Waterstones Hanns and Rudolf
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Price: £12.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: __THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE JQ WINGATE PRIZE 2015SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD'A gripping thriller, an unspeakable crime, an essential history.' JOHN LE CARRÉ __ Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s, becoming an investigator of war crimes. Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children. The hunt was on. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators, Rudolf Höss his most elusive target. In this book Thomas Harding reveals for the very first time the full account of Höss' capture. Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s, to the horror of the concentration camps and the trials in Belsen and Nuremberg, Hanns and Rudolf tells the story of two German men whose lives diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780099559054
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9780099559054
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Author: S Riaz
Rating: 5
Review: The author of this absorbing book was surprised to discover, at his great-uncle's funeral, that his relative was the man who tracked down war criminal Rudolf Hoss. In this engaging work, he tells the story of two men's lives in an honest and sympathetic manner. Harding parallels their biographies - Rudolf Hoss, born in 1901 in Baden-Baden, whose father had decided he would join the priesthood, but who joined the army to fight in WWI at the age of fourteen and who was a Commander at just sixteen years old; an odd mix of family man and committed National Socialist. Hanns Alexander, meanwhile, was born in 1933 to a rich and influential family, his father, an eminant doctor, was initially reluctant to even consider leaving Germany until the danger became too great. Luckily, Dr Alexander was visiting his married daughter in London when it became evident that he was to be arrested and the family managed to finally meet up again in England. When war broke out, both Hanns and his twin brother Paul were determined to enlist. This work takes us through the war years, where Hoss recalled how Himmler gave him personal orders to Auschwitz to become, "a site of mass annihilation." Zyklon B provided a cheap and quick method of killing hundreds of people at a time. Later, Hoss chillingly recalled how solving the problem of the mechanism for mass murder meant that, "now my mind was at ease." As the war neared its end, the Allies created a database of alleged war criminals and the Commandant of Auschwitz was high on that list. However, the British war crimes response was not seen as of major importance until British troops entered Belsen. Hanns Alexander was chosen for the first ever war crimes investigation team, first as an interpreter and later as a war crimes investigator. When Hanns arrived at Belsen his shock, rage and purpose was palpable - he knew that what happened in the concentration camps could easily have happened to him had he stayed in Germany. Hanns vowed to hunt down missing war criminals, especially Kommandant Hoss. How Hoss was tracked down and what happened to him at the close of the war is unveiled, often reading more like a thriller than a factual account. The author has really managed to write a book which is immensely readable, interesting and sympathetic to all the people he writes about; which, frankly, is more than Hoss deserves. His complete inability to realise what he was accountable for is truly shocking; his crimes almost defy belief. This, however, is an important book - it is a thrilling story of justice and the search for a man trying to evade capture, an account of how people forced to leave their country started again and the biography of two very different men. It is Rudolf Hoss's normality which shocks you when you consider even a small number of the crimes he perpetuated. It is Hanns Alexander's normality which shows you how resourceful and brave people can be when their cause is just. An excellent book and highly recommended.
Author: R Helen
Rating: 3
Review: This story is very interesting and it reads quickly, but I must say that I had a few major problems with it. At the very beginning Thomas Harding affirms for us that he in no way means to equate the two men morally, yet as you read through the book you get the impression that he in some way is. Right at the beginning he says "this story challenges the traditional portrayal of the hero and the villain. Both men were adored by their families and respected by their colleagues...Rudolf Hoess, the brutal Kommandant, displayed a capacity for compassion. And the behaviour of his pursuer, Hanns Alexander, was not always above suspicion." When Alexander finally catches Hoess, he allows his men some moments of revenge, where Hoess is beaten and humiliated. But these men were mostly German Jews; Jews who had lost family members to this man. Alexander himself lost family and friends. It may not be nice, but it is hardly difficult to understand their motivations and feelings. How in the world can this compare to a man who systematically murdered millions of innocent people who had no connection to him whatsoever in some of the most brutal ways imaginable? One of these men had a difficult, perhaps ultimately wrong, human reaction. One of these men can not even be described. Human is just not the word for this. What do you call such a personification of evil? And the letter Hoess wrote to his children...I felt nauseated. Not from the letter but because I was beginning to feel bad for him. In fact, I already felt bad for him as he was separated from his family, which he clearly loved, and they he. And I don't want to feel bad for him. I feel that Harding has manipulated me into viewing this monster as human. I just don't think he is. And I feel he not only deserved what he got, but he should have gotten worse. And I don't feel bad for the family either. His wife knew, and ignored, the most unimaginable cruelty happening right next door? And am I supposed to believe the children know nothing? Children are not so stupid, especially the older ones. Obviously, they are not responsible, but I still can't feel bad for them. I absolutely think Hoess was right when he wrote in his memiors that they should not publish the parts about his family, his "soft emotions," and his "secret doubts." He writes "Let the public go on thinking of me as a bloodthirsty brute, a cruel sadist, the murderer of millions-for that is the only way the vast majority will be able to imagine the Kommandant of Auschwitz. They would never understand that he too, had a heart, and was not a wicked man." Right, and it is a desecration of the memories of all those millions of innocent people sent to their deaths, all those crying and laughing children sent to their early graves, all those families ripped apart, never to see each other again, to think otherwise. What kind of "heart" is that anyway? I would have liked to give this book four stars, but I just can't. I am so bothered by this aspect of the book. Complex, Hoess might have been. Human, he certainly wasn't.
