Rating: 
Summary: Graphic Reading
Review: Author Richard Rhodes has provided the reader with very graphic accounts of Jewish people being murdered during World War II. I realize many books have been written regarding this subject, but what this book provided me with was the author stating that emphasizing that psychological trauma that was suffered by those involved with the murder of noncombatants in no way lessens the crime. On the contrary, the mental conflict that is suffered provides evidence that the Einsatzgruppen were aware that what they were doing was wrong even though it came down as an order from the German government. Abigail Adams warned America during the writing of the Constitution to beware of putting umlimited power in the hands of men because all men would be tyrants if they could. This warning should have very well been heeded by Germany before Hitler came to power. As Rhodes states in his book, "Without robust checks and balances, a leader's appetite for domination...can become insatiable..." If you have read a number of other books on the holocaust, I don't know that you need to read this one, also. I found myself skimming parts of it. The parts describing Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich,"The Blond Beast" were interesting.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Bestial Chapter of the Holocaust
Review: Richard Rhodes has written a fresh reconsideration of one of the worst episodes in human history: the story of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile German SS units that roamed eastern Furope in 1941 and 1942 slaughtering defenseless Jews and Slavs. Rhodes is a skillful writer and he makes this difficult material bearable and even compulsively readable. He relies on survivor testimony and confessions of perpetrators to paint an extrordinarily vivid picture of the most terrible things that people can do to each other. He makes individuals come alive again, such as Heinrich Himmler, the Reichfuhrer-SS, a "rigid, fussy pervert" who by the end of the war was collecting furniture and bookbindings made from the flesh and bones of his victims. I have always been suspicious of labeling Nazi killers as mechanically banal, and Rhodes confirms many of them weren't. As a result of the things they did, many of them became alcoholics, committed suicide or were carted off to mental hospitals. It's good to know [those individuals] suffered spiritual and psychological consequences for their acts. They knew what they were doing was evil, even as they proclaimed its righteousness. Even Himmler had a wretched emotional life, and had crippling pychosomatic stomach pain. The experience of the Einsatzgruppen was so oulandishly monstrous that it led the National Socialist leadership to develop killing methods that were more manageable for the killers--that is the extermination camps such as Auschwitz. (Small comfort for the murdered.) This book is suffused with a strongly moral point of view. Rhodes relies on a theory of "violent socialization" to explain how "ordinary men" could commit such atrocities. They weren't so ordinary; they had gone through a process of brutalization, by training or life experience, that prepared them for dealing out mass death. Rhodes convincingly demonstrates how the vast massacre of World War I prepared the way for the even greater hecatomb of World War II. But the brutalization process isn't determined: one has to *choose* to return evil for evil, to strike back at the world with your own brutality. In that sense, this is a hopeful book: despite how the world treats us, we don't have to become monsters, as the exemplary lives of many of the survivors Rhodes got to know bear out.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent history lesson.
Review: I can't even begin to tell you everything that I learned from this book. "Masters of Death" was my text book for my "history of the world wars" class last semester. This book gives you an indepth look into the beginings of Himmler's S.S and their chilling crimes on humanity. "Masters of Death" is a well researched text that gives an uncanny perspective into the final solution with out beging repeative or dull. This book is full with eye witness acounts, survivor testimonies and statments from S.S officals. Backgrounds of S.S big wings like Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann are also included. This book doesn't pull any punches. It gives you exactly what happened how it happened. Be prepaired to read things that amaze and sadden you. This is a powerful book and you'll remember what you read long after your done. I highly recomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to read only because of content
Review: "Masters of Death" author, Richard Rhodes, made the wise decision not to spare readers any of the gory details. It would be a disservice to the dead to in any way trivialize their suffering and unfair to minimize the twisted nature of the perpetrators' minds. Consequently, this thoroughly researched well- written book is a difficult read. I found myself constantly putting the book down to contemplate the horrors visited upon the victims and what manner of man could carry out such deeds.Surely Rhodes has penned the definitive book on the Eisantzgruppen and the early stages of the Holocaust. Rhodes introduces the main characters behind the Final solution, most notably Heinrich Himmler and the biggest "problem" they faced in carrying out their mass slaughter -- how to kill dozens, hundreds, thousands of human beings. The manner in which they discussed this problem and the methods employed to solve it (concluding, finally, with poison gas in extermination camps) are at the crux of this examination of human evil.
"Masters of Death" is an important book for anyone curious about or a student of the Holocaust, World War II, the Nazis or of grander philosophical issues.
