253 Pages
ISBN 978-1-917120-39-5
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Following his death during the opening stages of the Third Battle of Kharkov on 26 February 1943, Theodor Eicke was hailed as a hero in the Axis press. There can however be little doubt that the praise lavished on him was given through gritted teeth as he was a highly controversial figure whose egomania, paranoid tendencies, authoritarianism, and uncompromising manner had served to alienate him from much of the Nazi state apparatus. Eicke’s unlikely rise to prominence was founded on Heinrich Himmler’s patronage, his codifying of punishments for prisoners, and his role in the elimination of perceived enemies of the state during the infamous Night of the Long Knives. He went on to play a key role in the militarisation of his camp guards, and following the outbreak of war led his troops into battle in Poland, France, and Russia where he emerged as a moderately successful field commander.

In this absorbing new biography, David McCormack employs a process that can best be characterised as ‘cold empathy’ in order to provide an objective appraisal of how somebody with such a deeply flawed character not only survived the internecine strife within Himmler’s black guard, and the murky Machiavellian politics that characterised the Third Reich, but managed to prosper.