Customer Reviews

Himmler: Reichsführer-SS

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An outstanding book. I find that a good book will stimulate one or more of these reactions while reading it. I will want to learn more about the subject or I want to read more books by the same author. This book brought out the desire to learn more about the more arcane institutions and crackpot theorists of the Reich.

The images the author invokes of a young Himmler traveling around a motorcycle lecturing the proletarian in the hinterlands on the NSDAP viewpoint is amusing. Especially when contrasted with the all powerful figure in uniform he came to be. Somehow though I am sure he always wore his helmet.

His love of mysticism and his desire to imbure National Socialism with it was as important to its success then as it now. The same mysticism unfortunately lures enough young minds to keep National Socialism from completely disapearing to the rubbish bin of bad ideas.

Padfield describes the complex personality of a man who many rate as one of the most evil of his century. In doing so he does all of us a service by showing even the most evil of us can also be the most banal. He describes how Himmler, no where near an orator in the same league as Hittler or Goebbels, still managed to keep an audiences attention with a dry yet folksy style. I came a way from the book realizing that Himmler, the shy young man who grew up to desire with all his heart to be considered "one of the boys" was an insecure traveling salesman who sold his soul for power.

An extremely informative, accurate and unbiased account of one of Hitler's closest ranks. Peter Padfield does an excellent job of capturing, and often analyzing, the life of Himmler from his Catholic childhood, through his initial failures of military life, through his rise to become one of Hitler's inner circle and the most powerful person in the Third Reich. Padfield is consistent with his documentation of what is fact, his conclusions based on historical documentation, to what cannot be known with any level of certainty. It is particularly interesting to delve into Himmler's rationalizations for his actions. Padfield also gives insight into many of the additional cast of characters within the Nazi regime, including Hitler, Donitz, and Goebbels as well as the thoughts and strategies of those both inside and outside Germany during this particular period in history.