The SS is the most historically important institution of Third Reich Germany yet it remains amongst the least well understood. The SS was at the forefront of implementing the most radical and terrible policies of Nazi Germany: the Jewish Holocaust and mass resettlement of Russia and eastern Europe; the enslavement of the working population of the whole of occupied Europe. Yet at the same time members of the SS were subverting Nazi racial and foreign policy, associating with the Nazi resistance and even attempting to seek a separate peace with the western allies in direct defiance of Hitler's orders.

This thought-provoking new book argues that as the ideological 'engine room' of National Socialism, a study of the SS is the best way of gaining insight into how Nazism would have evolved if Germany had not lost the war. Packed full of bizarre characters and the exceptional detail that comes from careful new research, this book will be the book to buy on the SS for a generation.