Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz

Winner of the JQ Wingate Prize 2015

Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2013

Translated into 16 languages

Book of the Year - The Sunday Times, Times, Telegraph, News Statesman, Observer and Guardian

The extraordinary true story of the German Jew who tracked down and caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s.

Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for some of the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators; Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.

Moving from the Middle-Eastern campaigns of the First World War to bohemian Berlin in the 1920s; from the horror of the concentration camps to the trials of Belsen and Nuremberg, it is both a gripping, moving and deeply felt work of history, and the story of a remarkable quest for justice.

In Hanns and Rudolf Thomas Harding reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss’ capture, and of two lives that diverged, and intersected, in an astonishing way.

Summary

• International bestseller:

  • Sunday Times Bestseller (UK)

  • Bestseller in Israel

  • Bestseller in Italy

• Paperback: 384 pages

• Publisher: Windmill Books (1 May 2014)

• ISBN-10: 0099559056

• ISBN-13: 978-0099559054

REVIEWS

'A gripping thriller,  an unspeakable crime, an essential history,    a scrupulously   dispassionate   narrator.'   - - John Le Carré  

'An extraordinary tale deriving from meticulous research – the story of how a Jew after 1945 almost single-handed hunted down the Kommandant of Auschwitz. - - Frederick Forsyth

'Harding tells the extraordinary story of his great-uncle, Hanns, a Berlin Jew who fled to London in 1936 and, at the end of the war, joined Britain’s war-crimes investigation group. The tale of how he then doggedly tracked down Rudolf Höss, the merciless commandant of Auschwitz, is stunning — not just because it is so gripping, but because Harding interweaves Hanns’s life story fascinatingly with Höss’s. As he unpicks the moral complexity of both men (Höss could be a doting father; Hanns resorted to brutal means to hunt him), Harding builds a compelling, remarkable picture of war and its aftermath.' - - Robert Collins, Sunday Times, Biography of the Year 2013

‘No-one who starts reading it can fail to go on to the end.’ - - David Lodge,  author of Changing Places and literary critic

'An enthralling, thoughtful book—part history, part biography, part thriller.' - - Ian Brunskill, Wall Street Journal

'Meticulously researched and deeply felt, Hanns and Rudolf is written with a suppressed fury at the vicious moral emptiness of men like Höss, who were only following order.' - - Ben Macintyre, The Times, and author of Agent Zigzag

'Fascinating and moving... This is a remarkable book, which deserves a wide readership.' - - Max Hastings, Sunday Times, author of All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 

 'A gripping detective story and a chilling portrait of an unrepentant mass murderer.' Sally Morris, Daily Mail
 'A gripping new book.'  - - The Economist

 ‘Remarkable … A beautifully balanced double biography, admirably measured but also gripping, which offers a fresh perspective on a much-examined subject’ - - The Good Book Guide

‘A highly readable detective story . This is really a book about the world of Hanns Alexander.[and it is] well worth reading ... Harding has researched it thoroughly.'  - -  Richard Overy, Sunday Telegraph, author of Why the Allies Won, The Air War: 1939-1945

'Compelling... Fascinates and shocks.' - - Evan Thomas, Washington Post, author of Ike’s Bluff

'Harding, a British journalist who is related to Alexander on his mother’s side, tells the story with great verve.' - - Ian Thomson, Financial Times, author of the Biography of Primo Levi  

'Absorbing ... Thomas Harding narrates, in careful, understated prose, the story of how his great uncle Hanns Alexander hunted down the man who vaingloriously identified himself as 'the world's greatest destroyer': Rudolf Höss, the Bavarian-born Kommandant of Auschwitz. Harding balances with scrupulous care the stories of the pursuer and the pursued. Le Carré is quite correct. The last section of Harding's book does indeed read like a gripping thriller.' - -Miranda Seymour, Spectator

 ‘In this electrifying account, Harding commemorates (and, for the tired, revivifies) a ringing Biblical injunction: Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue.’  - - Cynthia Ozick , Short story writer, novelist, and essayist 

'This is a stunning book.  Rudolf Höss' descent into the horror of mass murder is both chilling and deeply disturbing. It is also an utterly compelling and exhilarating account of one man's extraordinary hunt for the commandant of the most notorious death camp of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau.' - - James Holland, author of Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the Dams

‘Its climax as thrilling as any wartime adventure story, Hanns and Rudolf is also a moral inquiry into an eternal question: what makes a man turn to evil? Closely researched and tautly written, this book sheds light on a remarkable and previously unknown aspect of the Holocaust - the moment when a Jew and one of the highest-ranking Nazis came face to face and history held its breath.’ - - Jonathan Freedland, Guardian  columnist, contributor to the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and BBC presenter.  

