Ian kershaw hitler (v5 0)

PENGUIN BOOKS

HITLER
is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. For services to
history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994. He was
knighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association
in 2004.
IAN KERSHAW

He was the historical adviser to three BBC series: The Nazis: A Warning from History, War
of the Century and Auschwitz.
His most recent books are Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis, which
received the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria
for the Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugrual British
Academy Book Prize; Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to
War, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2005; and
Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940–41.


IAN KERSHAW

Hitler

PENGUIN BOOKS


PENGUIN BOOKS
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www.penguin.com
Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris first published 1998
Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis first published 2000
This one-volume abridgement with a new Preface first published by Allen Lane 2008
Published in Penguin Books 2009
Copyright © Ian Kershaw, 1998, 2000, 2008
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-190959-2


Contents
List of Illustrations
Glossary of Abbreviations
Maps
Preface to the New Edition
Reflecting on Hitler

1 Fantasy and Failure
2 Drop-out
3 Elation and Embitterment
4 The Beerhall Agitator
5 The ‘Drummer’
6 Emergence of the Leader
7 Mastery over the Movement
8 Breakthrough
9 Levered into Power
10 The Making of the Dictator
11 Securing Total Power
12 Working Towards the Führer
13 Ceaseless Radicalization
14 The Drive for Expansion
15 Marks of a Genocidal Mentality
16 Going for Broke
17 Licensing Barbarism
18 Zenith of Power
19 Designing a ‘War of Annihilation’
20 Showdown
21 Fulfilling the ‘Prophecy’
22 Last Big Throw of the Dice
23 Beleaguered
24 Hoping for Miracles
25 Luck of the Devil
26 No Way Out
27 Into the Abyss
28 Extinction

Epilogue
Main Published Primary Sources on Hitler
Index


List of Illustrations
Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be glad
to make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.
(Photographic acknowledgements are given in brackets.)
1. Adolf Hitler in his Leonding school photo (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
2. Klara Hitler (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
3. Alois Hitler (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
4. Karl Lueger (Hulton Getty, London)
5. August Kubizek (The Wiener Library, London)
6. The crowd in Odeonsplatz, Munich, 2 August 1914 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Munich)
7. Hitler with Ernst Schmidt and Anton Bachmann (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin)
8. German soldiers on the Western Front (Hulton Getty, London)
9. Armed members of the KPD Sektion Neuhausen (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Munich)
10. Counter-revolutionary Freikorps troops entering Munich (Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
11. Anton Drexler (Hulton Getty, London)
12. Ernst Röhm (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
13. Hitler’s DAP membership card (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
14. Hitler speaking on the Marsfeld (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
15. NSDAP mass meeting, Munich, 1923 (Collection Rudolf Herz, Munich)
16. Paramilitary organizations on ‘German Day’, 1923 (Collection Rudolf Herz,
Munich)

17. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler, Friedrich Weber and Christian Weber (Bildarchiv
Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)
18. Armed SA men manning a barricade (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
19. Armed putschists from the area around Munich (Stadtsmuseum, Landeshaupstadt
Munich)
20. Defendants at the trial of the putschists (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
21. Hitler immediately after his release from imprisonment (Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
22. Hitler in Landsberg (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
23. Hitler in Bavarian costume (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
24. Hitler in a raincoat (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)


25. Hitler with his alsatian, Wolf (Collection Rudolf Herz, Munich)
26. The Party Rally, Weimar, July 1926 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
27. The Party Rally, Nuremberg, August 1927 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
28. Hitler in SA uniform (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
29. Hitler in rhetorical pose (Karl Stehle, Munich)
30. Hitler speaking to the NSDAP leadership (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin)
31. Geli Raubal and Hitler (David Gainsborough Roberts)
32. Eva Braun (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
33. Reich President Paul von Hindenburg (AKG London)
34. Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning with Benito Mussolini (AKG London)
35. Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen with State Secretary Dr Otto Meissner
(Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)
36. Gregor Strasser and Joseph Goebbels (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
37. Ernst Thälmann (Hulton Getty, London)
38. Nazi election poster, 1932 (AKG London)
39. Candidate placards for the presidential election (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

