Himmler's Last Days: The End of Terror in Nazi Germany, (Hardcover)

<p><b>The gripping story of the fall of Heinrich Himmler--the man who sought to perfect genocide and who ultimately became the most hunted war criminal in history--during the convulsive final days of the Third Reich</b></p><p>Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Gestapo, and Waffen-SS, rose to all but supreme power as architect of the concentration camps and commander of the murderous deportations, the mass sterilizations, and the gas chambers. In <i>Himmler's Last Days</i>, acclaimed historians Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos deliver an acutely revealing story of the psychic and physical unraveling of the ultimate mastermind of the Nazi terror apparatus.<br>Himmler leaves the Führerbunker just days before Hitler's April 1945 suicide, now aspiring to be his successor, and flees a Berlin under siege. </p><ul><li>The book tracks Himmler's desperate movements, never before reconstructed, in cinematic detail, to a series of outposts and hiding spots in the north of Germany.</li><li>Even as the camps are liberated--and the depth of Nazi genocidal evil is revealed through the testimony of living skeletons--Himmler schemes delusionally and in ill faith to parlay concentration camp prisoner releases into a deal with General Eisenhower for a partial German surrender.</li><li>The capture by the British of a disguised Himmler, his interrogation, his suicide by hidden cyanide capsule, and his consignment to an unmarked grave are vividly illuminated through eyewitness accounts and photographs.</li><li>A definitive telling that casts light on the universal fate of genocidaires--and puts to rest far-right conspiracy theories regarding Himmler's supposed murder by the Allies.</li></ul><p>Finally, through his own desperate acts and words, Himmler is revealed as clearly as we have ever seen him. A stunning and reverberating account.</p>

• Himmler's Last Days: The End of Terror in Nazi Germany, (Hardcover)
• Author: Wendy Lower
• ISBN: 9780063315143
• Format: Hardcover
• Publication Date: 2027-03-30
• Page Count: 432