The family history of Heinrich Himmler and his two brothers Gebhard and Ernst, as told by his great-niece.

There’s a lot of fascinating backstory in this book, and it explains a lot. It portrays Heinrich Himmler as very much the product of a middle-class, socially ambitious family who pushed him relentlessly to succeed and only seemed really to embrace him after he achiveed visible success as a Reichstag deputy and then later as Reichsführer-SS. The author, Katrin, has access to lots of family papers and photographs that have never been explored before, as well as being able to talk informally to Heinrich’s brothers’ children about their experiences. This makes this a profoundly personal exploration of Heinrich’s rise and fall.

That’s also its weakness, of course, of which Katrin herself is well aware: it was cleaerly not an easy book to write, and one led her to realise how much families re-write their own histories – understandbaly so in the light of what happened. It also means the the book as a whole concentrates on the domestic side of Heinrich’s life, which can be jarring: the period from him being a secretary to leading the SS is covered in less than a page. Overall, though, there’s a lot of keen insight provided into the making of a monster.

4/5. Finished Thursday 22 August, 2024.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)