40. Discussion at Neudeck (AKG London)
41. Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher (AKG London)
42. Hitler in evening dress (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
43. Hitler bows to Reich President von Hindenburg (AKG London)
44. SA violence against Communists (AKG London)
45. The boycott of Jewish doctors (AKG London)
46. An elderly Jew being taken into custody (AKG London)
47. Hindenburg and Hitler on the ‘Day of National Labour’ (AKG London)
48. Hitler with Ernst Röhm (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
49. Postcard designed by Hans von Norden (Karl Stehle, Munich)
50. Postcard: ‘The Führer as animal-lover’ (Karl Stehle, Munich)
51. Hitler justifying the ‘Röhm purge’ (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)
52. Hitler, Professor Leonhard Gall, and architect Albert Speer (Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
53. Hitler with young Bavarians (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
54. The Mercedes-Benz showroom at Lenbachplatz, Munich (Stadt-archiv,
Landeshauptstadt Munich)
55. Hitler with Karl Krause, Albert Vogler, Fritz Thyssen and Walter Borbet (AKG
London)
56. ‘Hitler in his Mountains’: Heinrich Hoffmann publication (Bayerische


Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
57. New recruits at the Feldherrnhalle, 1935 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)
58. German troops entering the Rhineland (AKG London)
59. Adolf Hitler, September 1936 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
60. Hitler discussing plans for Weimar, 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)
61. The Berlin Olympics, 1936 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
62. Hitler meets the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 1937 (Corbis/ Hulton-Deutsch
Collection)

63. Werner von Blomberg (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)
64. Werner von Fritsch (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
65. Hitler addresses crowds in the Heldenplatz, Vienna, 1938 (AKG London)
66. Hitler, Mussolini and Victor-Emmanuel III, 1938 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
67. Hitler in Florence, 1938 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
68. ‘The Eternal Jew’ exhibition, Munich, 1937 (AKG London)
69. ‘Jews in Berlin’ poster, Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Bettmann)
70. Synagogue on fire, Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)
71. Jewish Community building, Kassel, 1938 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
72. Looted Jewish shop, Berlin, 1938 (AKG London)
73. Joseph Goebbels and his family, 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)
74. Goebbels broadcasting to the people, 1939 (Hulton Getty)
75. Eva Braun, c.1938 (Hulton Getty)
76. Wilhelm Keitel greets Neville Chamberlain (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
77. German troops, Prague, 1939 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
78. Hitler’s study in the Reich Chancellery (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
79. Göring addresses Hitler in the New Reich Chancellery, 1939 (Bayerisches
Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich)
80. Hitler presented with a model by Ferdinand Porsche, 1938 (Hulton Getty)
81. Heinrich Himmler presents Hitler with a painting by Menzel, 1939 (Bundesarchiv,
Koblenz)
82. Hitler with Winifred Wagner, Bayreuth, 1939 (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv,
Munich)
83. Molotov signs the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany,
1939 (Corbis)
84. Hitler in Poland with his Wehrmacht adjutants (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
85. Hitler reviewing troops in Warsaw, 1939 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
86. Hitler addresses the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ at the Bürgerbräukeller, Munich, 1939

(Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
87. Arthur Greiser (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)
88. Albert Forster (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
89. Hitler reacting to news of France’s request for an armistice, 1940 (Bibliothek für
Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
90. Hitler visiting the Maginot Line in Alsace, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
91. Hitler in Freudenstadt, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
92. Crowds in the Wilhelmplatz, Berlin, 1940 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
93. Hitler bids farewell to Franco, Hendaye, 1940 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
94. Hitler meets Marshal Pétain, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
95. Ribbentrop talking to Molotov, Berlin, 1940 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin)
96. Hitler meets Matsuoka of Japan, 1941 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
97. Hitler talks to Alfred Jodl, 1941 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
98. Hitler and Keitel, en route to Angerburg, 1941 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter
Frentz)
99. ‘Europe’s Victory is Your Prosperity’, anti-Bolshevik poster (Imperial War Museum,
London)
100. Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder (AKG London)
101. Keitel with Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
102. Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
103. Nazi propaganda poster featuring Hitler’s ‘prophecy’ of 30 January 1939 (The
Wiener Library, London)
104. Hitler salutes the coffin of Heydrich, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
105. Hitler comforts Heydrich’s sons (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
106. Hitler addresses 12,000 officers at the Sportpalast, Berlin, 1942 (Bibliothek für
Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

