Her book “Die Brüder Himmler” was published in 2005 and translated into English in 2007, ‘The Himmler Brothers’ (Pan Macmillan), it has been translated into more than ten languages. Please Note: By their very nature, all signed books will have been handled several times before they get to you. There are parallels , extremism ,this time of a religious nature is rearing its ugly head again throughout the world ,again ordinary well educated individuals are having their minds poisoned by a few who simply want power for themselves ,collectively we have the power to nip it in the bud and banish it forever , but do we have the courage ?

It should be read not only by anyone who is interested in the history of the period but also by everyone who doesn't want to see it repeated. I wanted to give my son as much information as possible, so that when he starts asking questions about my family, at least I can answer him.

Heinrich grew up to become the head of Hitler's SS, mastermind of the concentration camp system and chief perpetrator of the Holocaust. I think Katrin Himmler has been very brave to tackle this subject , imagine having had Heinrich in YOUR family ? As she grew older, Katrin gave her family history a wide berth, but married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and with a young, half-Jewish son, she realizes that she cannot evade the past so easily. Briefe eines Massenmörders“ (Piper) and, at the same time, „Heinrich Himmler d’après sa correspondance avec sa femme 1927-1945“ (Plon).

In the end, The Himmler Brothers raises more questions about its subject than it is capable of answering, but that doesn't lessen in the slightest my admiration of Katrin Himmler for having written it. Having seen Germany prosper and then disintegrate during the years between the wars, they would have felt Hitler had help make Germany strong again. For her this was a turning point: she realised once and for all just how deeply her grandfather and her great-uncle Gebhard were in thrall to their brother's murderous racial policies. Although most of us do not have war criminals in our family tree we all have one or two relatives that we neither wish to brag about or discuss.Originally written as self-therapy, the book stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of guilt the Nazis left behind for future generations. 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 and a more nuanced portrait of Heinrich himself emerges - not a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family. For reasons she does not quite explain, he wanted to see if they shed light on what his father and uncle got up to while their brother was achieving notoriety. 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.

While a portrait of a specific family, it shows how inculcated cultural beliefs along with the aftermath of WW1 which humiliated German pride and the political turmoil between democracy, communism, and the extreme right, provided fertile soil for the nightmare of the Nazi platform. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. He brought his brothers and family down with him and the book shows how self delusion can mask the most horrible of crimes against humanity. Fischer Verlag and in 2007 in English by Macmillan as The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History.Gebhard served in the German Army in World War I, but Heinrich, who at 18 was still an officer cadet when the war ended, was too young to see frontline service.

Robert Hawks, however, wrote in The Independent: "Katrin does try to turn some equivocal evidence into revelations of her family's complicity, but her prosecutorial stance gets in the way of empathy. The Himmler Brothers raises more questions than it answers, but that doesn't lessen in the slightest my admiration of Katrin Himmler for having written it.

She is the granddaughter of Ernst Himmler (1905–1945), who was the younger brother of Heinrich Himmler, one of the leading figures of Nazi Germany. I would say this is a must read ,and could be used in schools as part of the curriculum when teaching what intolerance leads to , Fascists whichever colour , pray on ignorance and the ignorant to further their ends ,it should be noted that both the Hitler family and the Himmler family were both Catholic and much of their influences originated from that belief system , it is shown that Heinrich in particular was very pious ,although not necessarily the dominant one in his early life , he very often scolded his brothers for minor insurrections and also had an inferiority complex due to being weak due to illness ,he was also very poor at sport as a result , I think in later life he just wanted to Be Somebody ,and with the ingrained militarism and religious background of the family we all know which path he chose . That she was able to take on the challenge of writing about a relative which most people would never admit to, and to do so in such a candid and objective manner is admirable.