Rating:
Summary: Socialization to killing
Review: Masters of Death is a raw and disturbing account of the mobile killing squads that made their insidious way through the occupied territories of the east during the early years of the war. Victims were Jews, partisans, communist officials, and anyone else who happened to get in the way.
I've read most books on nazis and the holocaust, noticing that many of them contain the same stories. Rhodes, however, seems to have uncovered rare eyewitness and perpetrator testimonies, documents, and other research. He does not give watered down versions of events; it's no holds barred in graphic detail. (The story of the infants and toddlers that were locked in that shack were the most difficult pages I've ever read).
Some critics do not like the way Rhodes tends to digress. He throws in his own theories of the nature of evil and violence, sometimes making the reader wonder if this is a book on psychology, philosophy, or the Einsatzgruppen.
These horribly evil men were not made into monsters overnight. The mindset was gradually formed over many years: the years following WW1, when Germans developed an intense hatred of Jews and Bolshevism; and during the early days of the concentration camp system within Germany in the 1930s, when the "Deaths Head" units underwent their brutalization phase. Prisoners then were mainly dissidents, criminals, and social "undesirables." No, there was no mass slaughter at this time, but torture and executions were routine.
There were truly repugnant figures here. Under Himmler, Globocnick seemed to be in charge. I've read about him in other books, and I can tell you that he was a beast in human form, along with Christian Wirth, who oversaw the euthanasia program and helped to set up the "Operation Reinhard" death camps. (Surprisingly, Wirth is never mentioned in this book). Frederich Jeckeln is another official that makes the stomach churn. I don't think his level of cruelty and sadism could be surpassed. (He was known for his "sardine" method of killing.)
The ironic thing is that the brains behind this senseless slaughter- Himmler and Heydrich- were wimps in real life and would never have been able to pull a trigger on anyone.
Members of the Einsatzgruppen were from all socioeconomic levels, and not all of them were callous brutes. Some of them were unable to cope with their grisly task. There are bizarre accounts of nervous breakdowns, suicides, and descents into insanity.
Definitely one of the most powerful and gripping books to come along in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Bearing Witness to an Evil Universe
Review: Masters of Death is the most harrowing book I've ever come across. Many parts I had to repeat several times as I really couldn't believe what I'd just read. Some of the photographs are intensely distressing - beware, there are images you will never delete from your mind once you've seen them. I read the book for the reason that the author said he wrote it - to in a small way bear witness. Because the victims deserve their story to be told. Because although they died silently, the world should not be silent about their deaths. I was in mild shock when I finally finished reading. It was like emerging from an alternate evil universe. We use the word 'evil' too lightly these days. No horror writer could even start to imagine the scale, the scope, the terrible individual detail of these crimes. The magnitude of other mass killings during WWII - the millions later in the gas chambers, the suicidal infrantry assaults by the Red Army against the invading Nazis, not to mention the massive losses still resounding from WWI - for a while obscured the actions of the Einsatzgruppen. Only twenty thousand people shot here, thirty thousand people shot there. Many, many unnamed Babi Yars. Mass graves, unexhumed to this day, all over Eastern Europe. A method called 'Sardinenpackung' is perfected to fit bodies most efficiently into mass graves - a Kepler Conjecture for the evil universe. But each victim is shot singly, personally, up close - Adolf Eichmann, big picture logistics man for the Reich, is disgusted when brains splatter his coat as he inspects an execution. Some very discordant things hang in the air after this book. Not a few of the Einsatzgruppen members are distressed by having to kill babies and children, notwithstanding Hitler's rationalization that the children will just grow up to avenge their parents. Impersonal gassing techniques were then developed to prevent the child-murderers suffering psychological damage from their crimes, although Himmler used such distress to back up his assertions that the SS were really decent human beings at heart - there was just this 'Jewish Problem' and, you know, somebody had to do it. Heinrich Himmler, unfit weakling and squeamish runt, the very last person to be championing genetic quality, went unpunished, as did the vast majority of the Einsatzgruppen. Taking the coward's way out, he took cyanide when captured and was dumped in an unmarked grave. "It was no killing pit, but it would do."
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing. Lest We Forget.