107. The officers reacting (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
108. Fedor von Bock (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)
109. Erich von Manstein (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)
110. Hitler speaks at ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’ at the Armoury on Unter den Linden,
Berlin, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
111. Motorized troops pass a burning Russian village on the Eastern Front, 1942
(Hulton Getty)
112. Hitler greets Dr Ante Pavelic, 1943 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
113. Hitler with Marshal Antonescu, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
114. Hitler greets King Boris III, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)


115. Hitler greets Monsignor Dr Josef Tiso, 1943 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
116. Hitler greets Marshal Mannerheim, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
117. Admiral Horthy speaks with Ribbentrop, Keitel and Martin Bormann (Bibliothek für
Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
118. A ‘Do 24’ seaplane, Norway (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
119. Train-mounted cannon, Leningrad (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
120. German tanks, Cyrenaica, Libya (Hulton Getty)
121. Hunting partisans, Bosnia (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
122. Exhausted German soldier, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
123. Hitler reviewing the Wehrmacht parade, Berlin, 1943 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,
Berlin/Walter Frentz)
124. The Party’s ‘Old Guard’ salute Hitler, Munich, 1943 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
125. Martin Bormann (Hulton Getty)
126. Hitler and Goebbels on the Obersalzberg, 1943 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter
Frentz)

127. German soldiers pushing vehicle through mud, the Eastern Front (Corbis)
128. Armoured vehicles lodged in snow, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
129. Waffen-SS troops, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
130. French Jews being deported, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)
131. Polish Jews dig their own grave, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)
132. Incinerators at Majdanek, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)
133. Hitler and Himmler walking on the Obersalzberg, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,
Berlin/Walter Frentz)
134. The ‘White Rose’, 1942 (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin)
135. Heinz Guderian (Hulton Getty)
136. Ludwig Beck (AKG London)
137. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (AKG London)
138. Henning von Tresckow (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
139. Hitler just after the assassination attempt, 1944 (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)
140. Hitler’s trousers (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
141. Last meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, 1944 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
142. Karl Dönitz professes the loyalty of the Navy, 1944 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
143. An ageing Hitler at the Berghof, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/ Walter Frentz)


144. V1 flying-bomb (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
145. V2 rocket (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)
146. Messerschmitt Me262 (Hulton Getty)
147. The ‘Volkssturm’, 1944 (Hulton Getty)
148. The last ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’, Berlin, 1945 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)
149. Women and children fleeing Danzig, 1945 (AKG London)
150. Hitler views a model of Linz (National Archives and Records Administration,

Washington)
151. Hitler in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery, 1945 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,
Stuttgart)


Glossary of Abbreviations
BVP

Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party)

DDP

Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party)

DAP

DNVP
DSP

DSVB
DVFP
DVP

FHQ
KPD

NSDAP
NSFB
NSFP
NS-Hago

OKH

OKW
OT

RSHA
SA

SD
SPD
SS

Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party)

Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party)
Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Party)

Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung (German Folkish Freedom
Movement)

Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (German Folkish Freedom Party)
Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party)
Führer Hauptquartier (Führer Headquarters)

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)

Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung (National Socialist Freedom
Movement)

Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (National Socialist Freedom Party)
Nationalsozialistische Handwerks-, Handels- und Gewerbe-organisation
(Nazi Craft, Commerce, and Trade Organization)
Oberkommando des Heeres (High Command of the Army)
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (armed services)
Organisation Todt

Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office)
Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop)

Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of
Germany)
Schutzstaffel (lit. Protection Squad)


Maps
1 The legacy of the First World War
2 Poland under Nazi occupation
3 The Western offensive: the Sichelschnitt attack
4 The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue
5 Nazi occupied Europe
6 Limits of the German occupation of the USSR
7 The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944–5
8 The Soviet drive to Berlin


