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The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS
The SS was the terror of Europe. Swearing eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler, it infiltrated every aspect of German life and was responsible for the deaths of millions. This gripping history recounts the strange and, at times, absurd true story of Hitler's SS. It exposes an organization that was not directed by some devilishly efficient system but was the product of accident, inevitability, and the random convergence of criminals, social climbers, and romantics. Above all, this eye-opening book describes in fascinating detail the chaotic political conditions that allowed the SS-despite rivalries and bizarre conditions-to assume and exercise unaccountable power.
704 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
June 23, 2017
A huge tome, pretty much unreadable.
July 15, 2019
Fascinatingly detailed account of Nazi Germany, focusing (as the title suggestions) on Heinrich Himmler and the SS. In many ways the anti-William Shirer: Hohne shows the Third Reich as not a monolithic war machine but a disorganized regime with different factions at each other's throats. On top of his detailed yet extremely readable narrative, Hohne provides unique interpretations of key events. On the Night of the Long Knives, Hohne depicts the SS manipulating Hitler into offing Ernst Rohm and the SA. Where many historians delineate a straight line from Mein Kampf to Auschwitz, Hohne shows the equivocal, hesitant manner the Holocaust turned into full-blown genocide. And Himmler dabbled in anti-Hitler conspiracies throughout the Second World War until the Stauffenberg plot, ironically, elevated him to Germany's second most powerful figure. I'd have to reread, say, Shirer or Evans or Burleigh to test the validity of Hohne's theses, but it's certainly one of the best books on the subject I've encountered.
February 12, 2017
This monumental book on the SS is one I believe many will not want to miss. For the uninitiated like me who thinks that the SS is but a single organisation of uniform people, this book will almost confuse you with the divisions and sub-divisions within the collective SS outfit. Riding along the history of the SS is the inescapable history of the Third Reich, this book therefore does more than one job.
The Introduction to the book was written like a literature review in a thesis with a good survey of the then available literature. The research questions were given at the start:
1. What is this organisation and how do they go about the tasks that defined their existence? ("But the outer world was never allowed to know anything of what went on inside the SS...) (pg 2).
2. What turned the SS into this machinery that turned the ethnic cleansing doctrine into reality? ("...it did not explain the source of power which enabled the SS to turn the racial fantasies of the National-Socialist regime into dreadful fact.) (pg 4).
The author then spent the rest of the book trying to answer these two questions, which he did admirably. It is obvious that the author researched the materials very well and was meticulous about the smallest details. Unfortunately, I became quickly lost in the many names that appeared in the book, some making but a fleeting appearance. At first I tried to follow the names and developments as closely as possible, but found it tough-going and sometimes lost sight of the larger story. I then resorted to only paying attention to names associated with major events or incidents.
A book on the Third Reich will always evoke questions about how it came to be. How did a bunch of people who started off on the fringe, identified more with a group of hooligans than stately politicians came to gain total control over Germany and almost dominated Europe? The author did not explicitly answer these questions but gave clues for the readers to make their own conclusions. It was not that nobody was able to see the sinister side of the Hitler, but the law, which might have stopped him, failed to be exercised. The generals had their chances but would never take the fateful step when the time came (pg. 250) and eventually would have to relent to the Einsatzgruppen’s lawlessness, and then be themselves implicated after the war (pg. 298).
There are a few chapters that are particularly worth reading. Examples of these are the one on Heydrich (Chapter 8) and especially the one on the Final Solution (Chapter 14). The latter gives a raw depiction at the heart of the Nazi regime, one that is defined by violence. Many readers would have known about the camps and the number of people who died. But this chapter presents the torture in graphic details and most important of all, it tried to capture the warped and 'schizophrenic' nature of the SS. They are shown as 'ordinary' people who could go back to their families after killing hundreds in the camp - it's all in a day's work. What to me is the scariest is not that they didn't know what they did was morally wrong, not even that they tried to justify it based on their need to obey commands from the top, but their romance about the sacrifice they were making by doing something evil for the greater good, so that others would not have to do it. And I always believe that the interest in understanding the Nazis is precisely because we know that we might be like them.
