Masters of DeathBy: Richard Rhodes In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppens role in the Holocaust. These special task forces, organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1. 5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting