Rating: 
Summary: boring
Review: They were normal men and women, who lived in a very contentious time in Germany and did the wrong thing. They were not "evil", they did things that were evil. Just as bad things happen to good people, good people do BAD things.Himmler was not "evil", he believed in Hitler. What he did was evil, and he, as he should be, is held by most of the civilized world as a criminal.The deeper I went into this book, the more unbelievable I found it to be. It is amazing that people still write from a Marxist perspective, that capital is the primary motive of history. According to this book, it was the landed Junkers vs the Capitalist industialist that led the NAZI's into war and policy formation. The deeper I got into the book, the less I cared for what was being presented, and the more I wanted a biography on Himmler and less of a preaching of Marxist theory on world history!
Rating: 
Summary: A staggering tome of tremendous research
Review: This compendium of the life of the very personification of evil, Heinrich Himmler, is astounding. The amount of detail, not only concerning Himmler, but of other high ranking Nazi officials, such as Heydrich, Canaris, Mueller, Eichmann, and so forth is incredible. This book belongs alongside Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and "Speer's "Inside the Third Reich." A more unlikely figure to assume the position of head of the SS could not possibly be imagined; how could this weakling of a farmer who raised poultry reach the god-like status he attained, holding the power of life and death over eighty million Germans and later hundreds of millions more in the occupied nations under German domination? And yet he was not a sadist, he lived frugally and did not derive pleasure from reducing millions to human beings to expendable slaves and annihilation, he was largely apathetic to it all. The irony that he himself did not even remotely qualify for the racial characteristics he adamantly required of his subordinates, and would not even pass his own screening test for accepting SS applicants, is something to consider. His devout belief in God, perhaps eclipsed only by his belief in his Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, and the fact that he considered himself a Catholic, are interesting to note. His lack of emotion and impersonal disregard for the sanctity of human life would seemingly suggest the characteristics of a sociopath, someone who could hear a hideous scream of agony, acknowledge it, and calmly resume paperwork activity and proceed to complete it at his leisure. Although Himmler appears to be a harmless, pedantic crank, he is undoubtedly one of the most chilling personages of history, more so since he himself could never understand why his own name caused people to recoil in horror and terror, for reasons that were plain to anyone else.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, indispensable resource on Nazism.
Review: This is an excellent book, and indispensable to the library of anyone with a serious interest in Nazism or the Holocaust. Padfield has clearly done an enormous amount of research and he uses it with with great skill and perspicacity. He clearly explains Nazi ideology (as espoused by Himmler) and the projects which gave it shape and meaning. He presents plainly both the realpolitik of Nazi government, and the public policy under which it hid it's corruption. He chronicles the growth and spread of the SS both as Himmlers personal fiefdom and the power base he used to rise to the top. His portraits of the major 'players' both within the SS and in the broader regime are drawn from eyewitness accounts and are skillfully woven into the narrative in a way which empahasises both their personalities and their importance in the history of the period. Padfield creates a narrative of Himmler's life that takes the reader on a first class tour of the Third Reich, the upper echelons of the SS heirarchy, and the 'hell on earth' of the Holocaust created by Nazi ideology. It is particularly gratifying that Padfield never succumbs to the temptation of 'adjectival' history. He never describes events or people as 'evil' or 'monstrous', preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. He is free to do so because of the extraordinary clarity with which he presents the facts for the reader. A particularly brilliant example is the juxtaposition of Himmler's outrage at the brutality of a hunting party he took part in in October 1941 - "Nature is so wonderfully beautiful, and every animal has a right to live." which is followed by an account of the clearing of the Riga Ghetto in November of that year (just two weeks later) carried out under his orders. "it is not a Weltanschauungs-question to rid oneself of lice; it is a matter of cleanliness." (pages 351ff) His presentation of the micro-processes of Einsatzgruppen mass-murder is probably the best I've ever read. The methodology of dehumanising both victim and murderer by a series of incremental steps, coupled to a 'normalising' tempo which leads inevitably to the pit is vital to understanding both the brutality of the crime, and it's essentially human, militarist, 'technically dispassionate' character. As an Organisational Development consultant I find this particularly fascinating