Before Himmler, before the black uniforms, there was Emil Maurice — SS member No. 2, Hitler’s driver, confidant, and friend.
A man of partial Jewish descent who stood at the very birth of the Nazi Party and helped create its most feared organization, the SS.
From the failed Beer Hall Putsch and prison years when he helped Hitler dictate Mein Kampf, to a forbidden love with Hitler’s niece Geli Raubal and his later survival as an “Honorary Aryan,” this is the paradoxical story of the Jew who became one of the founders of the SS — and the only one Hitler personally protected.