Suicide in Nazi Germany

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 Richly grounded in gripping and previously unpublished source materialSuicide in Nazi Germany offers a new perspective on the central social and political crises of the era, from revolution, economic collapse, and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.

Christian Goeschel is a post-doctoral research fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he also teaches Modern European History. In 2006 he was awarded the Walter Laqueur Prize for his work on suicide in Nazi Germany.