1. The legacy of the First World War

2. Poland under Nazi occupation


3. The Western offensive: the Sichelschnitt attack


4. The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue


5. Nazi occupied Europe


6. Limits of the German occupation of the USSR


7. The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944–5


8. The Soviet drive to Berlin


Preface to the New Edition
It has been a source of immense satisfaction to me that the original two-volume
biography, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, and Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, published in 1998
and 2000 respectively, was so well received, as also in the numerous countries where
foreign-language editions were published. The warm reception in Germany was
particularly gratifying.
My biography was above all intended to be a study of Hitler’s power. I set out to
answer two questions. The first was how Hitler had been possible. How could such a

bizarre misfit ever have been in a position to take power in Germany, a modern,
complex, economically developed, culturally advanced country? The second was how,
then, Hitler could exercise power. He had great demagogic skills, certainly, and
combined this with a sure eye for exploiting ruthlessly the weakness of his opponents.
But he was an unsophisticated autodidact lacking all experience of government. From
1933 he had to deal not just with Nazi roughnecks but with a government machine and
circles used to ruling. How could he then so swiftly dominate the established political
élites, go on to draw Germany into a catastrophic high-risk gamble for European
domination with a terrible, unprecedented genocidal programme at its heart, block all
possibilities of a negotiated end to the conflict, and finally kill himself only when the
arch-enemy was at his very door and his country physically and morally in total ruins?
I found the answer to these questions only partially in the personality of the strange
individual who presided over Germany’s fate during those twelve long years. Of course,
personality counts in historical explanation. It would be foolish to suggest otherwise.
And Hitler, as those who admired him or reviled him agreed, was an extraordinary
personality (though, however varied and numerous the attempts at explanation are,
only speculation is possible on the formative causes of his peculiar psychology). Hitler
was not interchangeable. The type of individual that Hitler was unquestionably
influenced crucial developments in decisive fashion. A Reich Chancellor Göring, for
instance, would not have acted in the same way at numerous key junctures. It can be
said with certainty: without Hitler, history would have been different.
But Hitler’s disastrous impact cannot be explained through personality alone. Before
1918, there had been no sign of the later extraordinary personal magnetism. He was
seen by those around him as an oddity, at times a figure of mild scorn or ridicule,
definitively not as a future national leader in waiting. From 1919 onwards, all this
changed. He now became the object of increasing, ultimately almost boundless, mass
adulation (as well as intense hatred from his political enemies). This in itself suggests
that the answer to the riddle of his impact has to be found less in Hitler’s personality
than in the changed circumstances of a German society traumatized by a lost war,
revolutionary upheaval, political instability, economic misery and cultural crisis. At any

other time, Hitler would surely have remained a nobody. But in those peculiar
circumstances, a symbiotic relationship of dynamic, and ultimately destructive, nature


emerged between the individual with a mission to expunge the perceived national
humiliation of 1918 and a society ready more and more to see his leadership as vital to
its future salvation, to rescue it from the dire straits into which, in the eyes of millions of
Germans, defeat, democracy and depression had cast it.
To encapsulate this relationship, as the key to understanding how Hitler could obtain,
then exercise, his peculiar form of power, I turned to the concept of ‘charismatic
authority’, as devised by the brilliant German sociologist Max Weber, who died before
Hitler had been heard of – at least outside Munich beerhalls. I did not elaborate on this
concept, which had figured prominently in my writing on Hitler and the Third Reich
over many years. It lay unmistakably, however, at the heart of the inquiry. ‘Charismatic
authority’, as deployed by Weber, did not rest primarily on demonstrable outstanding
qualities of an individual. Rather, it derived from the perception of such qualities among
a ‘following’ which, amid crisis conditions, projected on to a chosen leader unique
‘heroic’ attributes and saw in him personal greatness, the embodiment of a ‘mission’ of
salvation. ‘Charismatic authority’ is, in Weber’s conceptualization, inherently unstable.
Continued failure or misfortune will bring its downfall; and it is under threat of
becoming ‘routinized’ into a systematic form of government.
Applying this concept of ‘charismatic authority’ seemed to me to offer a useful way of
tackling both of the central questions I had posed. To my mind, the concept helps in
evaluating the relationship between Hitler and the mass following that shaped his rise –
though in conditions never, of course, imagined by Max Weber, and where the image of
‘heroic’ leadership attached to Hitler, exploiting pre-existing pseudo-religious
expectations of national salvation, was in good measure a manufactured propaganda
product. And I also found it invaluable in examining the way Hitler’s highly
personalized rule eroded systematic government and administration and was
incompatible with it. Of course, by the middle of the war, Hitler’s popularity was in

