Hitler's Henchmen

by Guido Knopp

Josef Goebbels, Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolph Hess, Albert Speer and Karl Donitz. These were the men who smoothed Adolf Hitler's path to power and became the perpetrators of a reign of terror unparalleled in history. They were the supporters and executives at Hitler's regime, carrying out his orders with deadly efficiency. This radical new assessment of power under the swastika reveals many unknown facts and gives a unique but disturbing glimpse behind the scenes of the Nazi state. A Tv journalist and presenter, Guido Knopp has unearthed a wealth of new material about the Third Reich. Based on meticulous research and countless interviews, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Hitler and the Second World War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Politics, Biography, Holocaust

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Guido Knopp is a German journalist and author. He is well known in Germany, mainly because he has produced a great number of TV documentaries, predominantly about the Nazi era, but also about other topics, such as Stalinism.

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those that are not particularly familiar with the men surrounding Hitler, this is a great introductory book. Even though the history of the Nazi party is a favorite topic of mine, the book still held my interest as it provided an insight into the lives and beliefs of six of the staff closest to Hitler, although nothing new.

The mini-biographies are:

Joseph Goebbles: The fanatical genius of Nazi propaganda and he was a wizard at his job. He inundated the German volk with lies through the mediums of radio, rallies, pamphlets, parades, and newspapers. And he proved the adage that if you tell a lie enough times, people believe it. He was Hitler's most loyal follower and ended his days in the bunker with his beloved leader, taking the lives of his wife, his six young children and then committing suicide.

Herman Göering: The jolly appearing fat man who was, under the surface, as cold as ice, he was the lead man of the Luftwaffe and constantly assured Hitler that the air force was the best in the world. Instead of the 1,600 aircraft ready for combat that he claimed, he had initially only 200 outmoded machines and two bombers. Eventually, the numbers increased but it was never the size that was necessary to wage war. In the end, he fell out with Hitler and committed suicide the night before he was to be hanged at Nuremberg.

Heinrich Himmler: The less than intellectual and most unassuming man in the inner circle but also maybe the most evil. He represented, to quote Hannah Arendt, "the banality of evil". As the leader of the SS, he was responsible for the death camps and the elimination of six million Jews. That says it all. He escaped but was picked up by Allied forces while disguised as a common soldier and committed suicide.

Rudolf Hess: The strangest member of Hitler's cadre, he was disliked by everyone except the leader. His jobs were very commonplace (at least for Nazis) and he made history by his secret solo flight to Britain in a foolhardy attempt to meet with Churchill to discuss peace while the bombs were falling on London. Of course, that didn't happen and he was sentenced to life in prison. He spent four decade behind bars just waiting for death and attempted suicide several times. He died there in 1987.

Albert Speer and Admiral Karl Donitz: These are the shortest of the mini-bios about the architect and the Admiral. Nothing much there and they were sentenced to 20 years in prison (Speer) and ten years (Donitz). Speer was the only defendant who took responsibility for his actions and Donitz stated that he would do it all over again. Both men survived their imprisonment and Speer went on to be a best selling author.

This book does not suffer, as many books do, from translation issues and is well written. I would recommend it even if you are already familiar with the history of the Nazi inner circle.

[Leivo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitleri käsilased on suurepärane ülevaade olulistest inimestest kes olid kõik sisuliselt Hitleri karisma mõju all ning kelle käe läbi oli Saksamaa ja teine maailmasõda just selline nagu see oli.
Kuus inimest ja kuus väga huvitavat erinevat natuuri:
1. Goebbels - mees, kes oli sõnameister ning kes omas võimet panna suuri rahvahulki uskuma seda mida ta räägib.
2. Göring - õhujõudude juht, kuid totaalne laiskvorst ja lihtlabane varas. Selle asemel, et sõda juhtida, tegeles ta kogu Europast kunstiväärtuste varastamisega ning rongidega Saksamaale ja oma lossi transportimisega.
3. Hess - juudivastase programmi väjatöötaja, kuid sõja alguses Inglismaale lennanud ja seal vangi võetud mees. Ma ütleks, et sellest seltskonnast kõige nõrgem kuju.
4. Himmler - tõeline nats, kelle käe all said juhtuma kõige võikamad koonduslaagrite õudused.
5. Speer - arhitekt, kes aitas Hitleril disainida, projekteerida ja ellu viia kolossaalseid ehitusprojekte.
6. Dönitz - mere- ja eriti allveelaeva sõja tuline juht. Hitleri kõige parem sõjapealik üldse, temast sai ka lühikeseks ajaks Hitleri järglane.
Dönitzi juhitud allveelaevastiku ühest laevast sai inglased enda valdusse Enigma krüptomasina ning sellest alates muutus sõja kulg, eriti just merel, Inglaste kasuks.

