Showing results for "Ian Kershaw" in Biographies & Memoirs

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

Die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts war turbulent: Ganze Gesellschaften wurden umgestaltet, blutige Kriege geführt – oft unter Verachtung der grundlegendsten Werte. An der Spitze dieser Umwälzungen standen politische Führer, Demokraten wie Diktatoren, jeder von ihnen eine herausragende Persönlichkeit.

"Comment Hitler a-t-il été possible ? Comment un désaxé aussi bizarre a-t-il pu prendre le pouvoir en Allemagne, pays moderne, complexe, développé et culturellement avancé ? Comment a-t-il pu, à partir de 1933, s'imposer à des cercles habitués à diriger, bien éloignés des brutes nazies ? Comment a-t-il réussi à entraîner l'Allemagne dans le pari catastrophique visant à établir la domination de son pays en Europe, avec, en son cœur, un programme génocidaire terrible et sans précédent ?

Depuis 1936, après la remilitarisation de la Rhénanie, Hitler jouit du soutien de la grande majorité des Allemands. L'Allemagne prospère grâce à la reprise économique et accumule les succès diplomatiques, cependant que l'autorité charismatique d'Hitler soumet les milieux d'affaires et l'armée, qui souscrivent à sa volonté de domination du continent européen.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

From 1934 until 1944, Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally. Goeschel, a scholar of 20th-century Germany and Italy, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler's key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public.

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors.

Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms' major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-Semitism and his determination to secure the 'living space' necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States.