I. Himmler's early years. Childhood and youth ; The student of agriculture ; Struggle and renunciation ; A new start in Lower Bavaria ; The Party functionary ; Reichsführer-SS
II. Inside the Third Reich. The takeover of the political police ; From Inspector of the Prussian Gestapo to Chief of the German Police ; The State Protection Corps
III. The Order. Ideology and religious cult ; Himmler's leadership style ; Himmler as educator ; The SS family
IV. Into war : ambition and disappointment. War preparations and expansion ; War and settlement in Poland ; A new racial order ; Repression in the Reich ; Shifting borders : The year 1940
V. The greater Germanic Reich : living-space and ethnic murder. An ideological war of annihilation ; From mass murder to the 'Final Solution' ; The murder of the European Jews ; Settlement policy and racial selection ; The 'Iron law of ethnicity' : recruitment into the Waffen-SS ; A Europe-wide reign of terror
VI. Downfall in stages. A turn in the war : a new opportunity? ; Collapse