More interestingly is how people deal with the issue of the SS after the war. The author hinted that the Germans were very quick to recognise the existence of the SS, not to glorify them, but rather to paint them in as bad a light as possible, thereby shifting their collective guilt to the SS, absolving themselves of blame (pg. 7).
What of the surviving members of the SS then? The reader is invited to find out for himself/herself in this book, one that is not easy to read, but is nevertheless an important source of almost all aspects of the SS.
The Introduction to the book was written like a literature review in a thesis with a good survey of the then available literature. The research questions were given at the start:
1. What is this organisation and how do they go about the tasks that defined their existence? ("But the outer world was never allowed to know anything of what went on inside the SS...) (pg 2).
2. What turned the SS into this machinery that turned the ethnic cleansing doctrine into reality? ("...it did not explain the source of power which enabled the SS to turn the racial fantasies of the National-Socialist regime into dreadful fact.) (pg 4).
The author then spent the rest of the book trying to answer these two questions, which he did admirably. It is obvious that the author researched the materials very well and was meticulous about the smallest details. Unfortunately, I became quickly lost in the many names that appeared in the book, some making but a fleeting appearance. At first I tried to follow the names and developments as closely as possible, but found it tough-going and sometimes lost sight of the larger story. I then resorted to only paying attention to names associated with major events or incidents.
A book on the Third Reich will always evoke questions about how it came to be. How did a bunch of people who started off on the fringe, identified more with a group of hooligans than stately politicians came to gain total control over Germany and almost dominated Europe? The author did not explicitly answer these questions but gave clues for the readers to make their own conclusions. It was not that nobody was able to see the sinister side of the Hitler, but the law, which might have stopped him, failed to be exercised. The generals had their chances but would never take the fateful step when the time came (pg. 250) and eventually would have to relent to the Einsatzgruppen’s lawlessness, and then be themselves implicated after the war (pg. 298).
There are a few chapters that are particularly worth reading. Examples of these are the one on Heydrich (Chapter 8) and especially the one on the Final Solution (Chapter 14). The latter gives a raw depiction at the heart of the Nazi regime, one that is defined by violence. Many readers would have known about the camps and the number of people who died. But this chapter presents the torture in graphic details and most important of all, it tried to capture the warped and 'schizophrenic' nature of the SS. They are shown as 'ordinary' people who could go back to their families after killing hundreds in the camp - it's all in a day's work. What to me is the scariest is not that they didn't know what they did was morally wrong, not even that they tried to justify it based on their need to obey commands from the top, but their romance about the sacrifice they were making by doing something evil for the greater good, so that others would not have to do it. And I always believe that the interest in understanding the Nazis is precisely because we know that we might be like them.
More interestingly is how people deal with the issue of the SS after the war. The author hinted that the Germans were very quick to recognise the existence of the SS, not to glorify them, but rather to paint them in as bad a light as possible, thereby shifting their collective guilt to the SS, absolving themselves of blame (pg. 7).
What of the surviving members of the SS then? The reader is invited to find out for himself/herself in this book, one that is not easy to read, but is nevertheless an important source of almost all aspects of the SS.
June 23, 2017
I read "The Order of the Death's Head" during my student days in the early 1980s. It really opened up my eyes to the various units and entities that made up the SS . In particular, the Allgemeine SS (the part of the SS that was responsible for the running of the concentration camps, among other things) and the Waffen SS (the militarized arm of the SS that had its own infantry and tank units and saw action on virtually all of the fighting fronts between 1939 and 1945, with the exception of North Africa).
June 23, 2017
This hefty book remains one of the more popular items in mainstream bookstores' “German History” sections, suggesting that it continues to inform history buffs about its subject almost fifty years after its publication. I’m not sure how many amateur historians actually trouble to read all 750+ pages of text, but many (like myself not so long ago) probably refer to it for the table of SS ranks converted to standard military (US and British) ranks and may occasionally use the glossary to look up some of the more obscure departments or offices of the Third Reich.
I’m not sure that its value as a historical work is as great as its popularity would suggest. It was written by a journalist, who certainly made good use of archival sources, but seems to have approached his subject without any challenging questions to motivate his research – what he produced is a fairly ordinary institutional history of (admittedly) a rather extraordinary institution. There isn’t much in this book that you won’t find in other sources, but it does have the advantage of putting a great deal of information in one place.