Kes vähegi ajaloost huvitatud, siis see annab ühe vaate Saksamaa tegevusele teises maailmasõjas.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is basically six mini-biographies of some of Hitler’s top aides compiled into one volume: Goebbels, Goring, Himmler, Hess, Speer, and Donitz. I used to have a difficult time distinguishing between a number of Nazi brass when reading WWII history, but now I have a better understanding of the roles each of these men played in the regime. The book started off rough because I thought the bio on Goebbels was poorly written*, but that improved. Overall, it was informative and followed each individual through the ranks, the war, and Nuremburg.

*The author got carried away with superfluous descriptors for Goebbels. In one page he is referred to as: “the opinion-former,” “the new controller of press,” “the conductor,” “the disabled hack,” “the former pauper,” “the would-be Robespierre,” “the agitator.”

[kamonegix · Rating 2 out of 5]

anyway i was googling some other book and found a buncha phreaks cryin about how biased and unfair this book was, to the germans. lmao. i love almost everything that triggers nazis, so i gave it a try.

shit i was here for:

- the shade

- the tea

shit i was decidedly nhf:

- the shade was weak as shit and the tea was not even lukewarm. "the lead nazis were bad people who did bad things" is probably the weakest attempt at a roast ive ever seen

- boo-hooing about how the average german had no idea about jews being murdered. yeah im sure the people who saw their jewish neighbours become subject to increasingly restrictive racial laws, who were inundated with anti-semitic propaganda comparing jews to vermin, who voted into power a government whose platform essentially boiled down to blaming jews for everything - those people clearly mustve thought that the nazis were forcefully deporting jewish people from germany to send them all on a fucking pool-side vacation with ice cream. miss me with that shit.

- the author is a german born in 1948 so, hey, i get that holding your parents and grandparents accountable for the holocaust must be tough but like....how you gonna write a book trying to explain how the nazis became the people who did what they did if you cant accept that they were not anomalies among their generation? if actual card-carrying nazi zealots did not start out wanting the total eradication of all jews in 1933 and arrived at the final solution gradually, does the author really think the "uninvolved" public can be absolved of guilt just because they werent actively involved in murdering jews? i guess they were all beary sorry about the whole thing after the war tho :(((

- complete failure to acknowledge the presence of anti-semitism in interwar europe. the way he described it, some of these guys really just woke up one day and randomly decided to blame all their problems on a jewish conspiracy. smh

- the shitty ass translation??? honestly who translated this??

- tbh this felt a bit like one of those nazi documentaries from history channel

2/5 tho, an attempt was made

[RedSaab · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been avoiding Hitler most of my adult life. It felt unseemly to go anywhere near him in print. Well now I finally summoned enough courage to at least read about his henchmen. Knopp's book is an immersive (and eloquently translated) account of the roles which this bizarre assortment of key figures played in attempting to realize Hitler's demented vision. Their careers, actions, attitudes, quirks and foibles are recounted with journalistic precision, and hint at a fascinating variety of personal psychopathologies. Knopp's extensive use of quotes from their own mouths as well as from their contemporaries gives the story a particularly chilling power. This allows the reader to discern their true characters without the author ushering us too quickly towards any pat recital of History's judgement on these ghastly men. And while Hitler is ever-present in the narrative, exerting a baleful influence over everyone and everything like an irresistible force field, Knopp cleverly avoids promoting him into the foreground at any stage. That's for some other book, for which I will eventually have to steel myself, to try to comprehend what this whole dreadful holocaust of madness was about. For now, Knopp's clutch of interlaced biographies is quite enough.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent companion piece to Guido Knopp's "Hitler's Henchmen". Here, Knopp provides brief biographies of six Nazi leaders. With the exception of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Youth Leader Schirach, they held lower ranking positions mostly out of the public eye; in fact Eichmann and Mengele probably never even came to Hitler's attention, even as they implemented his policies. All of the men, whatever their role, enabled Hitler's dictatorship, war, and campaign of mass murder.