Review: This chilling study brings home to the reader the reality of how the genocide of the Jews and others planned by the Nazis did not actually begin with the mass, "industrial" exterminations in the gas chambers of the Concentration Camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka etc., but with small groups of murderers known as the "Einsatzgruppen". Units which were formed by Himmler and Heydrich immediately before the invasion of the East/Soviet Union and which followed the advancing German Armies. "In depth" is a term that is perhaps sometimes mis-used, but it is deeply appropriate when applied here to this disturbing, detailed study of what can only be described as "cold blooded murder" by these SS murder squads. This thoroughly researched and extremely well written book is at times a "heavy" and "difficult" read. Nevertheless it is indeed a major contribution towards the study of the Nazi Holocaust which describes the construction and utilisation of these Nazi murder squads. Units cited in this work as often consisting of many professional, "educated" men such as lawyers, doctors, architects etc., and who participated in an acutely "personal" manner of murder where some 1.5 million men, women and children were barbarically executed by shooting. The bodies of their victims described as then being disposed of in "killing pits" (often anti-tank ditches, natural ravines or freshly dug pits). Many of the mass graves each containing many thousands of innocent victims, frequently shot one by one and buried layer upon layer. Many of these graves are still marked as memorials to this day. Photographs of some are included in this book. One such massacre described in the book is that at Babi Yar. A ravine where Jewish men, women, and children were systematically machine-gunned in a two-day orgy of execution. Here the Jews in their thousands, with such pathetic belongings as they could carry, were herded into barbed-wire areas at the top of the ravine, guarded by Ukrainian collaborators. There they were stripped of their clothes and beaten, then led in irregular squads down the side of the ravine. The first groups were forced to lie on the ground, face down, and were machine-gunned by the Germans who kept up a steady volley. Their bodies were covered with thin layers of earth and the next groups were ordered to lie over them, to be similarly murdered. To carry out the murder of 34,000 human beings in the space of two days in such a manner is difficult to comprehend. Indeed, much of this book is so disturbing that it is frequently only possible to read in small sections at a time. Photographs are provided showing how some of the 1.5 million innocent Jews and innocent Poles and Russians were marched to such "pits" as these before being lined up and summarily executed. The task of these Units was to kill the Jews on the spot - but not only Jews; communists, Gypsies, political leaders, and the intelligentsia were also killed. The book also describes the beginning of the use of mobile gas "killing vans" where the victims carried in sealed areas to the rear were subjected to the vehicles' exhaust fumes. The graphic detail provided in this work is in itself difficult to read and might upset many readers, but the author makes no effort to trivialise the suffering of the utterly defenceless victims and the cold blooded barbarity of their executors. Many eyewitness accounts and testimonies of those who participated in the slaughter have been uncovered and are used to provide an essential reference and authenticity to the context of this presentation. Early on in the book the writer provides a commentary on the nature of violence and how these "ordinary" men became capable of carrying out such atrocities. The study further documents the impact of these mass murders on the individual perpetrators and the ensuing psychological traumas that many endured. Some readers might disagree with the conclusions drawn here or like myself feel uneasy with the section of the book which tries to fathom the mind-set of these murderers. The study makes specific mention of how Adolf Hitler cherished a fanatic hatred of the Jews and how he personally ensured that the highest priority was placed on their total elimination. The book also analyses how Hitler also intended to enslave and destroy with privation the far more numerous Slavic peoples as well. This is an extremely powerful book and a necessary addition to anyone's library on the Holocaust. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A necessary heart-rip
Review: To read this book is to glimpse into the abyss of hell itself. To read this book is to experience pain at the deepest level of one's being. The pictures of the helpless, naked women and children are almost unbearable. Anyone with his sanity and sense of compassion intact will burn with profound empathy and tremble with violence at these accounts of pure nightmare. Page after page of heartless savagery and nameless graves... The criminological background of the author brings a much-needed interpretive edge, providing insight to unspeakable monstrosity. This should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Evil Men.
Review: There is no excuse. The guys from SS were simply evil men. There's no reasonable explanation for the killing they did against civilians, women and children. Well, you can argue that the United States did the same when droping the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagazaky... In short, war is hell, but the metodic killing of millions of people was something never heard about in the history of mankind, and that was executed by a people (the German people) teoretically highly developed, lovers of philisophy, arts and music. It's simply unbeliavable.
Rating:
Summary: True terror
Review: Powerful book. Particularly heart wrenching for me since I have a two year old son. Rhodes' book upset me to the point that my wife noticed and asked why was I reading it if it bothred me so? I said any suffering this is causing me is nothing compared to the suffering Rhodes describes. I didn't particularly care for the psychoanalysis parts. Mainly because it seemed somewhat out of place in a history book. I'm sure everyone has said or heard someone say why did the Jews "let" themselves be killed? I loved how Rhodes wrote how Eichman and Blobel (an Einsatzgruppen commander) walked willingly to their own executions after the war. Highly recommended.
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