It’s quite a while since I read it, but what I recall being the most interesting was the section on the SD, or Sicherheitsdienst, the internal security force for the Party, whose power grew even within the SS throughout much of its history. Like many internal security forces, the SD was feared and distrusted even within the police and party apparatus, but also interestingly they appear to have constituted an elite within the elite SS, and correspondingly their journal, “Das Schwarze Korps” was where some of the more original and controversial theory of the SS-state was published and debated. Höhne only devotes a few pages to its analysis, but they are among the most promising in the book, and definitely provoke me to want to find a more thorough discussion of “Das Schwarze Korps” and the SD in general.
The book is also to be praised as one of the first in German (its original language) to devote serious study to the “Final Solution” in the context of the history of the Third Reich. While today we take analysis of the Holocaust for granted in historical work on Germany at the time, this was not the case in 1966, and Höhne’s chapter on the Final Solution includes much of what appears standard today. This is not to say that every detail is perfect, of course, but it was a beginning to willingness of German historians and history buffs to look at the darkest side of their history.
In looking over this book in preparation for the review, I found a few places where the translation seemed a bit awkward and much information that seemed superfluous to the story of the SS, no doubt because it targets a non-specialist audience which is unfamiliar with the details. It remains useful as an introduction to the SS and to the state it served, but should be supplemented by more current and more challenging research.
I’m not sure that its value as a historical work is as great as its popularity would suggest. It was written by a journalist, who certainly made good use of archival sources, but seems to have approached his subject without any challenging questions to motivate his research – what he produced is a fairly ordinary institutional history of (admittedly) a rather extraordinary institution. There isn’t much in this book that you won’t find in other sources, but it does have the advantage of putting a great deal of information in one place.
It’s quite a while since I read it, but what I recall being the most interesting was the section on the SD, or Sicherheitsdienst, the internal security force for the Party, whose power grew even within the SS throughout much of its history. Like many internal security forces, the SD was feared and distrusted even within the police and party apparatus, but also interestingly they appear to have constituted an elite within the elite SS, and correspondingly their journal, “Das Schwarze Korps” was where some of the more original and controversial theory of the SS-state was published and debated. Höhne only devotes a few pages to its analysis, but they are among the most promising in the book, and definitely provoke me to want to find a more thorough discussion of “Das Schwarze Korps” and the SD in general.
The book is also to be praised as one of the first in German (its original language) to devote serious study to the “Final Solution” in the context of the history of the Third Reich. While today we take analysis of the Holocaust for granted in historical work on Germany at the time, this was not the case in 1966, and Höhne’s chapter on the Final Solution includes much of what appears standard today. This is not to say that every detail is perfect, of course, but it was a beginning to willingness of German historians and history buffs to look at the darkest side of their history.
In looking over this book in preparation for the review, I found a few places where the translation seemed a bit awkward and much information that seemed superfluous to the story of the SS, no doubt because it targets a non-specialist audience which is unfamiliar with the details. It remains useful as an introduction to the SS and to the state it served, but should be supplemented by more current and more challenging research.
December 19, 2024
My family found it amusing that I was lying on the beach with a 600-page book about the Schutzstafel (SS), the elite order of the Nazi party. This book was written by a Der Spiegel journalist two decades after the war, drawing on thousands of documents and interviews with former SS members, and is still the standard work.
There are two schools of thought regarding the SS: some see the "Order of the Death's Head" as the control center of the entire Third Reich; this book, in contrast, portrays the "Black Corps" as one of many competing factions under Hitler, wracked by external and internal rivalries.
The SS was certainly the most bourgeois of any Nazi Party formation, made up of "uprooted people of the middle and upper bourgeoisie" — quite a contrast to the Sturmabteilung (SA), led by lumpenized aristocrats and filled with drunken hooligans. As German fascism developed, the SS took over much of Germany's repressive apparatus, including the Gestapo and the concentration camps, and set up its own army, the Waffen-SS. Yet it was constantly vying for dominance with the NSDAP, the army, and other Nazi institutions.
