Hitler spent his early life in Linz, Austria, and in Vienna. He was a lonely, frustrated artist and moved to Munich in 1913. While serving in the German army during World War I, he was wounded (1916). He began his political career as an army political agent in the German Workers' (later National Socialist, or Nazi) Party in 1919 and became head of its propaganda arm in 1920. Hitler was soon made president of the party and began his creation of a mass movement and his climb to power. After the abortive Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of 1923, he served nine months in prison and began the writing of Mein Kampf, in which he condemned democratic government and expressed his hate and fear of Jews.

Heinrich Himmler: was head of the entire Nazi police force including SD and the Gestapo, he was Minister of the Interior and commander of the Waffen SS and the Home Army. One of Hitler's most sinister henchmen, he was also in charge of the death camps in the East. It was Heinrich Himmler who essentially laid the plans and devised the schemes that led to the killings of six million Jews.

Reinhard Heydrich: was one of Hitler's most ruthless Nazis and second in importance only to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization and the principle planner of the Final Solution.

Adolf Eichmann:One of the most feared and hated Nazi leaders of World War II, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner: was a life-long fanatical Nazi. He had much to do with developing the Mauthausen KZ camp and visited it frequently. He agreed with Himmler on the establishment of gas-chambers for execution 1942, became head of the security police 1943.

Rudolf Hoess: was history's greatest mass murderer, the architect and SS Commandant of the largest killing center ever created, the death camp Auschwitz, whose name has come to symbolize humanity's ultimate descent into evil. Responsible for exterminating 2,5 million people in World War II, he was a mild-mannered, happily married Catholic who enjoyed normal family life with his five childern.

Josef Mengele: During the Holocaust he was the chief provider for the gas chambers at Auschwitz - and did well! When it was reported that one block was infected with lice, Mengele solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women assigned to it.

Alois Brunner: the last leading Nazi still believed to be on the loose and Eichmann's second in command - was a key figure in the planning and execution of the Final Solution, the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II.

Klaus Barbie: He joined the SS and later began a career in espionage.  In May 1941 Barbie was posted to the Bureau of Jewish affairs, as an intelligence officer. in November 1942 he was posted to Lyon, France. While in France he was to penetrate and destroy the resistance in Lyon and carried out his task with unmatched brutality.

The SS Men - wore black uniforms with a skeleton's head on their hats, the motto Unsere Ehre heisst Treue on their belts and their symbol was the double S-rune. They had sworn eternal faith to Adolf Hitler and they were his most ruthless henchmen, men often seen as the very personifications of evil. A violent group who rose to power in a democracy and established institutions of legitimized terror.

These masterminds of death were found to be quite psychologically normal. They were men of fine standing, husbands who morning and night kissed their wives, fathers who tucked their children into bed.

But murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts were an everyday occurrence.

In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed by the SS Men. The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews.

Winston Churchill (Britsh Prime Minister): "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, by few explosions seemed, after all our perils and toils, a miracle of deliverance."

Anne Frank is a world renowned Jewish girl. She wrote a diary about the horrors of the Holocaust while hiding, "... It is difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality."

Heinrich Himmler: "we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me."

Adolf Hitler: "And we say that the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews."