Only once has Ms. Himmler eaten a Thanksgiving dinner that was not a home-cooked meal, just after her mother’s death seven years ago.

Chris Mannion, a volunteer at the Imperial War Museum North, discovered his grandfather was part of the small unit which captured Heinrich Himmler.

Goering, Speer, Himmler and Goebbels are memorably depicted with a rhetorical zest inspired by Trevor-Roper’s admiration for great British historians such as Gibbon and Macaulay.