steep decline and any ‘charismatic’ hold over government and society was now waning
sharply. By this time, however, Germany had been wedded for a decade or so to Hitler’s
‘charismatic’ domination. Those who owed their own positions of power to Hitler’s
supreme ‘Führer authority’ still upheld it, whether from conviction or necessity. They
had risen with Hitler. Now they were condemned to fall with him. He had left them no
way out. Hitler’s authority within the regime started to crumble only as Germany faced
imminent and total defeat. And as long as he lived, he posed an insuperable barrier to
the only way the war he had brought about could be ended: his country’s capitulation.
I linked ‘charismatic authority’ to another concept as a way of showing how Hitler’s
highly personalized form of rule functioned. This, as referred to in the text and
operating as a kind of leitmotiv throughout the biography, was the notion of ‘working
towards the Führer’, which I tried to use to show how Hitler’s presumed aims served to
prompt, activate or legitimate initiatives at different levels of the regime, driving on,
consciously or unwittingly, the destructive dynamic of Nazi rule. I did not mean, with
this notion, to suggest that people at all times asked themselves what Hitler wanted
then tried to put it into practice. Some, of course, especially among the party faithful,


did more or less just that. But many others – say in boycotting a Jewish shop to protect
a rival business, or denouncing a neighbour to the police on account of some personal
grievance – were not asking themselves what the Führer’s intentions might be, or
operating from ideological motivation. They were, nevertheless, in minor ways, helping
to sustain and promote ideological goals represented by Hitler and thereby indirectly
promoting the process of radicalization by which those goals – in this case, ‘racial
cleansing’ of German society – gradually came more sharply into view as realizable
short-term aims rather than distant objectives.
The approach I chose meant the two volumes were necessarily long. But even beyond
the text itself there was much to be added. I was keen to provide full reference to the
extensive documentary sources – both archival and printed primary sources, and the
wealth of secondary literature I had used – first, so that other researchers could follow

these up and re-examine them if need be, and second to remove distortions in some
accounts or dispose of myths which had attached themselves to Hitler. At times, the
notes became in themselves minor excursions on points of detail which could not be
expanded in the text, or offered additional commentary upon it. I provided lengthy
notes in Hubris, for example, elaborating on points of interpretation in historiography,
and on differing views of Hitler’s psychology; and in Nemesis on the authenticity of the
text of the final ‘table talk’ monologues of early 1945 and on the complex (and
sometimes conflicting) evidence about the circumstances of Hitler’s death and Soviet
discovery of his remains. All of this meant that the two finished volumes became
massive in size, totalling over 1,450 pages of text and almost 450 pages of notes and
bibliography. Of course, not all readers are able to devote sufficient time and energy to
a work of such length. And, naturally, not all readers are interested in the scholarly
apparatus.
After much consideration, I decided, therefore, to produce this condensed edition. On
undertaking it, I was reminded of the passage in the film Amadeus, where the Kaiser
tells Mozart that he likes his opera – apart from the fact that it contains too many notes.
‘Too many notes, Majesty?’ an indignant Mozart interjects. ‘There are neither too many,
nor too few. Just exactly the right number.’ That is more or less how I felt about my
original two volumes. These took the form and shape that they did because I wanted to
write them in exactly that way. So the drastic pruning that has gone into the present
edition – losing over 650 pages (more than 300,000 words) of text and the entire
scholarly apparatus – was nothing if not painful. And of course, it goes against the grain
for a historian to produce a text lacking references and scholarly apparatus. But I
console myself that the notes and bibliographical references are all there for
consultation by those who want to check them in the full text of the two-volume original
version, which will remain in print. And the abridged text, though greatly shortened to
create this single, more approachable volume, stays completely true to the original. I
have cut out much which provided context, eliminated numerous illustrative examples,
shortened or removed many quotations, and deleted some entire sections which
described the general social and political climate or the setting in which Hitler operated.