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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Himmler by Peter Padfield Himmler by Peter Padfield. Anthony Storr in Dimensions , vol.6, No 2. Padfield writes clearly, and, judging from Himmler 's reference notes and bibliography, it is apparent that his research is thorough and his knowledge of his subject encyclopedic. The reader can be assured that this book contains all the facts that he could possibly want to know about Himmler, who was one of the four or five most powerful men in the Third Reich. In June 1936, Hitler promoted Himmler to the position of Chief of the German Police. Himmler's combined offices gave him unrivaled power, second only to that of Hitler. He could now proceed with his acknowledged aim of ridding the Reich of its enemies: 'Jews, Bolsheviks, priests, homosexuals'. Padfield calls this operation 'the cleansing of the German nation', and there can be little doubt that Himmler's anal-sadistic character structure inclined him to look upon mass murder as a purge, a way of clearing out the poisonous filth which had accumulated in the bowels of the German nation. The story of the decline and fall of the Third Reich, of the von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler, of Germany's final defeat, and of Hitler's suicide has often been told, but never, perhaps, more competently than in these pages. Padfield, for the most, stays with the facts and declines speculation. He has a gift for narrative, and his account of Himmler's capture by the Allies is riveting. Yet Himmler was not essentially different from many people whom we daily encounter. Indeed, many visitors found him charming, considerate, and unusually polite. I am sure Padfield is correct when he writes: 'There is no entity 'Himmler' capable of being viewed in isolation; if there had been it is apparent that that 'Himmler' would have had neither the self-confidence nor the power to have ordered helotry and genocide. We are peering dimly into a madhouse, but it is a communal asylum, and the inmates go home in the evening and discuss homeopathic medicine or read their children bedtime fairy tales. We are not dealing with individual psychopaths; we are not dealing with a Reichsf�hrer who was merely the sum of Heinrich Himmler's genes and experiences, a man who could be described as either 'indecisive' or 'ruthless' or labelled with any of the attributes he has been given here.' . what Padfield describes as a 'madhouse' and a 'communal asylum' had been in the making for years. The urge to create a mythical medieval Germany populated only by the Volk was already evident in the eighteenth century. Delusional systems which affect nations and those which affect individuals are closely similar. I think it absolutely essential that Holocaust studies continue to remind us that whole societies, as well as individuals, can become delusional. Those fortunate enough to lead reasonably equable lives in a modern democracy have no conception of how they might behave in circumstances of extreme deprivation and demoralization. You and I may complacently assume that we would never follow a leader like Hitler or succumb to the delusional system which he promulgated. But we were not there. We cannot be sure. Book Preview , April 1990. With the exception of Bradley F.Smith's Heinrich Himmler, A Nazi in the Making 1900-1926 (1971) [biographies of Himmler]. have treated his childhood and youth superficially and tended to describe him in clich�s. It is high time a new biography appeared which considered his formative years in detail and analysed his complex motives in the psychoanalytical and ideological terms they demand. Peter Padfield's is such a biography. It is a responsible, well-written biography which neither flinches from nor wallows in macabre detail. Padfield's description of Himmler's youth, for which he acknowledges his debt to Bradley Smith's spadework, is especially fascinating. [It] is the most compelling biography of any Nazi leader now available, and will probably be good for another fifty years yet. Telford Taylor, US Chief of Counsel for War Crimes Office, 1946-49, 1.2.1991. Peter Padfield's book on Heinrich Himmler is the first solid and readable account of Heinrich Himmler's place and purpose as the most destructive of the Nazi leaders. It is a fine piece of historical work. John Keegan in The Daily Telegraph , 14.7.1990. the 'SS state' was the engine which made Nazi tyranny work. How did Himmler do it ? Peter Padfield, whose biography of Admiral D�nitz is one of the most important studies of Nazi leadership, labours at enormous length to supply the answer. He spares the reader nothing in the process, making this a book which at times is difficult, if not impossible, to read page for page. Yet he does not in the end provide a solution, and perhaps no one can. [he] seems to come nearest the truth when