100 books like RSHA Reich Security Main Office

One of the strangest characters of the Nazi regime was Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic German born in Estonia and educated in Latvia.

He was one of Hitler’s closest friends from the 1920s. He is often viewed as the chief ideologue of the Nazi Party. After the War, his personal diary was discovered. It commenced in 1935. His activities before that are insufficiently documented, but important details of what he was doing in 1929 were revealed by Heinrich Pfeifer, who was recruited by Rosenberg to be his personal aide in that year, when Pfeifer was only 24 years old.

Wittman and Kinney have written this important book reporting on what was found in Rosenberg’s revealing diary, and it is a riveting read. To find the private diaries of senior people is most revealing, and very rare. Rosenberg was a weird fellow, but then which Nazi leader wasn’t? 

This crucial book was originally published by Putnam’s, New York, in 1941. 

Riess admitted in his autobiography (which exists only in German) that the book was largely a compilation of material from various sources, much of it handed to him personally by Robert Vansittart, the head of British Intelligence at the time. Large portions of the book were in fact written by Heinrich Pfeifer, and supplied to British Intelligence, part of it on Pfeifer’s two trips to London, and part passed across via Vansittart’s agent Walker in Lucerne.

Riess was a Jewish refugee from Germany who was trusted by Vansittart to aid him in helping to persuade the American public to enter the War against Germany. The book is one of the most astonishing books of its kind ever written, full of breathtaking revelations. It deserves to be widely known and to be a classic text for historical studies.

Its… show more.

This book was originally published by Doubleday, New York, in 1944. This book also contains material obtained from Heinrich Pfeifer, not only from Pfeifer’s own experience but from Pfeifer’s secret network of sympathisers and informants deep within the Nazi Establishment.

It is alarming in the extreme, detailing as it does how the Nazis of the SS and SD had since 1943 started planning to metastasize their doctrines all round the world, and found a Nazi International organisation, with the eventual hope of creating a Fourth Reich which was not dependent upon the territory of Germany, but was spread across the world invisibly, so that no armies could ever conquer it.

They planned the ratlines and escape routes to all the friendly countries such as Argentina and Chile. Their ratline HQ was in Madrid, with the full cooperation of the Franco Government. One of the two chief organisers was SS Lieutenant… show more.

This is a lively and shocking book, exposing countless Nazi wartime spies and sympathisers in Britain, with their stories and photos of them. One of them was Major General John F. C. Fuller.

When I was very young, I knew several people who knew him and spoke of him warmly. He was greatly admired for his book on Alexander the Great. These friends often said they were hoping to introduce me to him, but it never happened. They thought I would find him interesting because of his knowledge of ancient Greece.

None of them appeared to be aware that Fuller was a fanatical anti-Semite and fascist who had supported Hitler. So easily did he survive the War and retain some admirers into the 1960s. Fuller was famous as a genius of modern armored warfare and had countless admirers in the Army. He had written 45 books. He died in 1966.… show more.

Famous for his crookbacked sleuth Shardlake series, CJ Sansom sets this standalone counter-factual historical thriller in 1950s Britain – one where the United Kingdom had capitulated to Nazi Germany in 1940 (with Lord Halifax and not Winston Churchill becoming prime minister) and has become a German client state. It conjures up the 1950s – the smog, the coal smoke, the tea shops – while sketching out an alternate reality, one which is highly plausible, thereby doing one of the things I love best about historical fiction – showing us how different things could easily have been and shaking us from any complacency. More than this, Dominion is a highly effective thriller, as civil servant David Fitzgerald becomes the man in the middle of a politico-spy page-turner that keeps you guessing till the end.

Studying the history of the German occupation of France must include a knowledge of Gestapo history and its crimes against humanity. This book is an introductory overview of the German security forces (RSHA) and in particular, Amt IV, or the Gestapo. The book focuses on the Gestapo forces in Paris and how they interacted with other security units including the Sicherheitdienst (SD), or Nazi political intelligence agency (Amt VI).

The author was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944 after he was caught as a saboteur in the Combat resistance movement. During his post-war career, Delarue was called as a prosecution witness at Klaus Barbie’s trial, and he was assigned to investigate the French war criminal, Paul Touvier. I recommend this book to anyone who needs an overview of the Gestapo from Berlin to Paris.

Peter Kupfer travels back to Germany on several occasions to delve into the business his father was forced to abandon because of the Nuremberg Laws, helping him understand his father – and especially, his father’s emotional distance, and shows how Jews after the Shoah plunged ahead with their lives with something between stoicism and nihilism, which made it difficult for subsequent generations to understand their own emotions. 

Fatherland was the first book I read by Robert Harris and from then on, I’ve read all his books except his latest publication.

The novel is an alternative history narrative, the plot a murder mystery set in Nazi Germany in the 1950s. Yes, you read that right. What if Hitler won World War 2? The allies have negotiated a treaty with Hitler and the world is a very different place.

The main character, Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, investigates the death of an old man and as he delves into the murder, he discovers a conspiracy that involves the Gestapo.

I’ve recommended this book to friends and colleagues and all have enjoyed the story. While the setting is more contemporary than the other four titles, this is definitely worth reading.

Elizabeth Wein’s young adult novel about female friends and aviators during World War II has a jaw-dropping twist.

But it’s also a fabulous introduction to both the larger war-time history—including in England and France--and the history of women in aviation and military/ intelligence roles.

This story is a great choice for families with girls, who get to see themselves as heroines, fighters, and adventurers—roles traditionally reserved for male protagonists.

A fantastic work of a surefooted wordsmith takes an equally talented translator to carry it across the linguistic barrier in a way that makes it a literary treat in its own right.

I’m envious of Breon Mitchell’s limpid linguistic manoeuvering that has rendered the German modern classic very enjoyable in English. The narration set in Nazi times as told by a dwarf – who is rather unlikeable by all counts – is an ingenious technique of stripping bad politics to its bare bones and laying out the nonsense that remains.

It is political without being political. There are signs galore in the book for metaphor hunters, but I simply revelled in the language of this remarkable debut work.