Hitler’s Crime Fighter: The Extraordinary Life of Konrad Morgen

In the Third Reich, the SS ran the Gestapo, the police and the concentration camps where millions of people were killed. However Nazi Germany still had laws and a legal system which outlawed murder and other criminal acts and SS Investigating Judge and Police Official SS, Major Konrad Morgen, used these laws to investigate and bring individual members of the SS to justice for their crimes against innocent victims. He was a fearless judge and investigator, and when he crossed swords with more powerful forces inside the SS he was demoted and sent by the Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler himself to the Eastern Front as an ordinary soldier in the Waffen SS. But his investigative skills were still needed and he returned to launch a series of criminal investigations in concentration camps. As a direct result of his investigations two concentration camp commandants were shot before the end of the War and he arrested three others. This book describes the cases he investigated and how he was able to pursue some of Nazi Germany’s worst murderers from inside the SS.

David Lee is a historian who has written two other books about World War II. The first, Beachhead Assault is an oral history of the Royal Naval Commandos who were the first on to the invasion beaches and the second, Up Close and Personal describes what it was like to fight on the front line in World War II. He lives in England.