Adolf Eichmann, the textbook "desk-bound killer" is framed as a bureaucratic monster, though somewhat inconsistently. Eichmann seems to swing from complete apathy about the Human lives behind the documents, to moments of feeling a "tremendous satisfaction" at being responsible for millions of deaths.

Baldur von Schirach is best known at the leader of the Hitler Youth but as gauleiter of Vienna he supervised the deportation of the city's Jewish population. Even as head of youth organizations he primed a generation to worship Hitler and sacrifice themselves in his war.

Martin Bormann clawed his way from Nazi Party obscurity to become, in Knopp's words, Hitler's "Shadow", controlling access to the Fuhrer and practically managing the Nazi state.

Joachin von Ribbentrop is presented as an egotist constantly in over his head and at times border-line incompetent (as during his two years as German ambassador to Britain). Knopp does a good job documenting the Foreign Ministry's involvement (and Ribbentrop's own complicity) in the Holocaust.

Roland Freisler, head of the Nazi "People's Court" seems like a raving maniac, delighting in screaming abuse at defendants before condemning to the gallows. Among his victims were those involved in the 1944 plot against Hitler and the White Rose resistance group (led by siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl).

Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" specializing in torture rationalized as medical research is the most terrifying, not because he necessarily enjoyed tormenting his victims but because of his indifference to it.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introduction to some of the senior Nazis: Goebbels, Goring, Himmler, Hess, Speer and Donitz. (Yes, I'm aware there should be some umlauts there but I can't work out how to do them on my keyboard.)

Each person's chapter deals with their background, how and why they got involved with the Hitler and the Nazis, what they were involved with, what they knew - or claimed they didn't know - and their ends. Reading this you can only conclude that both Speer and Donitz got off lightly. Speer doing a good job of shifting the blame for a lot of ugly things on Fritz Saukel. Speer escaped execution at Nuremberg, Saukel didn't and I'm pretty sure that was because Speer was a much smoother, posher character than Saukel as opposed to their crimes. Knopp does a good job of pricking both Speer and Donitz's claims and denials.

This book does a good job of showing how Hitler's personal 'charm' could drag these men in and hook them firmly to him even as the obviously catastrophic nature of his rule became obvious. And showing that they were - Himmler and Hess's odd interests aside - normal men who were convinced to commit extraordinary crimes.

This is a good introduction to these men. There are more in-depth accounts of their lives. Speer and Donitz got to write their own post-war. It also doesn't particularly go into depth about how these men all worked together and with Hitler.

O & Guido Knopp is a German historian. Daily Telegraph writers who claim that the Germans don't like us going on about World War Two because it reminds them of their shameful past would do well to read this to avoid further stupidity.

[Les Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitler's Henchmen is comprised of a series of mini-biographies: Goebbels, Goring, Himmler, Hess, Speer and Donitz are discussed in the book.
Hitler naturally appointed people who were willing to do his bidding. Like the Fuehrer himself, they were unscrupulous, dispassionate - even hateful, violent and uncompromising. All seemed to be possessed of one or more glaring deficiencies in character in addition to those described above. For example, Goring has been described as a sort of overweight Dracula in drag wholly consumed with his addictions and Himmler was known to be an impossible dreamer who fancied himself a Nordic warrior. Hess was the fanatic reactionary pseudo-intellectual who helped Hitler to develop his working philosophy as a sort of ghost writer for Mein Kampf while the two were incarcerated together in prison.
This is an interesting book that helps to explain, through the men who led it, why the Third Reich was doomed from its inception.

[Luc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich habe ein zwiegespaltenes Verhältnis zu Knopp, allerdings muss ich sagen dass mich dieses Buch in allen Belangen positiv überrascht hat, sowohl inhaltlich als auch vom Schreibstil.

Die Einführung hat in mir die Befürchtung geweckt dass es ein weiteres schwer zu lesendes Werk über Geschichte ist. Aber da mich das Thema interessiert bin ich dabei geblieben, was sich definitiv gelohnt hat.

Knopp beleuchtet Hitlers Helfer so gut, ich habe das Buch nicht mehr weglegen können!

Ich hätte mir allerdings noch gewünscht dass Reinhard Heydrich ein eigenes Kapitel bekommen hätte,.

Ansonsten kann ich das Buch nur empfehlen wenn man etwas einführende Literatur in den Personenkreis Hitler möchte.

[DANIEL JOHNSON · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and it took me by surprise on how much I gained from it.

I like ww2 history but my knowledge on the nazi top brass is somewhat poor. I must say from this book I’ve been left a lot more informed.

