Summary of Richard Rhodes's Masters of Death

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 In 1941, a police academy in Pretzsch, a town on the Elbe River about fifty miles southwest of Berlin, became the site of a sinister assembly. Thousands of men from the SS, the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, were ordered to report for training and assignment. They were not told what their assignment would be, but their commonalities suggested they would be sent to Russia.

#2 By the spring of 1941, Poland had been decapitated. The Führer belabored the generals and field marshals of the Wehrmacht with an impassioned harangue about the need to destroy Poland and create a new German eastern frontier.

#3 During the first weeks after the invasion, while the Wehrmacht still controlled the occupied areas, towns and villages were burned, and 16,376 people were killed by the German army and police.

#4 The SS began to carry out mass killings of Jews in Poland in October 1939, just three months after the invasion. The Einsatzgruppen commanders specifically concerning the Jewish question in the occupied territory wrote that they needed to carry out measures within a shorter period of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669386957

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Insights on Richard Rhodes's Masters of Death

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1941, a police academy in Pretzsch, a town on the Elbe River about fifty miles southwest of Berlin, became the site of a sinister assembly. Thousands of men from the SS, the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, were ordered to report for training and assignment. They were not told what their assignment would be, but their commonalities suggested they would be sent to Russia.

#2

By the spring of 1941, Poland had been decapitated. The Führer belabored the generals and field marshals of the Wehrmacht with an impassioned harangue about the need to destroy Poland and create a new German eastern frontier.

#3

During the first weeks after the invasion, while the Wehrmacht still controlled the occupied areas, towns and villages were burned, and 16,376 people were killed by the German army and police.

#4

The SS began to carry out mass killings of Jews in Poland in October 1939, just three months after the invasion. The Einsatzgruppen commanders specifically concerning the Jewish question in the occupied territory wrote that they needed to carry out measures within a shorter period of time.

#5

The Eimann Battalion, an SS regiment that had been in the Free City of Danzig before the war, recruited several thousand members and sent them to an auxiliary police unit that was named after them. They were sent to kill Polish political prisoners in a forest.

#6

The secret annex to Germany’s nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union had divided Poland between the two powers. To claim Russia’s share of the spoils, the Red Army had invaded Poland from the east on 17 September 1939. The transfer of populations foundered as the demands of war production exposed the recklessness of deporting useful manpower.

#7

The Wehrmacht had conducted mass executions while it was still fighting to subdue Poland, but the excesses of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland disturbed the army leadership. They were not concerned with the victims’ suffering, but with the effect of the killings on the character and morale of Wehrmacht soldiers.

#8

The three-week course at Pretzsch in June 1941 involved only minimal training. The men and the NCOs had the opportunity to go on a range and fire their weapons. They were given lectures on honor and duty, and were told that they would be dealing with subhuman people.

#9

The Wehrmacht was preparing a surprise attack against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, which began on 22 June 1941. The four Einsatzgruppen were attached to Army Groups North, Center, South, and Ukraine, respectively.

#10

The four Einsatzkommandos of Einsatzgruppe A and the headquarters staff would have been issued field radios and possibly teletype machines for communication. The units would have had at least one