Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History – BOOK REVIEW

This book took me 15 hours to read.  I finished it in 2 and a half days.

I am a fan of all of Bill O’Reilly’s books.  If you happen to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Bill or didn’t like his television show, put that aside and give his books a chance.  He is a brilliant writer.  He dives deep into research to share detailed history and he works in human interest stories, many of which you won’t find written about by others.  Killing Jesus is one of the best books I have read.  Killing Reagan was great too.  Killing the SS might be even better.

I will warn you, this book can be difficult emotionally to read at times.  It does share some of the detailed testimony from various trials of SS war criminals that is tough to read.  If that type of detail troubles you, this book may not be for you. I admit, I cried a few tears reading this.

I loved history class growing up.  I struggled in most subjects in grade school, but never in history.  Along with all of the WWII history classes we all took growing up, I studied WWII on my own for fun.  I’ve read all sorts of books about the cause of the war and all the details of the battles.  However, noting I read nor nothing taught in school went beyond the war, beyond the Paris Peace Treaties.  This book details what happens after and the hunt to track down the war criminals responsible for the horrible Holocaust atrocities.

The most interesting story was the hunt for Adolph Eichmann.  There was recently a Hollywood movie about it, “Operation Finale,” which I have yet to see and do not know how it compares, but I can’t imagine anything about the subject topping this book,  The book gets deep into that search and gives such great detail that you feel like you’re right there in the hunt. I can’t express enough how great the detailed research in this book is.  I stayed up until 3 in the morning one night to finish the part of the book about capturing Eichmann.

One takeaway from this book for me is that I am struct by how absolutely Evil Eichmann was, but then how he led a peaceful life thereafter in which he was a regular hard working family man.  I would think that type of evil never leaves someone, he just lacked the circumstances to further enact evil.  Though, I can’t also think that we all have a bit of evil in us, that we are all sinners, that we are all capable of doing awful things.  That is frightening.  That drove me to further put on the armor of God to fight evil.

If you like history, especially WWII history, or are a fan of any type of true crime books, you will love this book.  I’d highly recommend it for any high school student as well.  There is value in learning about the past so that we may avoid making the same mistakes, or in this case, identify evil before evil seeks to destroy the world.

To purchase the book, visit: Killing the SS – Amazon.com