Masters of Death - Richard Rhodes

In Masters of Death,Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen's
role in the Holocaust. These "special task forces," organized by Heinrich Himmler
to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the
agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million
men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing
pits, as at Babi Yar.

These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated
by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking
account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign's
architects as well as its "ordinary" soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand
how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of
documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential
contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.