Books like Hitler by Volker Ullrich

A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, detailing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Third Reich during World War II.

Ian Kershaw's Hitler offers an intimate and compelling biography of Adolf Hitler, focusing on his rise to power through vivid descriptions of key events and figures in Germany's history. The author's research is supported by many previously untapped sources, bringing us closer to understanding the mysterious and controversial figure that Hitler was.

"In a remarkable synthesis of key scholarship and historical resources, Frederic Spotts portrays the "National Socialist revolution" as much less a social than a cultural revolution. Spotts maintains that Hitler viewed himself first and foremost as an artist, that his activities were largely directed to the promotion of the arts, and that his driving ambition was to create a supreme culture state, while at the same time using the arts to disguise the heinous crimes that were the means to fulfilling his ends." "Unlike the traditional biographical view that Hitler was an "unperson," who had no life outside politics, Spotts, author of the distinguished Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, shows that Hitler's interest in the arts was as intense as his racism. Spotts offers the first analysis of Hitler's own work as a painter as well as of his art collection - one Hitler intended to make the finest in the world. Spotts's argument is punctuated with evocative photographs and reproductions from Hitler's 1925 sketchbook." "Hitler's vision of the Aryan super-state was, as Spotts points out, to be expressed as much in art as in politics. Culture was not only the end to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it. This fundamental assessment of Hitler's career and artistic life in the Third Reich boldly shows how the arts were at the center of his life and that he was at the center of the arts. He dissolved the line between art and politics and - through the notorious spectacles, parades, festivals, films, rallies, Wagner's operas and (late in life) Lehar's operettas, political theatrics, monumental architecture, even the autobahn and the Volkswagen - turned the entre German populace into participants in his National Socialist drama." "A revealing, detailed, and highly conceptual work, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics provides an additional key to an understanding of the Third Reich - in many ways the key to the first lock on the first door. It has, until now, been only noted in the more speculative psychological portraits, biographies, and straightforward histories of the Third Reich."--Jacket.

What drove Adolf Hitler to do the abominable things he did? In this chilling new psychohistory, a distinguished psychotherapist with long experience in evaluating personality disorders examines Hitler's profoundly disturbed psyche. He then explains how Hitler made an entire nation help him advance a dark, deeply personal agenda. Dr. George Victor has drawn some surprising conclusions as he accounts for many of the most bizarre programs of the Third Reich. One of his most controversial findings is that Hitler had a plan to sterilize millions of ordinary Germans to ensure that, eventually, not a single drop of "Jewish blood" flowed in German veins. But even more amazing is Hitler's motivation for initiating the program. Dr. Victor also argues that many of Hitler's war decisions that contributed greatly to Germany's defeat achieved objectives of which military historians are unaware - objectives meant to satisfy Hitler's specific inner needs. This is the first book to show that implementation of the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.

Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. They were the most destructive and lethal regimes in history, murdering millions. They fought the largest and costliest war in all history. Yet millions of Germans and Russians enthusiastically supported them and the values they stood for. In this first major study of the two dictatorships side-by-side Richard Overy sets out to answer the question: How was dictatorship possible? How did they function? What was the bond that tied dictator and people so powerfully together? He paints a remarkable and vivid account of the different ways in which Stalin and Hitler rose to power, and abused and dominated their people. It is a chilling analysis of powerful ideals corrupted by the vanity of ambitious and unscrupulous men.

A scholarly examination of Adolf Hitler through the lens of his many biographers, analyzing how historians’ biases shape the portrayal of the Führer and the historiography of National Socialism.

Ian Kershaw's 'Hitler' offers a new perspective on the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler, providing a detailed account of the man and the events that led to his ascent to power and the subsequent Nazi regime.