To what circle of Dante’s Inferno should the quadrumvirate of most notori­ous Nazis be consigned? Or do their crimes so far exceed the poet’s imagination that an altogether deeper level of damnation needs to be created? Instigators of murder on an industrial scale, wreckers of Europe, bringers of catastrophe on their own country, inveterate liars: such is the charge sheet. And, faced with judgement, how did they respond? Hitler, along with his new wife, Eva Braun, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, Göring and Himmler all committed suicide. But the Goebbelses went one giant step further: before killing themselves, they poisoned their six children, aged between four and 12. How can the enormity of that act be understood?It is the question that Peter Longerich’s monumen