Originally published in 1962, this book is a good, if long, introduction to a dark period in modern world history. The author is French and suffered at the hands of the Gestapo.

I liked that the author spent some time explaining external military and political events so as to provide a frame of reference for how the Gestapo developed. He also suggests actions by external actors that could have deterred this development.

Most of the book is devoted to Gestapo history in Germany and France. As such, it is not a complete history of the Gestapo.

It took me 7 months to finish this. It is dense, very difficult to read. I am unsure if it is partly due to awkward translation and word choice from the original French. I just did not want to pick it up, but it was a gift so I felt obligated to finish it. By the time I finished it, I felt like I needed to restart it as I forgot the beginning. Maybe I will try picking it up in the future since it is an excellent piece of history that has to be remembered to prevent history from repeating itself.

(Reading the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials was so much easier, and it took me 4 months longer to read this than the 22 volumes of transcripts.)

Juvenilely written with to many inaccuracies and blatant falsehoods.

Day one on my Disney World vacation and I finished this awesome book!

An intimate look into the rise and fall of the Gestapo

This book explains and demonstrates the rise and fall of the Gestapo, the army, and even the rise of Hitler. It fully explains how a whole country could be forced to be silent as the tortures of the war, the concentration camps, and the persecution of Germans willing to stand up to such heinous acts. This is a must-read in order to better understand the Nazi's reasoning for what they did. I can only pray that our youth continue to study what led to such heinous atrocities in the name of "loyalty."