Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust-Fast Shipping

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In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’srole in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmlerto follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were theagents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 millionmen, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killingpits, as at Babi Yar.

These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimatedby Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstakingaccount, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’sarchitects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understandhow such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array ofdocuments and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essentialcontribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.