A dramatic history of a group that would give birth to Nazism... The birth pangs of Nazism grew out of the death agony of the Kaiser's Germany. Defeat in World War I and a narrow escape from Communist revolution brought not peace but five chaotic years (1918-1923) of civil war, assassination, plots, putsches and murderous mayhem to Germany. The savage world of the trenches came home with the men who refused to admit defeat. It was an atmosphere in which civilised values withered, and violent extremism flourished. In this chronicle of the paramilitary Freikorps - the freebooting army that crushed the Red revolution and then themselves attempted to take over by armed force - historian and biographer Nigel Jones draws on little-known archives in Germany and Britain to paint a portrait of a state torn between revolution and counter revolution. Raised in the chaotic aftermath of war, the Freikorps were composed mostly of veteran soldiers, embittered and out of place in civilian life, and young, right-wing students determined to crush those forces who had "betrayed" their homeland. The ideology of the Freikorps was adopted, almost unmodified, by the Nazis, who, fittingly, marked their arrival in 1934 with the massacre of many former Freikorps members. Nigel Jones, assistant editor of BBC History Magazine, is author of several histories and biographies, including The War Walk: A Journey along the Western Front, Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth and Sir Oswald Mosley.

In August 1942, Hitler directed all German state institutions to assist Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police, in eradicating armed resistance in the newly occupied territories of Eastern Europe and Russia. The directive for "combating banditry" (Bandenbekämpfung), became the third component of the Nazi regime's three-part strategy for German national security, with genocide (Endlösung der Judenfrage, or "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question") and slave labor (Erfassung, or "Registration of Persons to Hard Labor") being the better-known others. An original and thought-provoking work grounded in extensive research in German archives, Hitler's Bandit Hunters focuses on this counterinsurgency campaign, the anvil of Hitler's crusade for empire. Bandenbekämpfung portrayed insurgents as political and racial bandits, criminalized to a greater degree than enemies of the state; moreover, violence against them was not constrained by the prevailing laws of warfare. Philip Blood explains how German forces embraced the Bandenbekämpfung doctrine, demonstrating the equal culpability of both the SS police forces and the "heroic" Waffen-SS combat arm and shattering the contrived postwar distinctions between them. He challenges the traditional view of Himmler as an armchair general and bureaucrat, exposing him as the driving force behind one of the most successful security campaigns in history, and delves into the contentious issue of the complicity of ordinary German police, soldiers, and citizens, as well as the citizens of occupied territories, in these state-sponsored manhunts. This book provokes new debates on the Nazi terrorization of Europe, the blind acquiescence of many, and the courageous resistance of the few.

When the German Wehrmacht swarmed across Eastern Europe, an elite corps followed close at its heels. Along with the SS and Gestapo, the Ordnungspolizei, or Uniformed Police, played a central role in Nazi genocide that until now has been generally neglected by historians of the war. Beginning with the invasion of Poland, the Uniformed Police were charged with following the army to curb resistance, pacify the countryside, patrol Jewish ghettos, and generally maintain order in the conquered territories. Edward Westermann examines how this force emerged as a primary instrument of annihilation, responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of the Third Reich's political and racial enemies. In Hitler's Police Battalions he reveals how the institutional mindset of these "ordinary policemen" allowed them to commit atrocities without a second thought. To uncover the story of how the German national police were fashioned into a corps of political soldiers, Westermann reveals initiatives pursued before the war by Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create a culture within the existing police forces that fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as institutional norms. Challenging prevailing interpretations of German culture, Westermann draws on extensive archival research—including the testimony of former policemen—to illuminate this transformation and the callous organizational culture that emerged. Purged of dissidents, indoctrinated to idolize Hitler, and trained in military combat, these police battalions-often numbering several hundred men-repeatedly conducted actions against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, asocials, and other groups on their own initiative, even when they had the choice not to. In addition to documenting these atrocities, Westermann examines cooperation between the Ordnungspolizei and the SS and Gestapo, and the close relationship between police and Wehrmacht in the conduct of the anti-partisan campaign of annihilation. Throughout, Westermann stresses the importance of ideological indoctrination and organizational initiatives within specific groups. It was the organizational culture of the Uniformed Police, he maintains, and not German culture in general that led these men to commit genocide. Hitler's Police Battalions provides the most complete and comprehensive study to date of this neglected branch of Himmler's SS and Police empire and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust and the war on the Eastern front.

The birth pangs of Nazism grew out of the death agony of the Kaiser's Germany. Defeat in World War I and a narrow escape from Communist revolution brought not peace but five chaotic years (1918-1923) of civil war, assassination, plots, putsches and murderous mayhem to Germany. The savage world of the trenches came home with the men who refused to admit defeat and 'who could not get the war out of their system'. It was an atmosphere in which civilised values withered, and violent extremism flourished. In this chronicle of the paramilitary Freikorps - the freebooting armies that crushed the Red revolution, then themselves attempted to take over by armed force - historian and biographer Nigel Jones draws on little-known archives in Germany and Britain to paint a portrait of a state torn between revolution and counter revolution. Astonishingly, this is the first in-depth study of the Freikorps to appear in English for 50 years. Yet the figures who flit through its shadowy world - men like Röhm, Goering and Hitler himself - were to become frighteningly familiar just ten years after the turmoil that gave Nazism its fatal chance.

The compelling story of Arthur Greiser, territorial leader of the Warthegau and the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland.

This fascinating and richly detailed new biography of Hitler reinterprets the known facts about the Nazi Fuehrer to construct a convincing, realistic portrait of the man. In place of the hollow shell others have made into an icon of evil, the author sees a complex, nuanced personality. Without in any way glorifying its subject, this unique revision of the historical Hitler brings us closer to understanding a pivotal personality of the twentieth century.

A detailed military biography of the most highly decorated Nazi regimental commander in WWII. The most highly decorated German regimental commander of World War II, Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz first won the Iron Cross in the Great War. He was serving with the 1st Panzer Division when the Polish campaign inaugurated World War II. Strachwitz’s exploits as commander of a panzer battalion during the French campaign earned him further decorations before he transferred to the newly formed 16th Panzer Division. There, he participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and then Operation Barbarossa, where he earned the Knight’s Cross. At Stalingrad, he reached the Volga and fought on the northern rim of Sixth Army’s perimeter. Severely wounded during battle, he was flown out of the Stalingrad pocket and was thus spared the fate of the rest of Sixth Army. Upon recuperation, he was named commander of the Grossdeutschland Division’s panzer regiment and won the Swords to the Knight’s Cross during Manstein’s counteroffensive at Kharkov. Wounded twelve times during the war, and barely surviving a lethal car crash, Strachwitz finally surrendered to the Americans in May 1945. Historian Raymond Bagdonas, though impaired by the disappearance of 16th Panzer Division’s official records at Stalingrad, and the fact that many of the Panzer Graf’s later battlegroups never kept them, has written a vividly detailed account of this combat leader’s life, as well as ferocious armored warfare in World War II.