very well documented Mail on Sunday A superbly researched account Booklist a work of staggering scholarship Literary Review splendid Sunday Telegraph A masterpiece. Richard J. Evans A highly impressive biography, resting on exhaustive exploration of available sources. Ian Kershaw Gigantic book The Sunday Times Splendid...Longerich gives it a depth and breadth it has previously lacked. Sunday Telegraph

Abbreviatons and Glossary; Prologue; PART I: HIMMLER'S EARLY YEARS; 1. Childhood and Youth; 2. The Student of Agriculture; 3. Struggle and Renunciation; 4. A New Start in Lower Bavaria; 5. The Party Functionary; 6. Reichsfuhrer SS; PART II: INSIDE THE THIRD REICH; 7. The Take-Over of the Political Police; 8. From Inspector of the Prussian Gestapo to Chief of the German Police; 9. The State Protection Corps; PART III: THE ORDER; 10. Ideology and Religious Cult; 11. Himmler's Leadership Style; 12. Himmler as Educator; 13. The SS Family; PART IV: INTO WAR: AMBITION AND DISAPPOINTMENT; 14. War Preparations and Expansion; 15. War and Settlement in Poland; 16. A New Racial Order; 17. Repression in the Reich; 18. Shifting Borders: The Year 1940; PART V: THE GREATER GERMANIC REICH: LIVING SPACE AND ETHNIC MURDER; 19. An Ideological War of Annihilation; 20. From Mass Murder to the 'Final Solution'; 21. The Murder of the European Jews; 22. Settlement Policy and Racial Selection; 23. The 'Iron Law of Ethnicity': Recruitment into the Waffen-SS; 24. A Europe-wide Reign of Terror; PART VI: DOWNFALL IN STAGES; 25. A Turn in the War - A New Opportunity?; 26. Collapse; Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index