Table Of ContentPRAISE FOR
HITLERLAND
“Andrew Nagorski, a deft storyteller, has plumbed the dispatches, diaries,
letters, and interviews of American journalists, diplomats, and others
who were present in Berlin to write a fascinating account of a fateful era.”
— Henry Kissinger
“Andrew Nagorski once again turns his perceptive, seasoned foreign
correspondent’s eye to a dramatic historical subject. This eye-opening
account of the Americans in 1920s and 1930s Berlin offers a totally new
perspective on a subject we thought we already knew.”
— Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History
“Andrew Nagorski’s Hitlerland is a fresh, compelling portrait of Nazi
Germany, as seen through the eyes of a fascinating array of Americans
who lived and worked there during Hitler’s rise to power. The
extraordinary saga of Putzi Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate who became
Hitler’s court jester, is just one of the many page-turning stories that
make Hitlerland a book not to be missed.”
— Lynne Olson, author of Citizens of London
“The rise of Hitler and the Nazi state, one of the most consequential and
profound narratives in all of world politics, receives compelling new
treatment in Andrew Nagorski’s outstanding Hitlerland. By illuminating
the disparate experiences of the era’s preeminent American diplomats,
journalists, intellectuals, and others, Nagorski has created an engrossing,
harrowing, and vividly drawn mosaic of eyewitness accounts to one of
history’s most phenomenal catastrophes.”
— Gordon M. Goldstein, author of
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam
“At times deliciously gossipy, at times thoroughly chilling, Hitlerland
offers countless novel insights into Germany’s evolution from struggling
democracy in the 1920s to totalitarian dictatorship in the 1930s. The
intimate portraits from Hitler down add an almost tangible sense of the
foibles, ambitions, insecurities, and perversities of the relatively small top
Nazi elite whose actions plunged our world into a catastrophe from which
we are yet fully to recover. The Americans themselves come alive as a
group of intense, enterprising journalists and diplomats faced with the
greatest challenge of their lives.”
— Misha Glenny, author of The Balkans 1804–1999
Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s march to the abyss, as seen through the
eyes of Americans—diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic
athletes—who watched horrified and up close. By tapping a rich vein of
personal testimonies, Hitlerland offers a gripping narrative full of surprising
twists—and a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.
Some of the Americans in Weimar and then Hitler’s Germany were merely
casual observers, others deliberately blind; a few were Nazi apologists. But most
slowly began to understand the horror of what was unfolding, even when they
found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe.
Among the journalists, William Shirer, Edgar Mowrer, and Dorothy
Thompson were increasingly alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith
stood out among the American diplomats because of his passion and courage.
Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, was an astute political
observer and a remarkably resourceful military attaché. Historian William Dodd,
whom FDR tapped as ambassador in Hitler’s Berlin, left disillusioned; his
daughter Martha scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers from her
initial infatuation with Nazis she took up with. She ended as a Soviet spy.
On the scene were George Kennan, who would become famous as the
architect of containment; Richard Helms, who rose to the top of the CIA;
Howard K. Smith, who would coanchor the ABC Evening News. The list of
prominent visitors included writers Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Wolfe, famed
aviator Charles Lindbergh, the great athlete Jesse Owens, newspaper publisher
William Randolph Hearst, and black sociologist and historian W.E.B. Dubois.
Observing Hitler and his movement up close, the most perceptive of these
Americans helped their reluctant countrymen begin to understand the nature of
Nazi Germany as it ruthlessly eliminated political opponents, instilled hatred of
Jews and anyone deemed a member of an inferior race, and readied its military
and its people for a war for global domination. They helped prepare Americans
for the years of struggle ahead.
Andrew Nagorski, award-winning journalist, is vice president and
director of public policy at the EastWest Institute, a New York–based
international affairs think tank. During a long career at Newsweek, he served as
the magazine’s bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and
Berlin. He is the author of four previous books and has written for countless
publications. He lives in Pelham Manor, New York.
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Description:Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s march to the abyss, as seen by Americans—diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes—who watched horrified and up close.Some of the Americans in Hitler’s Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind, a few were Nazi a
