Upfall

The account of the massacre at Biali, in which the fictional Sergeant Mueller participates, is based on the historical destruction of the Jews of Jozefow. The brutal method of execution described in the book is historically accurate. This massacre and many similar ones were carried out by Ordnungs Polizei units during the war, which were essentially ordinary military police units attached to the SS. The men who committed these despicable acts were, in general, ordinary policemen.

General Globocnik was indeed the commander of the Lubin district of Poland and presided over this empire of death A policeman himself, he went by the nickname of Globo. Heydrich, a much younger and more dashing man, was his superior.

Heydrich died in June 1942 near Prague after an attack by Czech commandos who had been infiltrated by the British. In the novel Heydrich escapes assassination, but the description of the attack on his car is essentially accurate. There has been other historical speculation as to what would have happened had Heydrich lived. A clever, popular and ruthless Nazi leader he might have challenged Himmler for power within the Reich. In reprisal for Heydrich‘s death, the SS liquidated the Czech town of Lidice, murdering hundreds of innocent people.

The organization, commanders and initial deployment of the Der Fuehrer Regiment of the 2d SS Panzergrenadier Division are as they were in the spring of 1942. 2d SS Panzergrenadier Division (later just 2d SS Panzer) is perhaps the most notorious of the major SS formations that fought in the war. This is not because this division was necessarily more fanatic and brutal than other Waffen SS units, but because its most famous atrocities occurred in France in 1944. All SS units—despite the frequent protestations of veterans that they were just combat soldiers—happily participated in countless atrocities the East.

Colonel Otto Kumm commanded Der Fuehrer in the spring of 1942 and had participated in anti-partisan actions in Russia, where he indeed described his tactics as akin to crushing anthills. Unlike his fate in the book, he survived the war and lived to old age. Kumm's subordinates, Stadler, Opificius, Horn, and Holzer were generally as described in the novel including Norwegian origins and Stadler‘s bad teeth.

The German rail system operated as described, and the approach to the Sobibor death camp, including the changing of crews and the laborious backing up and switching are generally accurate. The transport of millions of innocent men, women and children to their deaths in the most horrendous conditions imaginable has been amply chronicled, and the descriptions of the conditions within the death train heading to Sobibor taken from these.

In May and June of 1942 the death camps at Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzac had only been in operation for a few months. Over the next year they would murder nearly two million people between them.