Heldentod – The Nazi Culture of Death graphically focuses on the Third Reich’s conception and promotion of the “Hero’s Death” as it fostered and then fueled a cataclysm of apocalyptic carnage and destruction. This underlying driving force, ultimately self-destructive, is shown infusing both State sponsored propaganda and echoed by the personal battlefield images captured by its soldiers' personal cameras. In so doing it confronts the matter of subject vs. observer and their intimate connection. The original, often one-of-a-kind and never before seen photos also serve as a searing documentation of man’s inhumanity to man and a stark warning to future generations.

Introduction; Part I: Molding the War Makers: From Cradle to the Grave: 1 WWI—Seeds of a Future War Sown and Transitions; 2 Kinder—The Iron Forge of Hitler Youth; 3 Gott Mit Uns—An Ambivalent Faith and a Twisted Cross; 4 War Games and Deadly Diversions; 5 Heroes of the Third Reich and Lethal Leadership; 6 On the Path to Heldentod—The Wounded and Wound Healers; 7 Graves, Grave Markers and Grave Makers; 8 Microcosms of Mayhem—Deathcards Chronicle the War; 9 Gotterdammerung—The Funeral Pyres of the Third Reich; Part II: Victims of the Third Reich—A Miracle of Evil: 1 Poland—Murderous Intent; 2 France—The Six Weeks War and a Divided Country; 3 The East—War of Annihilation; 4 The Great Patriotic War; 5 The War within a War; 6 Final Words from the Third Reich; 7 Post-scripts—Aftermath, Justice Delayed and Retribution; 8 The Day the Last Nazi Died.