Heinrich Himmler by Peter Longerich

One of the major personal tragedies of the Second World War is that Heinrich Himmler, man of evil, did not meet the hangman's noose. Like his fellow Nazi, Goering, he took his own life with cyanide. If you were a captive in his hands, you would have a right to shudder, for Himmler was a living nightmare.

It is reckoned that ten million died through his barbaric influence. Yet, if you met him while strolling in the park, you would barely recognise him. For he was a person with outwardly no oustanding qualities. He was a man who got the job done, a control freak who created the SS literally as his own empire. Himmler was the iconic armchair murderer.

A former agricultural student, Himmler rose to a position of unparalleled power as Hitler himself put his stamp on the nation.

There were two areas in which his penchant for terror were to be put in force — the sinister repression of the German people themselves and the atrocities committed by his SS thugs in the east, culminating in the Holocaust.

Longerich, in this giant of a book, has written a definitive history. He brilliantly entwines Himmler’s personal life with his propensity for monumental destruction. It is the mystery of Himmler’s personality and the motivation for his “monstrous deeds” that fascinate. The heart of it, says Longerich, is the police chief’s ability to blend ideology with power politics in different strands of his career.

Finally, as mass murder took place in far-flung regions of Germany and Eastern Europe, it was the ruthless bespectacled man behind the desk who controlled the killing.