Rating: 
Summary: Read It Carefully
Review: Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes recounts the terrible history of the Einsatzgruppen from 1941 to 1943. At a time in which popular thinking about the Holocaust has been essentially reduced to, and sanitized as, the notion that Germans committed atrocities and approximately 6 million people died, Rhodes' book replaces faceless statistics with names, events, and places. Through the extensive use of first-person accounts by perpetrators and surviving victims, the book reflects the absolute horror and depravity of the many mass murders, which also seems to have been lost or forgotten in the popular imagination. One of the more astonishing parts of the book are excerpts of letters sent by an SS man to his family in which he alludes to his activities while taking the tone of a devoted father and husband. The book yet again dispels the notion that the Germans through the SS organization acted alone in perpetrating these crimes. Masters of Death is an awful read due to the content -- the text is easy on the eye, but brutal to the imagination. It leaves a haunting impression and could possibly give the reader nightmares. It is an important work because it focuses on, and brings attention to, a part of the Holocaust which is mostly overshadowed in Holocaust literature by a concentration on the activities in the death camps.However, the work contains fatal flaws which the author could have avoided. One factual error is the statement that President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy, on December 11, 1941, and that Hitler responded by declaring war later the same day. The historical record indicates that Roosevelt declared war on Japan on December 8. He declared war on Germany and Italy on December 11 in response to declarations by Germany and Italy earlier that day. Rhodes also uses two excerpts from the alleged autobiography "The Black March" by Peter Neumann. Unfortunately, as I understand it, Neumann's book was long ago revealed to be a fake -- the name is a pseudonym and the author never served in military or SS. These are perhaps minor points, but one is left to wonder about the author's facts and assertions regarding shadowy and controversial matters when he does not seem to be careful about less controversial issues that are easily researched. Rhodes also expends considerable ink to present Lonnie Athen's "violent socialization" model in an effort to explain the violent and barbaric acts of the perpetrators. In the course of the book, Rhodes fails to demonstrate the validity of the model. The best he can obtain is the ridiculous assertion that the perpetrators acted as they did because of disciplinary brutalization as children and that the victims did not generally resist because European Jews brutalized their children less than Gentiles. Rhodes also occasionally inserted what seem to be personal or sarcastic comments which detracted from the flow of the text and the presentation of information. The latter part of the history felt rushed with a seemingly abrupt ending. This reviewer would have liked to seen more material on the SS's efforts to cover the crimes and the early efforts on the part of the Allies to discover the truth. Rhodes also does a good job of implicating various elements of the German military, police, and intelligence, agencies in the crimes of the Einsatzgruppen. He made numerous references to the role played by the Waffen SS. There is a persistent , and seemingly expanding modern trend, to present the Waffen SS as an elite band of warriors untainted by atrocities or war crimes. I applaud Rhodes' references on this score, but I would have liked to have seen more information regarding specific Waffen SS units and the number and identities of Waffen SS personnel involved in the crimes. Specificity of facts is to the deniers as direct sunlight is to mold. I recommend that one read this book , not for the author's weak theories and observations, but rather for the story, for the brutal descriptions, and for understanding the calculated nature of the murder process. Read the book with a critical eye, and do not leave it as the first and last word on the subject. Use it as a stepping stone to other works regarding this topic. Most of all, read it to remember.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm 83 years old, I was in Hanau Germany, we knew
Review: The reason why I bought this book was to understand if the writing would prove true. Well it certainly proved right. In the summer of 1941 we all knew the horror had began, it was on a scale of which could not be concealed within the borders of Duetch Land. As time progressed, the crimes progressed to outward flaunting, scenes which I am sure I cannot speak here, but the book does that. I can say with 100% certainty this is an accurate account and recommend. I wish to recommend a wonderful book which goes further, SB:1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox
Rating: 
Summary: A book long overdue
Review: The shelves of the literature on the Holocaust have for too long been without a volume describing the men and the operations of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile murder squads that were unleashed upon Europe in the wake of the German invasion of Poland and, later, the Soviet Union. Richard Rhodes undertook to write such a book and the result is "Masters of Death". It is not an easy book to read, and there is no reason that it should be. It is a chronicle of stunning, almost mind-numbing, cruelty and death. Significantly, and perhaps most importantly, Rhodes attempts to create a history that reaches beyond the impersonal body count of victims with which so many books on subjects such as this are concerned. Rhodes examines the perpetrators themselves, the men who served in these killing squads and those who led them. In doing so he delves into theories that have been created to account for violent behavior and he strives to apply them to these uniformed killers. It seems that he does not readily accept that many of them were, as Professor Christopher Browning described them,"Ordinary Men". I believe that Rhodes fell short of the mark here. Himmler seems to me portrayed as little more than a two-dimensional desk killer, and despite the application of behavioral theories and the examination of social and political backrounds, I completed this book still convinced that Professor Browning was, frighteningly, much closer to the truth in his characterization of the SS and Police personnel who filled out the ranks of the Einsatzgruppen. But neither this book nor Browning's compelling "Ordinary Men" should stand alone at this point. They should be read together, for in placing them side by side we have a more complete picture than we have ever had before of a time when there was an indescribable darkness upon the earth, a darkness in mens' hearts, a darkness that was spread across the sky by funeral pyres created of human beings stacked like cordwood.
