to be solved, and in came the problem solvers - like Eichman.
Don't get caught up thinking it was Hitler who got the ball rolling. The whole of Europe, well the 'important,' those who can do something about it, part anyway, thought Eugenics was the way to go. It was commonly accepted, unless of course, you were one of the commoners at the wrong end of the eugenic stick. People like Hitler, were conditioned to believe that sort of nonsense and (amongst other things) link it with hundreds, maybe even two thousand years of hatred for what the You Know Whos, did to You Know Who (except they probably didn't, but that's a discussion for elsewhere). My thought is that Hitler had the power to do what in another life he should have just been muttering about in beerhalls.
After Hitler said this kind of thing out loud, the men who would do anything or stop at nothing, to please him and lived for catching crumbs of praise from his high table, did all and more of what they could. The main architect, I get from Masters of Death, was Heinrich Luitpold Himmler. And he was (partly) using power as compensation for his own failings, disappointments, inadequacies. And because he could.
But really, as we don't live in those times now, and there are surely only a handful of people left alive who did, we can never fully enter their minds again and 'understand' what and why. I doubt really if even the perpetrators could tell you the why. I say why do we feel we need to know? As I've said before in other reviews and above, our times seem to be all about the smoking gun. The desire to say "ahhh! it was that that caused it! Phew, that's that sorted, what's next?" The reasons are so many and varied and refuse to be tied into neat little packages. It is surely enough to keep repeating what happened to each new generation and be there to stand up and be counted if it looks like it's going that way again. Which it will, if it already isn't.
It is, as the blurb up top says, not easy to track down books on this period. Apart from this book, there aren't many I can find that are resonably priced and so aren't (I'm thinking) niche, textbooks. Certainly nothing much that the interested, but not that interested reader could commonly be expected to get hold of.
What Richard Rhodes manages to do, is not to numb with statistics. There are a lot of names, places and horrendous numbers of people killed documented here. Especially as there are a lot of Polish and Russian names, it is difficult for an English-born speaker to not rush over the difficult, bad Scrabble-hand town names. But, and I have no explaination for how, Rhodes manages to give them all individual emphasis. Each documented incident strikes home. Eash perpetrator or groups of perpetrators is identifiable and clear in my mind as I read. And there were some real bastards on the German side. I've always had an inkling that the Ukrainians and Latvians in particular, enjoyed doing this sort of thing, but they are really nothing compared to some of the mentally disturbed, civilised Nazi good old boys. They make ISIS look like Catholic schoolgirls.
The Einsatzgruppen were the percusers of the Holocaust. As the blurb suggests and the book develops, they were sent in to 'clear up' after the Wehrmacht, then seemed to turn into being a kind of testing ground for ideas of how to 'dispose' of so many people as they found there that they didn't like. How to kill them in the most efficient way? Because back in Berlin, they were worried what killing so many not fighting back people, was doing to previously 'normal' soldiers! Which meant that killing them individually - took too long, used too many bullets, not actually certain enough - or in groups - took too long, not certain enough, time consuming, difficult to keep the next group of people unaware of what they were in for, while killing the group before - wasn't going to be efficient enough to work. And then there was Russia, once that had been conquered. Killing by carbon monoxide in specially constructed vehicles was tried, people came from other areas - the killing of mentally ill and hospital patients - to add their expertise and gradually form a way of killing that might work in larger, specially set up work- and dedicated death-camps was developed. The commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, was in on the later stages and developed on the ideas used in Eastern Europe, for when he was in charge of the camp.
Maybe the book will prove to be too much for a lot of people. But just the fact that it is uncomfortable reading, shouldn't put you off reading it. Now you've heard of the book and what it covers, you owe it to the people who were killed and those who lived through horrors we can not even imagine, to read it.
Blog: Speesh Reads
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January 25, 2014
An omnivorous intellect who has written incisively and authoritatively on a wide variety of subjects, Richard Rhodes here deploys his skills to not just describe, but also to explain the phenomenon of the Einsatzgruppen within the Holocaust.
