The Dark Lives of the Third Reich

Half of what gets repeated about these men is wrong

Read the comments under any video about the Third Reich and you will find the same fights. Did Hitler really fear Heydrich? Did Bormann escape to South America? Was Speer the one decent man in the room? Did Müller die in Berlin or walk away?

The documents answer most of these questions. Some of the answers are stranger than the legends.

Bormann's bones.For 27 years he was reported alive in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. In 1972 workmen digging near a Berlin railway station found a skull with glass in its teeth. A DNA test in 1998 settled who it was.
Mengele's grave.He lived free for 34 years and drowned off a Brazilian beach in 1979. The world kept hunting him for six more years, until a grave in Embu was opened in 1985.
Göring's last night.Hours before he was due on the gallows at Nuremberg, he bit through a cyanide capsule in his cell. How he kept it hidden is still argued about.
The deputy who flew to Scotland.In May 1941 Rudolf Hess took off alone in a twin-engine fighter and parachuted onto a Scottish farm. He spent the rest of his life in prison, more than 20 years of it as the only inmate of Spandau.

Every chapter of this book ends with a section called The Record and the Legend: the claims people repeat, each one marked as RECORD DISPUTED or MYTH, with what the documents actually show.

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Fourteen lives. Each one told from the first step to the last day.

We make Wartime Lives, the channel of long WW2 biographies. Our videos on Heydrich, Göring, Bormann, Müller, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Mengele and Göth have been watched hundreds of thousands of times, and the same questions keep coming back underneath them. This book is the long answer.

Each chapter opens on one dated moment: a car slowing at a hairpin bend in Prague, a lone plane over a Scottish moor, a bus stop on Garibaldi Street. Then it goes back to the start and follows the person up through the machine, into the worst of what they did, and on to the end.

These were not monsters who came from nowhere. They were people who said yes, step after step, and the book shows each step. It never admires them, and it never looks away from the people they hurt.

Real pages from the real book.

This is exactly what opens on your phone.

Book page: Heydrich, Prague, 1942 — Page 9: Heydrich: the morning in Prague.

Book page: Göring at Nuremberg — Page 24: Göring: Nuremberg and the last night.

Book page: Bormann, the record and the legend — Page 40: Bormann: the record against the legend.

Book page: Hess and the flight to Scotland — Page 66: Hess: the flight to Scotland.

Book page: Mengele in South America — Page 90: Mengele: 34 years on the run.

Book page: where they ended, the table — Page 108: Where they ended: all fourteen in one table.

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One story from the book, free

December 1972: a skull with glass in its teeth.

On the night of 1 May 1945, Martin Bormann left the Führerbunker with a breakout group and headed north across the ruins toward the Lehrter railway station. Then he disappeared. For the next 27 years he was "seen" in Argentina, in Paraguay, in Brazil. The Nuremberg tribunal sentenced him to death in his absence in 1946.

In December 1972, construction workers near the Lehrter station dug up two skeletons. One matched Bormann's height and his dental records. Fragments of glass were lodged in the jaw: a cyanide ampoule, bitten. West Germany declared him dead in 1973. The rumors went on anyway, until a DNA test in 1998 matched the skull to a relative.

That is one story. The book has fourteen, and every ending is on the record.

What's inside

Fourteen chapters, each with the same shape: the moment, the rise, the power, the fall, the end, and the record against the legend.

Reinhard Heydrich: The Hangman's Paperwork · p. 6
Heinrich Himmler: The Ledger Keeper · p. 13
Hermann Göring: The Ace Who Cheated the Rope · p. 20
Joseph Goebbels: The Voice That Would Not Stop · p. 27
Martin Bormann: The Man Who Kept the Door · p. 34
Heinrich Müller: The Policeman Who Vanished · p. 42
Ernst Kaltenbrunner: The Signature He Denied · p. 49
Albert Speer: The Architect of His Own Alibi · p. 56
Rudolf Hess: The Last Prisoner of Spandau · p. 63
Wilhelm Keitel: The Field Marshal Who Signed Everything · p. 70
Adolf Eichmann: The Man Who Ran the Timetables · p. 78
Josef Mengele: The Ramp and the Beach · p. 86
Amon Göth: The Commandant on the Hill · p. 93
Hanna Reitsch: The Flight Into the Bunker · p. 100
Where They Ended, the timeline 1933-1998 and further reading · p. 108

14lives, start to finish

14endings, on the record

117pages

1table of where every one of them ended

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The Dark Lives of the Third Reich, book cover

The Dark Lives of the Third Reich: Fourteen Lives Inside Hitler's Machine, and How Each One Ended

Wartime Lives · 117-page book · reads on any phone, tablet or computer

Reinhard Heydrich, from Wannsee to the bend in the road in Prague
Himmler's false papers and the capsule at Lüneburg
Göring at Nuremberg, and the night before the rope
Goebbels, the bunker and the six children
Bormann, the breakout, and the bones found 27 years later
Müller, the Gestapo chief who walked out of the bunker and vanished
Kaltenbrunner, Keitel and Göth, and the trials that hanged them
Speer, the "good Nazi" defense, and what later documents showed
Hess, the flight to Scotland and the last prisoner of Spandau
Eichmann on Garibaldi Street, Mengele on the beach at Bertioga
Hanna Reitsch's flight into encircled Berlin in April 1945
Where they ended: one table, plus a timeline from 1933 to 1998

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Questions, answered straight

"Is this the same as the videos?"

No. The videos are one life at a time. The book puts fourteen of them side by side, adds Himmler and Goebbels, and ends every chapter with the record set against the legend. It also has the table of where every one of them ended and a timeline from 1933 to 1998.

"Does it glorify any of these people?"

No. It tells what they did and how it ended, in plain language. The people they hurt are named where the record names them.

"How do you know what's true?"

Each chapter separates three things: what the documents show, what historians still argue about, and what is myth. Where the record is thin, the book says so.

"Can I print it?"

Yes. It is an instant download. Read it on a phone or tablet with the words as large as you like, or print the whole thing.

"How do I get it?"

Press any Buy button on this page. Pay once on the secure checkout. The page that opens right after you pay has your download button, and the same link is sent to your email. No account to set up, no password to remember.

"Is it a subscription? Will you charge my card again?"

No. One payment of $27, one time. No membership and no monthly anything.

"What if it isn't for me?"

Then you get your money back. Ask within 30 days and it is refunded in full.

Fourteen people chose to serve that machine. Every one of them met an ending.

The full story of each, with the record kept apart from the legend.

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