Suicide in Nazi Germany

Book excerpt: The suicides of Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler, and later Goering at the end of World War II were only the most prominent in a suicide epidemic that has no historical parallel and that can tell us much about the Third Reich's peculiar self-destructiveness and the depths of Nazi fanaticism. Looking at the suicides of both Nazis and ordinary people in Germany from the end of World War I until the end of World War II, Christian Goeschel shows how suicides among different population groups, including supporters, opponents, and victims of the regime, responded to the social, cultural, economic, and political context of the time. Richly grounded in gripping and previously unpublished source material Suicide in Nazi Germany offers a new perspective on the central social and political crises of the era, from revolution, economic collapse, and the rise of the Nazis, to Germany's total defeat in 1945.