However, during the past two decades not only Jewish persecution but
numerous other aspects of the history of the SS and police apparatus have been
the subject of a vast number of research studies. I have endeavoured to make
use of this substantial research for this biography, and indeed without it this
book could not have been written. Among these works, to name only a small
selection, are those concerning the police by George C. Browder, Robert
Gellately, Eric A. Johnson, and Patrick Wagner; those concerning general
aspects of the concentration cam ps by Karin Orth and Johannes Tuchel; the
studies of Martin Cu
¨
ppers, Ralf Ogorreck, and Andrej Angrick on the Ein-
satzgruppen and other murder units, which substantially supplement the
‘classic’ works by Helmut Krausnick and Karl-Heinz Wilhelm. In addition,
there are various contributions dealing with particular groups of victims:
Michael Zimmermann’s and Gu
¨
nther Lewy’s books on the persecution of
the Gypsies, and the contributions of Helmut Neuberger on the Freemasons,
of Burkhard Jellonek on the homosexuals, of Detlef Garbe on the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and of Wolfgang Dierker on the persecution of the churches.
Moreover, in the last few years substantial works have been written
describing and analysing the activities of individual SS main offices and
particular parts of the SS. Among these are, in particular, Torsten Querg’s
dissertation on the SD’s foreign espionage, Michael Wildt’s book on the
Reich Security Main Office, Isabel Heinemann’s book on the Race and
Settlement Main Office, Jan Erik Schulze’s and Michael Allen’s studies of
the Business and Administration Main Office, Bianca Vieregge’s analysis of
the SS and police’s judicial system, Hermann Kaienburg’s detailed account of
the SS’s business sector, and Gudrun Schwarz’s study of the role of women in
the SS. These works supplement older studies of other parts of the SS, for
example the books by George H. Stein and Bernd Wegner on the Waffen-
SS, Michael Kater’s on the Ahnenerbe (which has still not been superseded),
and Georg Lilienthal’s study of the Spring of Life (Lebensborn) organization.
By integrating biography and structural history this book offers a new
perspective by which the history of the SS, which in recent years has
fragmented into its individual parts, can be reintegrated. In this way it
represents an attempt to continue the work begun in the earlier general
histories of the SS by Heinz Ho
¨
hne (The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story
of Hitler’s SS, published in 1969) and by Robert Lewis Koehl (The Black
Corps, published in 1983).
xii note on sources