‘A fascinating, well-crafted book, entwining two biographies for an unusual and illuminating approach to the history of the Third Reich, its most heinous crime and its aftermath.’ - - Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler and Berlin at War 

'Hanns and Rudolf packs an extraordinary punch about the nature of evil, told in a cool, dispassionate voice. As these two lives wrap around each other, the quality of evil becomes ever clearer, and more shocking.' - -  Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Baroness Neuberger, West London Synagogue of British Jews 

'Absorbing.' - - Winnipeg Free Press

'This fascinating book, based on the gripping story of one man’s unrelenting pursuit of Rudolf Höss in his search for justice, this book fills a unique and vital role.' - - Lyn Smith, author of Forgotten Voices and lecturer in International Politics at the Open University. 

‘A remarkable book: thoughtful, compelling and quite devastating in its humanity. Thomas Harding’s account of these two extraordinary men goes straight to the dark heart of Nazi Germany.’ - - Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

'This important and moving book... Well-researched and grippingly written it provides a unique insight into the fate of Germany under National Socialism.' - - Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University

' A fascinating account, with chunks of new information, about one of history's darkest chapters.' - - Richard Breitman, Author of The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and The Final Solution and Editor-in-chief of the U.S. Holocaust Museum's Holocaust and Genocide Studies

'Outstanding, outstanding, outstanding!  I was riveted to the text. Thomas Harding writes superbly, the storyline is better than any contrived mystery, and a compelling part of history.' - - Rabbi Dr. Stuart Altshuler, Belsize Square Synagogue, London

'A gripping, moving read, written with masterful research and endless compassion.’   - -  Bookseller Magazine

'In this gripping biography-based history, Harding, a former documentary filmmaker and journalist, profiles both men in chronological alternating chapters.' - - Publishers Weekly

'Reading anything Holocaust-related is emotionally difficult. Reading the riveting, recently published Hanns and Rudolf by Thomas Harding, is no different. Yet, something sets this book apart. I read it in one sitting this past Sunday ... As soon as I completed the book, I thought to myself: This might just be another “Schindler’s List” in the making. ' - -  Tehilla Goldberg, Intermountain Jewish News

'The protagonists' individual choices and family backgrounds give this biographical history a unique, intimate quality.' - - Kirkus Review

  'A brilliantly written and well-researched book.' - -  Lorri M Writings, book blogger

'Hans and Rudolph'  v  'Hanns and Rudolf'

What's in a name.... You might have thought it easy to spell someone's name. Not so for Hanns and Rudolf. Or is it Hans and Rudolph?

When I was researching my book, Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz, I discovered that such things were not always so simple. 

The Kommandant of Auschwitz’s name can be spelled in different ways. Perhaps the most authentic is ‘Rudolf Höß’, which is how the Kommandant himself wrote it. This uses the letter ß, affirming the Kommandant’s conservative Swabian heritage.

The more common English spelling is ‘Rudolf Hoess’. However, the Kommandant never spelled his name this way, and it also has the danger of being confused with Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s secretary.

An alternative is to use the contemporary German spelling, ‘Rudolf Höss’, which was not only the way that the SS typed his name, but also the way it was written by Hanns Alexander.

The Kommandant never spelled his first name 'Rudolph', though that does sometimes appear in internet searches.

There are similar confusions around Hanns' name.

His German passport has it as 'Hans', and when I first started my research I was told by some of my family members that this was the correct way of spelling his name.

But looking a little deeper, I confirmed the correct spelling is 'Hanns', as reflected in his Alien identity booklet and death certificate. This was also how he spelled his name, in letters and when labelling books. 

When fighting in the British Army, Hanns officially changed his name, to Howard Hervey, not Howard Harvey, but that's another story.

There is some confusion about how to say Hanns' name, does it rhyme with 'pans' or 'once'. Click on the link below to see how his daughter, Annette, says it should be pronounced.