given the extent to which corporations seek to 'normalise' human behaviours to suit their own goals. Padfield is equally clear in tracking the larger history of the Holocaust as it developed over time. He deftly avoids falling into the 'intentionalist' or 'functionalist' camps by sticking to the facts available and presenting the series of orders, actions, refining of methods, and further orders in the context of both the organisations and individuals involved, and in the tempo of the times. The book is weakest in it's attempts to psycho-analyze Himmler which come across as Freudian psycho-babble when set against the scale of Himmlers crimes, but this is a minor quibble. The honesty with which Padfield's analysis is developed from the facts is refreshing. Where he has a theory or explanation unsupported by the evidence available to him he labels it clearly as 'conjecture' and returns to the historical record. I have read scores of books on the Nazism and the Third Reich and this is one of the very best. An excellent resource, clear, lucid and rich with the sort of detail that illuminates reather than clutters. Buy this book! ... Aristeas.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than nothing
Review: To title this book as a biography of Himmler is a bit misleading. It should be titled "Himmler: Things He Did." It starts off promising, with a good account of Himmler's childhood. However, soon after that it devolves into a standard history book, covering events at great length that have already been well-documented elsewhere, events which are often only tangentially related to Himmler. In short, this book is too much a history and too little a biography.
Certainly it does a good job as a factual bio - the dates and events are all there - but contrary to what some other readers have said, there is really very little here (after the childhood section) about Himmler the MAN. Important issues such as his family life, his mistress, his personal views (except as they relate to Jews), and his personality are glossed over in favor of pages and pages of digression. Except for a precious few excerpts from speeches and the occiasional letter or communique, Padfield hardly includes any of Himmler's writing at all. And for a biography, there are almost *no* personal recollections or reminsences of the man from those who knew him. There is a real lack of anecdotes, stories, or other material which would have revealed more about his personality. Other than "He was very indecisive and probably insecure", few elements of his character are revealed. If you want insight into his character, this book doesn't deliver that well.
For someone wanting a lot of facts and dates and events and names, this books is a perfectly good resource, though its length and the density of the text make reading it a real project. And, since it (amazingly) seems to be the only full-length biography of Himmler that's widely available in English, one really has no choice - it's this or nothing.
Padfield's editor should have used the red pen more. At well over 600 pages, the book could have been half as long and twice as good. As it is, it leaves the reader with a very good idea of what Himmler *did*, but only a general idea of what he was *like*.
Rating:
Summary: Better than nothing
Review: To title this book as a biography of Himmler is a bit misleading. It should be titled "Himmler: Things He Did." It starts off promising, with a good account of Himmler's childhood. However, soon after that it devolves into a standard history book, covering events at great length that have already been well-documented elsewhere, events which are often only tangentially related to Himmler. In short, this book is too much a history and too little a biography. Certainly it does a good job as a factual bio - the dates and events are all there - but contrary to what some other readers have said, there is really very little here (after the childhood section) about Himmler the MAN. Important issues such as his family life, his mistress, his personal views (except as they relate to Jews), and his personality are glossed over in favor of pages and pages of digression. Except for a precious few excerpts from speeches and the occiasional letter or communique, Padfield hardly includes any of Himmler's writing at all. And for a biography, there are almost *no* personal recollections or reminsences of the man from those who knew him. There is a real lack of anecdotes, stories, or other material which would have revealed more about his personality. Other than "He was very indecisive and probably insecure", few elements of his character are revealed. For someone wanting a lot of facts and dates and events and names, this books is a perfectly good resource, though it's length and the density of the text make reading it a real project. And, since it (amazingly) seems to be the only full-length of biography of Himmler that's widely available in English, one really has no choice - it's this or nothing. Padfield's editor should have used the red pen more. At well over 600 pages, the book could have been half as long and twice as good. As it is, it leaves the reader with a very good idea of what Himmler *did*, but only a general idea of what he was *like*.
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