People have reviewed and said the writing is poor at times. I didn’t find this at all and was more taken buy the content rather than errors in writing and translation.

If you are looking for a book to enhance your knowing in Hitlers surrounding group then give it a read.

[Cory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting information. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in WWII. It has a lot of new stories about Hitler's closet confidants.

[John Ferringer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting insights

[Vladimir Veškovac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Očekivao sam više.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good collection of short biographies of senior Nazi leaders. Knopp nicely balances the early lives of his subjects with their professional lives, and their roles in the worst crimes of the Nazi regime. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a brief, highly readably overview, though entire biographies have been written for each of these men.

Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels comes across as a failed intellectual who found his true calling in the production of big lies. A man so attached to Hitler, he could not bear to live in a world without his Führer.
Luftwaffe commander and second-in-commander Herrmann Göring leaves the impression of a romantic (who literally grew up in castle) but who would exhibit a ruthlessness only matched by his massive ego.
Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was another dreamer who drifted until he found his true religion in Hitler. Himmler is the textbook image of the cold, efficient organizer of mass murder.
Party deputy leader Rudolf Hess is one of the strangest people I have ever read about. He was more than a devoted follower of Hitler. It's almost like Hess had surrendered his entire will and being.
Architect and Armaments Minister Albert Speer used his talents to construct Hitler dream buildings and war machine. Ever the opportunist, he finally constructed an elaborate façade to hide his guilt; Knopp tears it apart.
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz is shown to be anything but the "non-political admiral" and revealed for what he actually was: a fanatical anti-Semite and ruthless pursuer of military objectives, regardless of the lives of Allied- or German- sailors.

[Charlotte Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was recommended this book as I am wanted to study a period in history that has had such a deep impact on the 20th century. I am deeply ashamed to admit that my knowledge of the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the events of WW2 has been very superficial. Basic facts yes, but in depth knowledge no. So I want to change that. Hitler's Henchmen is an excellent introduction to the key leaders within the Nazi regime that came to power in the 1930s in Germany.

I found the book very easy to read and most of the chapters dealt with the backgrounds of the individuals concerned and how they came to be where they were. A lot of tantalising questions were also left for the reader to ponder and investigate further. Such as was Hess really suffering from a breakdown when he flew to Scotland in his aeroplane or not?

The one chapter I felt did not really cover very much was the one on Albert Speer, it was a bit sparse and did not really go into his background much which was disappointing.

I know the book covered the people surrounding Hitler and not Hitler himself but a brief chapter on the leader himself would have rounded off this excellent book very nicely. A useful feature of this book was the excellent bibliography at the end of the book which helps points serious students of Nazi Germany and WW2 to other books for study.

Hitler's Henchmen is an excellent book which acts a foundation from which historians and students studying this era can progress from.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Buch ist nicht leicht zu verdauen, aber es ist ein toller Blick auf die Zeitgeschichte.

Es sind nicht einfache Biographien, sondern ihr Leben in Momentaufnahmen, mit Eindrücken von Kollegen, Freunden und Familien, sowie aus den Verhör- und Prozessprotokollen, die dem Wahnsinn ein Gesicht geben. Dadurch, dass Knopp diese Auszüge aus Briefen, Tagebüchern und Reden nimmt, quasi wörtlich zitiert, was diese Männer gesagt haben bzw. über sie gesagt wurde, kann er einen Einblick in ihre Gedanken geben und sie besser darstellen.

Gerade das ist es, was das Buch so faszinierend und erschütternd macht.

[Alaa Sonyeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is not easy to digest, but it's a great look at the history.
There are no simple biographies, but her life in snapshots, with impressions of colleagues, friends and families, and from the interrogation process and protocols that give a face to the madness. Because Knopp these excerpts from letters, diaries and speeches takes almost quoted verbatim what these men have said or was told about it, he can give an insight into their thoughts and present it better.
Just that it's what the book so fascinating and heartbreaking makes.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to further my understanding of Hitler and the German nation of the time, in particular those people who assisted him in his awful vision.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dopala mi se. Razumna, objektivna, pametna knjiga.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting details of various historical Nazi figures.

[Bojan Avramovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitler je imao prilicno uigranu i pametnu druzinu. Saznajte ko su ti ljudi i na sta su sve bili spremni

[Brandon Pyle]

Very well written. Its unsettling how similar it is to what is happening today...

[Marko]

I have two different editions.