Customer Reviews
Courageously digging up poisonous roots - By: A Common Reader, 23 Aug 2007 
Katrin Himmler has had the unfortunate experience of having Adolf Hitler's secondin command, Heinrich Himmler as her Great Uncle. Throughout her life, her family have down-played the role of her own grandfather, Himmler's brother Ernst, who she was told, "went along with things" & was a very minor Nazi. However, over the last few years she has conducted an in-depth investigation into her family history, & the result is this excellent book.
Katrin Himmler begins by describing the childhood & youth of the three Himmler brothers, & the home life they had with their parents. They were by any account a fine family, the parents strict, but involvedin every aspect of their sons' lives, & the three boys beingin turn respectful of their parents & working hard at the various activities around home & school. Their parents were proud, upper middle-class people who sought & found recognition from influential peoplein Munich society. The family were strong Catholics, & despite this, Katrin Himmler shows us the family's strong feelings of nationalism & ethnicity, & an unquestioning dislike for Slavs & Jews who were seen as "dirty" & primitive peoples. We read of family lifein the Weimar Republic, with holidays & games, & a rich involvement with friends & relatives, but also increasing money & employment problems due to the rampant inflation which beleagured the nation during the 1920s.
Heinrich joins the emerging National Socialist movement & due to his great skills of organisation, rises up through the ranks until he achieves the terrifying position of Commander of the SS. The Himmler name turns out to be a helpful passport for the other two brothers, & Katrin discovers that far from being a "minor Nazi", her grandfather wasin fact a key figurein the broadcasting organisation, who arranged broadcasts from the Nuremburg rallies & the 1936 Olympic games - a position he could not possibly have maintained without being a seriously committed party member.
It will spoil the book for others if I go on to describe further what Kain Himmler foundin her investigations. However, the book is a fascinating picture of lifein Germany through the 1920s & 30s & into the war. Katrin Himmler's research has been impeccable & she gained access to a considerable amount of family & national archive material, which she has pulled together into a unique narrative, both informative & very readable, & also containing a number of excellent photographs to illustrate the text. It was as enjoyable as any detective novel but fillsin many gapsin our understanding of what the Nazi party meant to countless Germans.
This is another book for those (like me) who want to understand quite what happened to the minds of the German peoplein the run up to the Second World War. Other books on Amazon deal with this question & the reviews reveal considerable divergence of views about whether the Germans were uniquein their ability to adopt such a cruel ideology & make it their own. Whatever stance the reader takes on this question, this book is invaluable as an account of the inner life of this prominent German family. One cannot help but admire the willingness of Katrin Himmler to explore & then document her findings with such painful honesty & humanity.
An Excellent Fast Paced History of the Himmler Brothers - By: Dr. R. Brandon, 09 Aug 2007 This is a most interesting piece of family history research into the background, upbringinging & subsequent fate, of the three Himmler brothers Gebhard, Heinrich & Ernst. It vividly portrays a picture of an industrious & clever middle class family with useful connections to the Bavarian royal family. The prevailing political views of the time & the profound effect of the First World War upon the family & their careers are carefully documented. This book gets away from the 'one-dimensional monster' descriptions of modern journalism & illustrates well the relationship with friends when the family is exalted & thenin disgrace. This excellent translation is well written & faced paced throughout apart from a small section which illustrates the competition between the various Nazi agencies for control of the radio industry. I have no hestitationin commending this well balanced book to all those interestedin the history of the Third Reich & the shaping of one of the main players.
