Hitler's Henchmen

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As a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the SS organisation responsible for administering the concentration and extermination camps, Arnold Strippel served at a number of locations during his rise to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. Hess, an early and devoted follower of Nazism, participated in Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923. O'Shannon, who was an Irish-born Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran, described how he felt that anti-British sentiment in Ireland led to Nazis receiving a warmer welcome than he did when he came home after the war.

The story Read tells is divided into three parts: first, the emergence of the Nazi Party and its rise to power within Germany, which took place from 1919 to 1933; second, the period of appeasement, whereby the Nazis' territorial ambitions within Europe were realized without a shot being fired (1933-39); third, the period of World War II, from 1939-45. Another early contributor to the party was Goebbels, a failed playwright who had grown disaffected with Catholicism. The plotters were then forced to listen to a speech given by Hitler on the radio, confirming that the fuhrer was indeed still alive and well. 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.Rumours spread that Skorzeny's men were planning to assassinate General Eisenhower, with the increased security leaving Eisenhower temporarily confined to his Versailles headquarters during Christmas week. He controlled the administrative apparatus for carrying out the extermination of European Jewry in 1943–45. At the Nuremburg Trials he was sentenced to life in prison but was released early due to his failing health. Adolf Eichmann, the textbook "desk-bound killer" is framed as a bureaucratic monster, though somewhat inconsistently.

In 1937 the Nazi Party formed a new state-owned automobile company which was eventually named Volkswagenwert, or “The People’s Car Company”.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. Finn not only tells their story but he brings them to life, makes them seem like real people, warts and all. It was a finely balanced team of military commanders, administrative leaders and Ministers of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Josef Kramer had the dubious double honor of commanding both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen (where he was dubbed the "Beast of Belsen").