The Story of the SS: Hitler's Infamous Legions of Death

The Story of the SS: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death by Al Cimino (a pseudonym for the author Nigel Cawthorne) is a nonfiction book that goes into detail about the formation, operations, defeat and prosecution of the Schutzstaffel. It is detail heavy and quite in depth but I have many reservations regarding its authenticity. 

Pros 

The book is compelling and makes for an enjoyable read, Mr. Cimino certainly knows how to use good word choice to draw readers in. It is full of details about the leaders of the SS, giving short biographies of their lives and what led them to join the organization. It does a good job showing who did what in the organization and largely has Hitler take a backseat to the other leaders that really made the SS the infamous organization it was. The book does a good job bringing the corruption and hypocrisy of the SS to light and how it was ultimately doomed to fail. 

Cons

The first red flag did not take long to spot as it appeared in the introduction when the author interjected his own personal opinion. There are a few times that personal opinion is acceptable in works of nonfiction, certainly autobiographies and memoirs are fine and when an expert is giving his opinion on a disputed fact or claim, but none of these were the case for this book. The author gave his opinion on the SS by calling them evil and putting them down from the start. While many people would agree with him it is not needed especially before you give any information about the organization itself. The story that you tell and details that you include should be enough for people to form that opinion. The only thing the author did by this was show that he is transmitting information from a heavily biased perspective. 

Another issue was organization. At the start of the book it was fine but as I read further names and dates began to be jumbled and towards the end it was difficult to follow along and understand what all was going on. 

A big red flag that I noticed early on was the lack of sources. There are no sources or bibliography at the end and I do not remember a time while reading where he cites any of his information. It really leads me to believe that some of the information presented could be false or misleading, especially where he is so openly biased. There are definite figures given for deaths where there really should be number ranges because even to this day we still are not certain of how many people were killed. Many documents during and after the war were falsified and giving definitive numbers is not what I believe a trusted source would do without really backing it up, which he does not do. To the author's credit, some facts that he presented that I was skeptical about and looked up were either true or close enough to the truth that they were acceptable, but those were only a couple and I would be hesitant to trust this book's information to any real degree.

I think the biggest red flag to me is the author himself. I could not find any information on him until I searched the name of the book and found that the exact same book was published years earlier under the author's actual name. From what I could tell the new publication I bought was not updated or had any changes but was merely a direct reprint under another name. The author, from best I can tell, has no formal education in military history or any history for that matter. This just makes the flag all the more red as he did not cite any sources. It seems to me that the book is nothing but a cash grab. 

The first publication of this book under the author’s real name. Courtesy of Goodreads.

Recommendation 

The Story of the SS: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death by Al Cimino (Nigel Cawthorne) is a book I can not recommend to anyone and I think it should be avoided. The only person I could possibly recommend it to is someone that is already quite knowledgeable about the organization, but what would be the point of that? I should have known to avoid this book when it was already on sale for $5 within the same year of its publishing, but I suppose we are all duped at some point. I would recommend that no one buy this book and look for something else.