The ideology of the SS was only consistent in its extreme racism. While using industrial methods for war and genocide, they advocated a society of individual farmers living off the land. And while seeing themselves as a master race, they recruited millions of people from "inferior races" to fight in the Waffen-SS — turning it into a multinational fighting force that even had a Ukrainian division. Remarkably, the SS was sympathetic to Zionism, hoping to convince Jews to leave Germany and Europe. When deportation of millions of people to Palestine proved unfeasible during wartime, it was the SS that administered the genocide
Höhne describes the crimes of the SS as the result of the "power mania of the petty bourgeoisie unleashed," and I think that is an apt analysis. The horrors committed by the SS are what happens when fanatically racist "Kleinbürger" gain absolute power.
There are two schools of thought regarding the SS: some see the "Order of the Death's Head" as the control center of the entire Third Reich; this book, in contrast, portrays the "Black Corps" as one of many competing factions under Hitler, wracked by external and internal rivalries.
The SS was certainly the most bourgeois of any Nazi Party formation, made up of "uprooted people of the middle and upper bourgeoisie" — quite a contrast to the Sturmabteilung (SA), led by lumpenized aristocrats and filled with drunken hooligans. As German fascism developed, the SS took over much of Germany's repressive apparatus, including the Gestapo and the concentration camps, and set up its own army, the Waffen-SS. Yet it was constantly vying for dominance with the NSDAP, the army, and other Nazi institutions.
The ideology of the SS was only consistent in its extreme racism. While using industrial methods for war and genocide, they advocated a society of individual farmers living off the land. And while seeing themselves as a master race, they recruited millions of people from "inferior races" to fight in the Waffen-SS — turning it into a multinational fighting force that even had a Ukrainian division. Remarkably, the SS was sympathetic to Zionism, hoping to convince Jews to leave Germany and Europe. When deportation of millions of people to Palestine proved unfeasible during wartime, it was the SS that administered the genocide
Höhne describes the crimes of the SS as the result of the "power mania of the petty bourgeoisie unleashed," and I think that is an apt analysis. The horrors committed by the SS are what happens when fanatically racist "Kleinbürger" gain absolute power.
August 18, 2011
Good heavens, I don't know where to begin here. I ordered this book to supplement by curiousity about German history. I did not expect this to be as vast and as expansive as it turned out to be. Forget what you think you know about the SS, all of its history begins and ends here.
This is a book that did not cause me to be enraged by what the SS were, so much as to calmly analyze its structure, its beginnings, its rationale for what it did, and how it proceeded to do this. Personally, I believe this is important to critically analyze terror squads like this and the NKVD of the Yezhovian era, not to become outraged at them emotionally, but to calmly reject their rationale and teachings through logic and reason. Society must not only eject their irrational ideologies, but must have reason for doing so.
This book is over 700 pages, definitely an extensive read panned down to grueling detail. I was absolutely floored by some of the things I read, I suggest anyone who has interest in the Third Reich read this. You will be surprised to find that the Nazi SS were not the only culprits in the devious crimes they committed, but the blame could be cast in numerous directions, including a guilty party not many would expect.
This book is quite possibly one of the most detailed reads I've ever experienced, well written and enjoyable. Technical enough to reel in anyone truly interested, but simple enough to be enjoyable. Its on the same level of detail that Ian Kershaw's "The Nazi Dictatorship" was, but somehow manages to be much more enjoyable to actually read, which is quite an accomplishment unto itself.
This is a book that did not cause me to be enraged by what the SS were, so much as to calmly analyze its structure, its beginnings, its rationale for what it did, and how it proceeded to do this. Personally, I believe this is important to critically analyze terror squads like this and the NKVD of the Yezhovian era, not to become outraged at them emotionally, but to calmly reject their rationale and teachings through logic and reason. Society must not only eject their irrational ideologies, but must have reason for doing so.
This book is over 700 pages, definitely an extensive read panned down to grueling detail. I was absolutely floored by some of the things I read, I suggest anyone who has interest in the Third Reich read this. You will be surprised to find that the Nazi SS were not the only culprits in the devious crimes they committed, but the blame could be cast in numerous directions, including a guilty party not many would expect.