he writes that Himmler's ultimate inability to keep silent about what he himself insisted should be an eternal secret welled up from a 'primal, childlike understanding that he had sinned, sinned in the sight of the Lord'. Giles Macdonogh in Weekend FT , 22.7.1990. It can be no easy job writing the life of a monster like Himmler. Mr Padfield has convincingly sifted the evidence while steering clear of the pitfalls. His is a black biography, as black as the uniforms of Himmler's praetorian guard, the SS. Richard Overy in The Observer , 17.6.1990. [Himmler's] story is a chilling reminder of what happens when, by chance more than design, fanatics get their hands on the instruments of state power. Donald Cameron Watt in The Sunday Times , 24.6.1990. Padfield is a writer of great power. The scenes he paints of what the SS did in its 'police' role, and in the camps, where it reflected most clearly the effect of unfettering Himmler's mish-mash of caf� Stammtisch racialism, half-educated conspiratorialism, thwarted sexuality, locker-room machismo and wagon-lit philosophy, are as graphic and horrible as our imaginations can grasp, a hell on earth more terrible than any medieval artist or Calvinist theologian could depict. Padfield is not the first to portray it. But he is not the least effective. Jeremy Noakes in Jewish Chronicle , 20.7.1990. Peter Padfield' well-written biography captures Himmler's complex personality extremely well. Through a judicious use of psychological theory and shrewd psychological insights he paints a very persuasive portrait of Himmler's development from a comparatively normal middle-class Bavarian schoolboy into a monster who as Reichsf�hrer-SS either initiated or supervised the worst Nazi crimes. The author describes the personal traits and the context of family, school, and the wider society which combined to form Himmler's personality, depicting him as the product as much of a deeply disturbed society as of his own particular character defects. A.L.Rowse in The Sunday Telegraph , 12.8.1990. Of all the quite able thugs and gangsters who ran Nazi Germany Himmler has hitherto been thought the most charmless. Also the most mysterious; we knew so little about him. We have no excuse for not knowing about him now, after Peter Padfield's thorough, conscientious and compulsively readable investigation. Nigel Jones in London Magazine , October/November 1990. The name Himmler has long been a popular byword for the bogeyman of nightmares, but the actual historical figure of the Reichsf�hrer has remained blurred; obscured behind those rimless spectacles and the feared black uniform of the SS. No longer. For this massive biography Peter Padfield has painstakingly documented all that we need to know about the architect and overlord of the Nazi empire of terror. It is not, as Padfield readily admits, a work of original scholarship. There are no interviews with Himmler's surviving intimates, and no startling new facts are unearthed. Nevertheless, Padfield has methodically read through a mass of material, organised the salient details and told the story with just the right historical objectivity, leavened with an understandable revulsion for his subject. The moral left by the book is a chilling one. For what is most striking about Heinrich Himmler is his desperate ordinariness. Philip Keer on Book Choice , Channel 4 TV, 29.6.1990. At the end of the week it took me to read Peter Padfield's life of this unlikely mass murderer I found myself reaching for the mouthwash. I shudder to think how Padfield himself must have felt after reputedly spending five years of his life peering into Himmler's diaries, letters, speeches and file notes, but the result, the first full-scale biography of the Reichsf�hrer-SS, as well as being, I think, the most accurate life of any of the Nazi leaders, is also the most chilling portrait of evil that I have ever read. Richard Heller in The Mail on Sunday , 17.6.1990. Peter Padfield. writes with massive authority and lucidity, and (as far as possible) objectivity. [His] catalogue of Himmler's evil is mind-numbing. Richard Lamb in The Spectator , 21.7.1990. Clear writing and much detail about atrocities bring sharply to life the unbelievable horrors of Nazi rule. Himmler gave the superficial impression of good manners and prudishness, but in fact he was a sadistic thug without conscience; he was also corrupt and accumulated a large fortune. Hitler trusted him and allowed him to practise his brutality all over Europe where death camps and slave labour made the impact of this frenzied, half- crazed creature awe-inspiring. Pertinently, Padfield quotes the evidence of a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbr�ck at Nuremberg: 'Himmler had a systematic and implacable urge to use human beings as slaves and to kill them when they could no longer work.' .

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