Preface to the New Edition

When this book first came out in 1982 it was widely recognised as a unique reference guide to the leading personalities of the Third Reich. In a compact, easily accessible form it focused on top-ranking party leaders, SS and Gestapo personnel, diplomats, administrators, outstanding Wehrmacht generals and army commanders, industrialists, jurists and churchmen. Apart from these pillars of the regime, it also included life portraits of artists, scientists, academics and other intellectuals. There were profiles of entertainers, sportsmen and other celebrities, prominent at the time, if largely forgotten today. I made a special point of including opponents as well as proponents of the regime, both the resistance fighters and the distinguished writers and scientists who fled from Nazi Germany for racial or political reasons. This wide selection enabled the book to provide a more rounded picture of all aspects of life under Hitler and to relieve somewhat the almost unbearable litany of evil that inevitably springs from its pages. From the outset I was determined to break with the usual format of the Who's Who, in order to provide much more than a mere catalogue of names, ranks, dates and numbers. I wanted this to be a book which is not only objective and reliable as a work of reference, but which is also incisive, lively and readable from beginning to end. Hence I have permitted myself the use of pointed quotation, implicit approval or criticism, the note of black humour, the scathing irony or touch of biting sarcasm where necessary. In dealing with such a scale of inhumanity and cruelty, a completely dispassionate and value-free approach would itself surely be suspect. Nevertheless, as reviewers noted at the time in both Britain and Germany, this is not a deliberately judgemental book. It allows the broader story of Hitler's Germany to emerge naturally from the chilling detail of the individual biographies. This book can and should be read not simply as a kind of dictionary or reference guide but also as a collection of nightmarish short stories which I doubt that any fiction-writer could have made up. It is a world where smooth elite figures, dull apparatchiks, corrupt judges, lawyers and opportunist academics rub shoulders with vicious Gestapo officials and SS murderers; where brilliant generals mix with scholars, writers, playboys and stars of stage and screen; where criminals, dissidents and artists come together as actors in a singular drama whose reverberations are still being felt to this day. Where else, except in a book like this, can one find Martin Heiddeger alongside Heydrich, Karajan with Kaltenbrunner, Richard Strauss next to Julius Streicher? By interweaving these stories together, I have sought to illuminate the connection between the aesthetic and the barbaric, the normal and the homicidal, the everyday banality and the criminality of the Third Reich. We can surely learn most about the Nazi regime and the wicked ideology which it so ruthlessly implemented by studying the people who made it up, through their individual life-histories. This involves much more than simply dealing with the hard-core of the Nazi Party; hence the effort in this guide to encompass as broad a cross-section of German society as possible, within the limitations of available space. Wherever possible I have also sought to record the careers of the individuals included in this volume after World War II. Not only was this information generally lacking elsewhere but by pinpointing these details I have been able to show some of the inadequacies and failings in the de-Nazification process. Post-war German courts often handed down derisory sentences and many war criminals were released long before their time was served. This book demonstrates just how easily SS and Gestapo personnel, jurists, bureaucrats, bankers and industrialists involved in the Nazi regime could continue successful careers after 1945, as if nothing had happened. Today, fifty years after the end of the Third Reich, such a reference volume is more than ever necessary. With the revival of the siren-call of fascism and Nazism in Germany and much of Europe, with the denial of the Holocaust and efforts at relativizing the history of the Third Reich, the need for reliable and accessible information is paramount. I have accordingly updated and extended the earlier edition, adding some new entries and bibliography. May this book serve both as a guide and a warning to those born after 1945, to guard preciously the flame of freedom. Back

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