The notorious Nazi leader’s attempt to take war prisoners hostage at the end of WWII is revealed in this lively and expertly researched history. During the final weeks of the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler assembled the most famous and noteworthy SS prisoners be taken hostage. Himmler’s plan was to use these individuals as bargaining chips to save the Reich—or, failing that, himself. Known as the Prominenten, this group included European politicians and former heads of state, five British survivors of the ‘Great Escape,’ two MI5 agents, and Irish born POWs. This meticulously researched study sheds new light on how the British prisoners came to be integrated with a multinational group of VIPs in Dachau concentration camp, including German family groups of men, women and children; relatives of those implicated in plot to kill Hitler. The lively narrative describes kidnapping, escape attempts, interpersonal conflict, betrayal and comradeship. It also reveals intrigues and love affairs among the prisoners, culminating in their dramatic attempt to free themselves from the SS.

A biography of Henrich Himmler, interweaving both his personal life and his political career as a Nazi dictator.

Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, this book challenges many sterotypes about Belsen, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalized or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

This book contains the biographies of Hitler’s three henchmen, Göbbels, Himmler and Göring, the longest loyal servants of Hitler. It utilises both older biographies, because of their insights, and more recent scholarly publications, as well as diaries (such as those of Göbbels and Ciano). The volume illustrates that Göbbels’ support was three-fold, in campaign managing, propaganda and myth-building. Himmler’s terror apparatus supressed occupied Europe, and controlled Germans, ensuring that Hitler retained power. Göring’s control of the economy and the Luftwaffe and his personal support of Hitler were critical as demonstrated by his trial at Nuremberg, but he was the weakest link from 1940 as he became virtually ineffectual. In addition, and new to this area of study, the book introduces the work of Stephen Roberts, an academic who actually met these men in 1936, and whose insights are revealing. The volume also examines the question of their mental stability in the light of psychopathic studies.

Himmler's Diary 1945: A Calendar of Events Leading to Suicide is an exceptional work with unpublished diary entries made by Himmler that shows in detail how The Third Reich fell to ruin in its final bloody year. Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was instigator of the largest programme of racial mass murder in history. 1 January 1945 saw Heinrich Himmler at his peak in Nazi Germany, controlling the entire German police force (including the Gestapo), all SS organisations and Nazi Minister of the Interior. His powers extended into the German Army and included Commander of the Replacement Army and two Army Groups. Two field commands revealed his limitations and failure as army commander. Between January and May 1945, Heinrich Himmler vacillated, showing a lack of vision, action and decision. At least he was able to gain control of V-2 rocket production and their launch against Britain. He ordered all concentration camp inmates be shot, before rescinding the order. When his SS generals asked for instructions, Himmler ordered them to show backbone as their commands had few bounds. The Swedes and Swiss negotiated with Himmler who allowed over 10,000 concentration camp prisoners taken to safety before Hitler intervened. Himmler conducted peace feelers via the Swedes before the German surrender in May 1945, while trying to make contact with British Field Marshal Montgomery. These contacts went unanswered. Himmler was captured by the British and then committed suicide on 23 May 1945.

Dachau to the Dolomites is the dramatic but little-known story of a group of prominent Nazi SS hostages transported from various concentration camps to a remote Alpine valley in the final days of the Third Reich. Five Irishmen were among the 160 prisoners whom Himmler and other SS leaders attempted to use as barter to save the regime or, as a final resort, themselves. As well as eminent international statesmen, aristocrats and clergy, the group contained opposition German generals and civilian relatives of those who had plotted against Hitler, including the family of Claus von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb in Hitler's Wolf's Lair. Among the hostages were a number of British officers, survivors of the famous 'Great Escape', and also Colonel John McGrath from Roscommon, a World War I veteran who had left his job as manager of Dublin's Theatre Royal to rejoin the British Army in 1939. They had been held with Russian, Italian and Polish special prisoners as 'Nacht und Nebel' - Night and Fog - prisoners, whose existence was a state secret. They lived in constant danger of execution, a fate some did not escape, including Stalin's son, who died following a fracas with Irish prisoners. It is an astonishing and epic tale encompassing heroic endurance, escape, betrayal, tragedy and love.

Blatman writes about the end phase of the German concentration camp system when the Nazis, realizing that they were losing the war, were faced with the enormous problem of what to do with the people being held captive. As these camps were being evacuated, the collapse of the front in Poland and the advance of the Red Army generated frantic waves of flight and the evacuation of millions of civilians and soldiers. The panicky retreat created conditions under which prisoners were murdered in horrific death marches. Gas chambers in faraway camps were no longer in use, and now the slaughters took place on the very doorsteps of ordinary German civilians' homes and in the streets German and Austrian towns. Unknown numbers of ordinary civilians across the dissolving Reich, fearing for the fate of their families and property, participated in the lethal eruption of violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first part provides an detailed overview of the camp system and a thorough chronological treatment of the camp evacuations during the winter of 1944-45 and the spring of 1945. The second part is a case study of the atrocity in the German town of Gardelegen where over 1000 prisoners were murdered, along with about 400 in the surrounding villages. This event serves as a focused example of the breakdown of the evacuation plans at the end of the war.