Masters of Death, Richard Rhodes
Masters of Death, Richard Rhodes
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Masters of Death
The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust

Author: Richard Rhodes

Narrator: Neil Hellegers

Unabridged: 14 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/21/2017


Synopsis

In Masters of Death, Richard 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.

About Richard Rhodes

Richard Rhodes is the author of many works of history, fiction, and letters. His book The Making of the Atomic Bomb won a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Richard lectures widely on subjects related to his books, which run the gamut from nuclear history to the story of mad cow disease to a study of how people become violent to a biography of the 19th-century artist John James Audubon.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessaka

They are ripping children out of the arms of their mothers down at the Mexican border, putting them in cages with little warm clothing. Where is the outrage? I know it is there because it has to be, but is it enough? Isn’t this illegal? What happened to humanity? To America? Hitler tested the people......more

Goodreads review by Brett

This was a very good book on the atrocities committed by the SS-Einsatzgruppen. These were 'Task Force' groups that operated joint and independently of the Wermarcht Army. They deployed into Eastern Europe as a uniformed paramilitary force conducting cleansing operations. Most people are educated on......more

Goodreads review by Lewis

This had a few useful details for me, but mostly provided the kind of horrific examples of German criminal brutality that I have decided not to repeat in my current novel, since it has been covered often by people far more knowledgeable than me, including some who experienced it directly and survive......more