Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust

A chilling read - not for the faint of heart. The Einsatzgruppen killed more Jews with a bullet to the brain than all the death camps combined. Heartbreaking - and c h i l l i n g.

Chilling

In Masters of Death, 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...more

In Masters of Death, 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 A pretty grizzly account of the opening stages of the holocaust, the Nazi Death Squads,and the men behind them. At times it gets confusing with a lot of German names and can jump around in dates and times, but this is powerful book.   hide

A good companion piece to Lozowick's "Hitler's Bureaucrats", as it shows the other end of the spectrum. While Eichmannn and his people were the White Collar entities running the trains, the worker bees (i.e. Dirlewanger, a great example of nastiness, aggression, and ugly psyche) managed the dirty work of the Einsatzgruppen.

A terrifying look into the darkest corners of humanity. This book chronicles how Hitler's mobile killing squads perfected the machinery of death that would eventually extinguish more than 11 million lives. While the narrative is exceptionally informative, Rhodes application of violent socialization theory to the Einsatzgruppen is somewhat misplaced. Violent socialization usually applies to...more

A terrifying look into the darkest corners of humanity. This book chronicles how Hitler's mobile killing squads perfected the machinery of death that would eventually extinguish more than 11 million lives. While the narrative is exceptionally informative, Rhodes application of violent socialization theory to the Einsatzgruppen is somewhat misplaced. Violent socialization usually applies to the family unit of analysis over extended periods of exposure and explains the reproduction of violent behavior for an individual. Rhodes does not adequately explain how this process differs in military organizations. Nevertheless, this book is a worthy contribution to the field of Holocaust Studies and international criminology.   hide

Gruesome.