This book is quite possibly one of the most detailed reads I've ever experienced, well written and enjoyable. Technical enough to reel in anyone truly interested, but simple enough to be enjoyable. Its on the same level of detail that Ian Kershaw's "The Nazi Dictatorship" was, but somehow manages to be much more enjoyable to actually read, which is quite an accomplishment unto itself.
March 1, 2012
This is a honkingly huge history of the SS packed with detail. Indeed, as it contains so much detail and follows for the most part a chronological approach, it pretty much serves as a history of the whole Third Reich through the prism of the SS.
March 26, 2008
Holy shit, this is a ridiculously interesting and excruciatingly detailed history of the SS. Seriously, absorbing, but on a meticulously completist level I've rarely seen before or since. Excellent, but very serious reading at 600 pages, not for the faint of heart or easily distracted.
December 5, 2009
After all the movies over all the years, you would think that the SS and it's various arms were a monolith. This book sets about displaying the inner workings of this organization, showing the various divisions to be private fiefdoms of their respective heads, all vying for ultimate control.
September 17, 2024
Nesta obra monumental, Heinz Höhne nos imerge profunda e detalhadamente no universo da SS, a mítica e temida organização paramilitar nazista e, com sua prosa envolvente e sua pesquisa meticulosa, o autor nos apresenta não apenas uma visão geral das atrocidades cometidas pela "Ordem Negra", mas, principalmente, faz uma análise complexa e completa das dinâmicas internas da organização. Um trabalho que contribuiu - e ainda contribui - para desmistificar a imagem monolítica que se costuma fazer da SS, frequentemente retratada como uma máquina de guerra implacável e perfeitamente coesa: pelo contrário, essa visão simplista é desbaratada, com o autor desvelando uma organização marcada por constantes e ininterruptas disputas de poder, rivalidades pessoais e ambições individuais entre seus líderes; uma guerra de egos que, longe de mera curiosidade histórica, moldou decisivamente as ações da SS e contribuiu para a intensificação da violência durante o Terceiro Reich. Riquíssima em detalhes, a obra de Höhne oferece uma perspectiva muito interessante e inusual sobre a ideologia nazista, as motivações dos membros da SS e as relações entre estes e sua organização e entre esta e o próprio Partido Nazista, sem deixar de lado as interferências e as sabotagens mútuas entre os paramilitares e os militares de carreira da Wehrmacht. Ao explorar as trajetórias de figuras-chave como Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Otto Ohlendorf e outros, é-nos permitido e facilitado compreender as complexidades do pensamento nazista, da sociedade da época e as nuances do poder dentro da SS. É importante ressaltar que, apesar de sua idade (o que limita um pouco a visão de Höhne ao contexto histórico e às fontes disponíveis na época, trazendo algumas desatualizações e incorreções), o livro segue como uma obra de referência para quem deseja estudar a história do nazismo, oferecendo um arcabouço sólido e coeso para a compreensão da SS e de seu papel no Holocausto.
July 27, 2020
First published in English in 1969, 'The Order of the Death's Head' tells the story of Hitler's SS from it's early pre-war formation until the end of WW2. The detail is both extensive and compelling, if you like detail. For example, chapter covers 'The Rohm Putsch', and does so in 39 pages of impressive detail - I have come across histories that have devoted barely a paragraph to this crucial event. The tone adopted throughout is appropriately dispassionate, and the author is not afraid to recognise 'apologists' for what they are. Some people will find the level of detail daunting, but for those who relish detail this helps pad out the overly-simplified descriptions of the organisation of the SS that appear in many books on European WW2 history. Excellent.
November 18, 2019
This book took me a while to read but it was well worth the time and the information provided was both insightful and interesting. While there were some inaccuracies (perhaps because it is an older book, first published in 1967) there was nothing so blatantly wrong that made me want to downgrade it. While the book does provide a good overview of the SS, it gives specific details to elaborate the author's points and truly shows the reader how the SS operated and why they believed in the things that they did.
The book was perfect for research purposes as it gave backgrounds on all key members of the SS, dates, and events that I found to be most useful.
The book was perfect for research purposes as it gave backgrounds on all key members of the SS, dates, and events that I found to be most useful.
