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Hitler's Hangman

The Life of Heydrich

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Hitler's Hangman

By: Robert Gerwarth
Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
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About this listen

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany.

Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward recreating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe.

©2011 Robert Gerwarth (P)2016 Tantor 20th Century Europe Germany Historical Military Military & War Modern World War II War Holocaust Imperialism Socialism Soviet Union Russia Interwar Period

Critic Reviews

"This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous." ( The Wall Street Journal)
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Detailed and delivered well showing his strengths and weaknesses Great listen well worth your time for history buffs

The amount of detail

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Where does Hitler's Hangman rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

For those interested in this subject the book is very good

Who was your favorite character and why?

Heydrich given the book was about his life story

Which scene did you most enjoy?

The assassination scene when one of the assins gun jams while standing in front of the car

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Ambition by nature

Any additional comments?

No

A chilling insite into a ambitious monster

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A well researched and written story of a Nazi. Encompasses a more political social side of the German peoples of that time.

Well researched and written.

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A product of Nazism Heydrich layed the foundations for the holocaust. A brutal read and stark reminder of how the Nazis murdered so many. Well read by Ryan.

Brutal!

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reinhard was such an interesting complex man.easy to say he was a monster or blonde beast but Robert has really tried to disect his story. can one admit that I had admiration for him one minute and then had to remember what he was responsible for.you can cosplay dearth vader but never heydrich .

a man without a heart

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Meticulously researched and interestingly narrated, with direct quotes clearly articulated by tonal changes, this is history that must be heard. It is also a psychological study of the accelerating descent into the self-justifying, exculpatory madness of a regime and an individual who hitched their wagons to a perverted ideology founded on a prejudicial and amoral inhumanity.

Detailed Portrait of a Living Nightmare

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