Rating:
Summary: Tells the tale of modern genocide
Review: A grim tale of the Shoah's early years, delivered by accomplished journalist and Pulitzer-winning historian Rhodes (Why They Kill, 1999, etc.). The Final Solution, he acknowledges, was inherent in the founding premises of the Hitler regime, but its mechanisms were refined only gradually, after hastily organized massacres committed by "ordinary men" led to the development of the vastly more efficient death camps. Exploring familiar themes of psychopathology and technology put to evil uses, Rhodes writes that the scarcely controlled violence of the SS Einsatzgruppen in Nazi-occupied portions of Eastern Europe effectively brutalized German soldiers, setting in motion a violent cycle that could become only more virulent: "a vicious circle . . . whereby the perversion of discipline bred increasing barbarism, which in turn further brutalized discipline." Yet this sort of catch-as-catch-can war on the enemies of the Nazi state was just a shade too nasty for the SS leadership, which worried about creating "neurotics or brutes" on the Eastern Front who might later become disciplinary problems at home. Heinrich Himmler, Rhodes writes, was shocked by witnessing an incident in Russia in which German soldiers lost their nerve and "shot badly," wounding two Jewish women who writhed before him on the ground; he screamed at the firing squad to put the women out of their misery. Himmler apparently had no such qualms about the bloodless-and, in his estimation, more humane-dispatch of his victims by means of nerve gas, which prompted the development of large-scale killing factories such as Auschwitz and Sobibor. Drawing heavily on first-person accounts and official documents, the author contributes to our understanding of how the Final Solution was put into motion and how it subsequently evolved. Though the explorations in mass psychology may not convince all readers, Rhodes exposes the industrial logic that underlies modern genocide.
Rating:
Summary: A memorial in print
Review: Rhodes has written a memorial in print to the victims of the holocaust. Too often, histories of this subject devolve into numbers or catalogs of atrocities. Rhodes has been able to convey the humanity of the victims and give a searing sense of the inhumanity of the perpetrators. His use of personal accounts and documentary evidence is masterful and moved me deeply. His character studies of the perpetrators, particularly Himmler, are enlightening and chilling. This book should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written, insightful and worth the read
Review: Rhodes is an excellent writer who manages to convey the Einsatzgruppen's activities with a good degree of accuracy. There are some minor mistakes, already mentioned by others, but the book offers a good introduction to the subject, especially as most of the other books on the Einsatzgruppen have not been translated into English. The book presents an overview of their activities, along with testimony from both victims, witnesses and perpetrators. The book provides a look at the higher level decisions and the ground level activities. The book probably serves best as a history for the general reader, although it does provide vivid descriptions and psychological insights that even the scholar would like. That it was written by a journalist is not that noticeable, and the book is definitely worth the read.
For a more detailed, scholarly approach, I would recommend the works of Krausnick (slightly obsolete), Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Ogorreck, Angrick, Streim, the Lageberichte published in Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion, or the Ereignismeldungen available on microfilm from the National Archives in Washington.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Readable Look at a Neglected Topic
Review: The role that the Einsatzgruppen played in the formation of the Holocaust is a vitally important topic, but one that is often given short shrift by historians and journalists. This book, therefore, would be an important one even if it weren't so well-written and readable.
And it really is an excellent book. If it's not the most minutely-detailed or profound book in the world, it's very readable, as I said, and punches home the horror and tragedy of the story with considerable force. It's like Martin Gilbert's THE HOLOCAUST in that regard.
And Rhodes's use of Lonnie Athens's theories about the genesis of violent criminal behavior (so well-covered in WHY THEY KILL) gives the book an added dimension.
Is there any nonfiction American writer today with anything like Rhodes's diversity of interests, broad mind, and narrative skills? I can't think of anyone else who comes close.
Rating:
Summary: To leave no Doubts
Review: This is a very well written book about the Horrors that the German Especial Action Squads committed. The author goes on a very linear path to show you month by month after Operation barbarossa started about how these action groups operated. That keeps you from getting lost. He shows you great maps of the areas. Tells you about Himmler, the man responsible for ordering these horrid acts. Finally, he makes you stop every once in a while, to think about the poor, poor people who went through this. They are dead of course, more than one million of them.
The Holocaust is viewed by many as just the Extermination camps, the gas that was used to kill the victims and the huge ovens. Well, before all that could be started, Himmler and the German State authorized a less "humane" way as they put it, to get rid of it's main enemies, the Jews. The author describes the main cites were these massacres took place, moslty in Russia. At times you feel like you are right there, with the victims, in line with them, getting ready to meet the end. That's when you have to stop and hope nothing like this happens again. But then you see that it has, in Yugoslavia, and other places in Africa. We can never learn because hate blinds everything, even your heart.
For many the end came when it shouldn't have. Germany had to be stopped and defeated so that these people would cease doing these horrible things. A quote from the book came from Himmler himself who said "in this Iron age, we have to sweep with Iron brooms" He was a man who ordered many to be killed but who could never do it himself. Read this book and understand why their can be no doubt, Germany had to be stopped.
Rating: 
Summary: He forget s to mention the other killers!
Review: There's no denying that the Final Solution did take place, but why the fixation on the sufferings of the Jews and the Germans as perpetrators?
How about researches on the atrocities and massacres, well documented in period photos and reports, performed willingly by the Slavs (Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Russians), Hungarians, the Latins (Italians, French, Greeks), the lesser Aryans (Dutch, Belgains) against the Jews?
.What about the ones they inflicted on Palestinians? Or the ones Stalin and Mao visited on their own fellow countrymen, on a much bigger scale? Or the ones the French infliccted on the Algerians?Where are the cries of indignation?
Rating:
Summary: The Early Pase of the Holocaust on the Eastern Front
Review: Masters of Death is a difficult book to read, at times almost unbearable. It is an examination of the early years of the Holocaust, illuminating for the first time the monstrous evil of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile death squads who followed along behind the Nazi combat troops, executing more than one and a half million innocent human beings. Rhodes shows us that educated German professionals commanded the killing teams carrying out such massive crimes as the massacre at the killing pits of Babi Yar. He has provided us with evidence of just how evil the Nazis were and how deep the depths of depravity can be
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