Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

by IanKershaw (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $19.85

  Winner of the Wolfson Prize for History, Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis is the concluding second volume of one of the greatest biographies of modern times. No figure in twentieth century history more clearly demands a close biographical understanding than Adolf Hitler; and no period is more important than the Second World War. Beginning with Hitler's startling European successes in the aftermath of the Rhineland occupation, from Czechoslovakia to Poland; addressing crucial questions about the unique nature of Nazi radicalism; exploring the Holocaust and the poisoned European world that allowed Hitler to operate so effectively; and ending nine years later with the suicide in the Berlin bunker, Kershaw allows us as never before to understand Hitler's motivation and impact. Magisterial ...anyone who wishes to understand the third reich must read Kershaw, for no on has done more to lay bare Hitler's morbid psyche . (Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph ). An achievement of the very highest order ...a marvellous book . (Michael Burleigh, Financial Times ). No previous biographer has examined Hitler's devilishness in Kershaw's detail ...his book is so comprehensive, so richly documented and so judicious that it will not soon be superseded . (Daniel Johnson, Daily Telegraph ). Ian Kershaw's other books include Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis , Making Friends with Hitler , Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-4 and The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45 . Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis received the Wolfson History Prize and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $10.49

  It is impossible to offer an adequate parallel to Hitler's situation in 1936. With the peaceful resolution of the Rhineland crisis, Hitler became both the adored object of the vast majority of Germans and an international symbol of modernity and dynamism. He managed this while in reality being the dictator of a system of single-minded viciousness new to human experience. In this book, drawing on a vast range of material, Ian Kershaw allows us to understand both the dictator himself and the society that made him. Perhaps this book's greatest achievement is to make clear the often conflicting dynamics that led from the seemingly stable, successful Germany of 1937 to the brutalised military state of the 1940s. By concentrating on the figure of Hitler, Kershaw both gives an immediate texture to these terrible events and shows the options available to Germany and its ruler at each point in the unfolding disaster. At the heart of the book lies Hitler's decision to unleash annihilatory war in the East and the terrifying new moral universe this brought into being: the degradation of enemies into beasts and the hatching of the Final Solution . This is the story of a poisoned world and of a man who was both shaped by that world and - to a catastrophic degree - created it.