In so doing he makes practical application of the research and "violent socialization" theories of Professor Lonnie Athens, which he had previously explored in his book Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist. Like many (perhaps even most) psychological theories, it does not rise to the level of testable, empirical science; however, it does seem to fit with the available evidence, as well as providing a reasonable explanation thereof.
Obviously a chilling, gut-churning read that does not reassure one's faith in humanity, to say the very least.
In so doing he makes practical application of the research and "violent socialization" theories of Professor Lonnie Athens, which he had previously explored in his book Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist. Like many (perhaps even most) psychological theories, it does not rise to the level of testable, empirical science; however, it does seem to fit with the available evidence, as well as providing a reasonable explanation thereof.
Obviously a chilling, gut-churning read that does not reassure one's faith in humanity, to say the very least.
January 7, 2017
Jedna z najbardziej wstrząsających pozycji, które przeczytałem w ostatnich kilkunastu latach. Niby znałem trochę historię Einsatzgruppen, ale dopiero tutaj widać, jak precyzyjnie przebiegało wykonanie rozkazu Hitlera o wyniszczeniu Żydów. Rhodes jak zawsze wykonał doskonałą pracę, znajdując setki źródeł, jak też odwiedzając wiele miejsc kaźni.
Naprawdę warto tę książkę przeczytać, ale uprzedzam - to jest bardzo trudna lektura. Opis tego, co zrobiono w Lesie Krążel z Żydami z Konina przekracza wszelkie granice wyobraźni.
Naprawdę warto tę książkę przeczytać, ale uprzedzam - to jest bardzo trudna lektura. Opis tego, co zrobiono w Lesie Krążel z Żydami z Konina przekracza wszelkie granice wyobraźni.
September 3, 2011
Rhodes delivers a book like few others, the sheer horrific nature of the subject is delivered in such a way that pulls at your soul. A difficult book to read at times but a must for all if only to remind us why it can never happen again. Rhodes gives a masterful mix of fact and firsthand accounts from both sides and delves into the question how can humanity visit the horror of the holocaust on itself.
July 31, 2024
More depressing nonfiction. There is a lot of detail and some psychoanalysis. It’s definitely good but I wouldn’t recommend it if you get queasy. It’s a Holocaust book so I guess if you pick it up you kinda know what you’re in for. This is one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read in my life. 4.1 stars
July 26, 2022
This book makes you appreciate your average and relatively dull life more. It is simply mind-boggling to realize this chain of events happened barely 85 years ago.
September 14, 2014
This is quite possibly one of the hardest books I've ever had to read in terms of content, as it concerns mass murder on an industrial scale in stomach churning detail. The story is of the setting up of the Ensatzgruppen in Nazi Germany before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Their task was to destroy the Jewish communities in those areas conquered by the Nazis, by lining them up, shooting them, & burying the bodies in pits, over and over and over again.
Whilst this is a harrowing read with very little light in the darkness (the testimony of survivors & those people who helped them escape the fate of too many - who never had a voice but are present throughout), it is informative in many ways. For example, many of those who took part, despite being committed Nazis in what their ideology would class as an essential task, suffered mental breakdowns resulting in them being sent home & even Himmler collapsed when watching a mass execution. However, this led to the development of more "sophisticated" ways of killing large numbers of human beings without distressing the killers (and no one seems to have ever questioned whether or not the policy was morally wrong in the first place). At least with a horror novel, when you put it down you know it never happened, whilst this did.
I can only recommend if you have a strong constitution.
Whilst this is a harrowing read with very little light in the darkness (the testimony of survivors & those people who helped them escape the fate of too many - who never had a voice but are present throughout), it is informative in many ways. For example, many of those who took part, despite being committed Nazis in what their ideology would class as an essential task, suffered mental breakdowns resulting in them being sent home & even Himmler collapsed when watching a mass execution. However, this led to the development of more "sophisticated" ways of killing large numbers of human beings without distressing the killers (and no one seems to have ever questioned whether or not the policy was morally wrong in the first place). At least with a horror novel, when you put it down you know it never happened, whilst this did.
I can only recommend if you have a strong constitution.
January 6, 2013
One of the most difficult books I've read. Reviews had told me that it was gruesome -- too gruesome for some to finish. One reader couldn't get past page 30. But I bought it, read it (about thirty minutes at a time; no more), and finished it for one simple reason: I wanted to know. I wanted to know the name of every Jew that died by bullets, by beating, by gas, by burning alive, by suffocating beneath the bodies in the mass graves. It kills me that I will never know them all. That I will never know their stories. It kills me until I remember that they were given life by the One who also wrote them as victims into His story, and that by Him even the hairs of their heads are numbered. He knows their names. He knows them all.
August 27, 2008
Thoroughly depressing as one would expect. It is mostly about the psychotic nature of the Einsatzgruppen. The most morbidly interesting parts were about how members of the Einsatzgruppen lost their minds because of all the killing they were doing. This ofcourse necessitated the more industrial methods of the Final Solution. Sickening.
December 13, 2014
Richard Rhodes has written many great books. The subject matter in this one is so intense and mind-bogglingly horrific that to review it like a good GoodReads member trivializes it's subject matter. Is it worth one's time? Unless you are already an expert on the subject, learning more about this topic is one of the essential (albeit painful) experiences of any member of humanity.
January 1, 2019
Solid book focusing on the einsatzgruppen and their role in the Holocaust, detailing "actionen" taken outside of labor or death camp settings. Tough to read at time because of the subject matter, detailing how most Jews were killed by bullets (instead of by gas) and buried in mass graves throughout eastern Europe.
One glaring error: the author states that the United States declared war on Germany at the same time as its declaration of war on Japan, saying that Germany's declaration of war followed. This is incorrect; Germany declared war on the United States first.
One glaring error: the author states that the United States declared war on Germany at the same time as its declaration of war on Japan, saying that Germany's declaration of war followed. This is incorrect; Germany declared war on the United States first.
November 28, 2019
The is a blunt but important examination of the start of The Holocaust. On the heels of invasion, mass murders were perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen or special task forces. The Einsatzgruppen were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia, including members of the priesthood, and cultural elite of Poland, and played an integral role in the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
These roaming paramilitary groups were organized by Himmler and Heydrich before "the gruesome death camps industrialized the Final Solution." Rhodes has done his research. He has combed through postwar memoirs and interrogations. Not to mention the fact, the Nazis implicated themselves by being such anal record keepers.
Were these Einsatzgruppen men fanatical monsters? Not in this account. Many of the lower ranks were so impacted by their actions that Himmler set up mental hospitals and rest camps for these men. More than one million were killed by gun and buried by these men. The leaders were highly educated. Nine of seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate degrees. They would have known what exactly what they were doing. Precious few were punished after the war as both American and German courts were shockingly lenient.
This is an important contribution to history but is a very difficult read for obvious reasons.
These roaming paramilitary groups were organized by Himmler and Heydrich before "the gruesome death camps industrialized the Final Solution." Rhodes has done his research. He has combed through postwar memoirs and interrogations. Not to mention the fact, the Nazis implicated themselves by being such anal record keepers.
Were these Einsatzgruppen men fanatical monsters? Not in this account. Many of the lower ranks were so impacted by their actions that Himmler set up mental hospitals and rest camps for these men. More than one million were killed by gun and buried by these men. The leaders were highly educated. Nine of seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate degrees. They would have known what exactly what they were doing. Precious few were punished after the war as both American and German courts were shockingly lenient.
This is an important contribution to history but is a very difficult read for obvious reasons.
May 16, 2020
No detail is spared in describing the terrible acts these men laid upon the world. You will feel sick as you read this. Its very well done, but I will probably never read it again.
December 11, 2024
Gutting.
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