Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
Dec 2007 · Vintage
4.8star
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About this ebook
In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar.
These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’s architects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.
These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’s architects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.
Ratings and reviews
4.8
19 reviews
A Google user
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April 13, 2010
It's astonishing the author uses the incorrect "The Ukraine" instead of Ukraine. Ukraine being a sovereign nation. Having said that, it's a thorough examination of a little studied and little understood time of history of events taking place in a region where eye witnesses are becoming few and far between.
A Google user
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August 6, 2012
Einsatzgyuppen.... history of a macabre and dreadful chapter in world war two. There really was no spelled out order for Final Solution per se, yet the war between facism and communism.... could there be any other outcome except the extreme measures put to task by the einsatz? Should have put them in charge of the actual war.... maybe our world would be a much different place today? Better off we would be and without the runaway corporations and madhouse capitalism that slowly eats away our society and.....
A Google user
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November 14, 2017
I'm finally glad to read a book that doesn't sugarcoat what happened, this book is very detailed, sad, and shows the evil that was done from start to finish.
3 people found this review helpful
About the author
Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twentytwo books, most recently the author of The Twilight of the Bomb, the last volume in a quartet about nuclear history. The first, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, won the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT and a host and correspondent for documentaries on public television's Frontline and American Experience series. An affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, he lectures frequently to audiences in the United States and abroad.
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