May 21, 2022
A colossal and extraordinary book of history. "The fascination of a nightmare" describes it well. The popular facades of Nazi Germany as an efficient monolithic state is systematically dismantled; the reality is that the Reich was a disorganized hodge-podge of unscrupulous gangsters and foolish dilettantes who were constantly backstabbing each other. They were truly vile and pathetic people.
May 27, 2017
A most thorough and detailed account of the SS! Insights and understanding that make sense, instead of the "mob mentality" theories from other books on the subjects. Allows you to also draw you own conclusions. LONG - DRY - and exactly what a factual history book should be.
June 11, 2018
Incredibly complex, you cannot put it down, not because it is short of a interesting story line, but because if you do then it is impossible to find where you are do to its complex referencing system.
April 23, 2020
All paths lead to Himmler. Incredible, unbelievable display of the banality of evil. Just working 9 to 5. Its what we do.
November 23, 2020
Heinz Höhne verfasst hier einen sehr guten Überblick über die Geschichte der Schutzstaffel. Dieses Buch bietet Unmengen an Wissen und ist in einer verständlichen Sprache verfasst. Der Autor schafft es das Thema interessant zu gestalten. Einige Formulierungen können Kopfkratzen auslösen, an manchen Stellen ist das Werk veraltet.
May 29, 2021
I'm only up to page 100 or so (it's about 4 or 5 hundy pages) and am parking it for now.
Published in the mid-60s by a German journalist who specialised in Nazi history and is painstakingly detailed. Possibly too much detail.
He paints an interesting picture of the Nazi state and shows that it wasn't as monolithic or total as people think. Hitler may not have been very bright, but he was as cunning as a shithouse rat. He used the classic political tactic of divide et impera, allowing and encouraging internecine struggle between factions within the Party and other groups such as the Reichswehr (German military) in order to safeguard his own position.
Himmler was a sad, pathetic figure of a man without much personality who was hopelessly devoted to Hitler. Excellent organisational skills though.
Published in the mid-60s by a German journalist who specialised in Nazi history and is painstakingly detailed. Possibly too much detail.
He paints an interesting picture of the Nazi state and shows that it wasn't as monolithic or total as people think. Hitler may not have been very bright, but he was as cunning as a shithouse rat. He used the classic political tactic of divide et impera, allowing and encouraging internecine struggle between factions within the Party and other groups such as the Reichswehr (German military) in order to safeguard his own position.
Himmler was a sad, pathetic figure of a man without much personality who was hopelessly devoted to Hitler. Excellent organisational skills though.
January 23, 2016
To my mind one of the best books ever written on the topic of the SS.It may appear to be a dense read for the casual reader but to anybody with a good interest in the Third Reich I think they will find it a very enjoyable and rewarding book.Published nearly 50 years ago and still stands up to some of the more recent SS histories.
A must have for anybody interested in the nazi regime and this odious organisation
A must have for anybody interested in the nazi regime and this odious organisation
December 13, 2010
Excellent author dedicated detailed research with a sure precision for detail and accuracy. Not sentimental brutally true to the historical imperative. We owe him and his colleagues a huge debt of gratitude.
March 8, 2012
Excellent book, but for me the structure (thematic rather than chronological) made it somewhat confusing. Halfway through, I started to feel like I needed to draw a timeline to keep track of who was feuding with who/made which powerplay when.
December 3, 2013
A very long book with some boring chapters about the inner rivalries within the SS and with the Nazi party and the Wehrmacht.
The last two chapters were the most interesting - the SS and the Resistance and the End days of the SS and the Reich.
The last two chapters were the most interesting - the SS and the Resistance and the End days of the SS and the Reich.
April 14, 2014
Heinz Hohne's "The Order of the Death's Head" is a pretty dense read. That being said, it is impeccably researched, and offers what I consider the definitive look at one of the most macabre and fascinating groups ever created.
February 21, 2009
An excellent book on the history of the German SS. Fascinating and terrifying.
June 23, 2009
informative, but hard to keep track of the names and dates
May 30, 2016
I loved this book. Definitive account of the SS. Very detailed, perhaps too much for the casual reader.
January 1, 2016
History of the SS. Höhne's explanation of the Night of the Long Knives is the best I've read.
February 4, 2016
Very good and informative ; with lots of names ,dates and very specific information.
December 8, 2008
outstanding... unbelieveable
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews