Katrin Himmler's cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story reveals - in all its dark complexity - the gulf between the 'normality' of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member. This riveting family memoir provides essential new information on the private life and background of one of the twentieth- century's most notorious killers - not a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family. It also offers a unique account of one women's courageous attempt to deal with her chilling inheritance.
'It is part of the creeping discomfort in reading her book to realise the incredibly ordinary middle-class background of these three sons of a rather pompous provincial headmaster and to see how, right until the end, he was almost able to convince himself it hadn't happened like it had' Sunday Times
'You get a vivid sense of a particular kind of German conservatism - Roman Catholic, monarchist - and of how, weirdly, it found an outlet in the upstart, part-pagan thuggery of Nazism' Independent
'One can only admire her bravery . . . In a way, Katrin Himmler's book is not a story about the past, but one about the present. The most interesting details are the ones she gives of her own quest' Daily Telegraph
- ISBN10 0330448145
- ISBN13 9780330448147
- Publish Date 20 June 2008 (first published 6 July 2007)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 31 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Macmillan
- Edition Unabridged edition
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 384
- Language English