Hitler: A Biography

1339 Pages·2019·21.206 MB·English

by  Peter Longerich, Jeremy Noakes, Lesley Sharpe

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© Peter Longerich 2019
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First published as Hitler: Biographie
by Siedler Verlag © Peter Longerich, 2015
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Acknowledgements
I
should like to express my thanks to everyone who helped me write and
publish this biography. It could not have been written without the sup-
port of the staff of the various archives and libraries I consulted. I am very
grateful to them all, and in particular, once again, to the staff at the Institute
for Contemporary History in Munich for their tireless efforts.
In the early stages of this book I had the opportunity to discuss its sub-
ject’s personality with a group of psychoanalysts in Hamburg and a circle of
psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in Munich. I am grateful for the help
I received from Sabine Brückner-Jungjohann, Christiane Adam, Gundula
Fromm, Ulrich Knocke, Rüdiger Kurz, Astrid Rutezki, Dirk Sieveking and
Gudrun Brockhaus, Falk Stakelbeck, Heidi Spanl, and Corinna Werntz.
My sincere thanks go to Thomas Rathnow and Jens Dehning of Siedler
Press and to all their colleagues at Siedler, and also to Daniel Bussenius and
Jonas Wegerer for their work in editing the text.
Munich, October 2015

Contents
Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
Prologue: A Nobody 7
I. THE PUBLIC SELF
1. Back in Munich: Politicization 49
2. Joining the Party 63
3. Hitler becomes Party Leader 82
4. The March to the Hitler Putsch 98
5. The Trial and the Period of the Ban 120
II. CREATING A PUBLIC IMAGE
6. A Fresh Start 143
7. Hitler as a Public Speaker 164
8. A New Direction 173
9. Conquering the Masses 191
10. Strategies 224
11. On the Threshold of Power 247
III. ESTABLISHING THE REGIME
12. ‘The Seizure of Power’ 279
13. First Steps in Foreign Policy 333
14. ‘Führer’ and ‘People’ 346
15. Breaking out of the International System 358
16. Becoming Sole Dictator 368
viii Contents
IV. CONSOLIDATION
17. Domestic Flashpoints 403
18. Initial Foreign Policy Successes 415
19. The Road to the Nuremberg Laws 425
20. A Foreign Policy Coup 438
21. ‘Ready for War in Four Years’ Time’ 447
22. Conflict with the Churches and Cultural Policy 477
23. Hitler’s Regime 500
V. SMOKESCREEN
24. Resetting Foreign Policy 527
25. From the Blomberg–Fritsch Crisis to the Anschluss 540
26. The Sudeten Crisis 555
27. After Munich 584
28. Into War 612
VI. TRIUMPH
29. The Outbreak of War 651
30. Resistance 674
31. War in the West 689
32. Diplomatic Soundings 705
33. The Expansion of the War 718
34. Operation Barbarossa 741
35. The Radicalization of Jewish Policy 763
36. The Winter Crisis of 1941/42 777
37. The Pinnacle of Power 796
38. Hitler’s Empire 827
VII. DOWNFALL
39. The Turning Point of the War and Radicalization 845
40. With His Back to the Wall 878
Contents ix
41. Defeat Looms 905
42. 20 July 1944 914
43. Total War 924
44. The End 935
Conclusion 949
Notes 967
Bibliography 1215
Illustrations 1287
Index 1289