Peter longerich hitler biography his book

It became everything for Hitler. The author argues Hitler ensured cooperation from his allies and from the Germans by making them complicit in the crimes against humanity. Amazing how successful he was. Stephen Selbst. Peter Longerich's new biography of Hitler is superb, well-written, analytical and thorough. Longerich shows that Hitler was not, as some have suggested, a passive leader who set the tone but ignored the details.

Rather, he intervened in events he cared about, determining not only overall strategy, but also surprisingly mundane details. He deliberately undermined institutions so that he could keep a rein on by policy matters by ceding to people he trusted the authority to take over areas of government. He also played off members of his entourage, encouraging each to challenge the others, with the result that no individual amassed a threatening or competitive power base.

This book is a new biography of Hitler. The scholarship has been excellent and the writing has been superb. It makes me wonder if there is anything going on in popular politics that is stimulating such work on this archetypal dictator. Just kidding This book is one of the longer entries in the group and written by a prolific scholar on the Nazis at the University of London who has done bios on Himmler and Goebbels.

In evaluating a bio like this, I need to note that there is a high bar for biographies of Hitler. Much of the information that is available or likely to become available has already been used, most notably the opening up of Eastern European and Russian archives after Associated with German reunification, the Germans themselves have produced real accomplishments associated with their Nazi Documentation centers.

On the one hand, H was a unique once in a millenium character. On the other, context is everything and H is better understood by knowing his situations and how he used them. Longerich tries to meld these two approaches to show how H used his own background and characteristics, in conjunction with high skill in understanding the logic of his situation, and built up his career and successes to change the world and throw it back into war and genocide.

Luck and noise also helped things along. This is a plausible organizing approach and rings true as a basis for explanation. The trouble is that it leads to a very long book, since the context needs explaining, along with how H interacted with that context, along with how one event linked with others And there are a lot of events to explain.

The initial account of his life does not get a lot of attention, since the combination of person and situation that produced H had not gotten sufficiently intense to make a difference. As source materials, Professor Longerich appears to make good use of diaries by Goebbels and others and is a master and bringing in policy documents and plans as summing up the policy orientation of H at different times - orientations that changed across time and situations as well.

For example? To start with, in looking at the initial establishment of the Nazi regime, Longerich does at good job at how the various aspects of the regime fit or failed to fit together, and whether conflict among overlapping centers of power was intentional or not. This aspect of regime chaos is frequently commented upon, but it is done well here.

As the regime is more established, some really interesting analysis revolves around available budgetary figures - how the growth in some areas affected or limited growth in others rearmament versus consumer goods, for example. The discussion of the agriculture sector was new to me and striking. This is not just a matter of budget trade offs but also of how different aspects of the strange Nazi ideology fit together or not.

The sections on diplomacy leading to war are also well done but require attention. The tension between how the Third Reich performed and how it was organized and coordinated to peter longerich hitler biography his book and perform is a continuing one throughout the book. Once the war begins, the dynamics between H and his generals become an increasingly important part of the story.

An issue I had with the book is that Longerich has some involved arguments implied in his account but they tend to be broken out as needed for particular situations. Sometimes they are summed up at the end of a chapter. I would have liked for the broader argument to be presented so that it could be recalled as various moments during the detailed story of particular events.

For an example of this, what was the organizing principle and practice that made the Third Reich - a hugely complex undertaking - work as effectively as it did for over a decade? But the peter longerich hitler biography his book did not need total support, it had other means to organize and gain compliance. OK, so what else was involved?

There was a complex dual structure of party and state. There was also the evolution of a system where some power was delegated to a small set of key individuals, such as Goring, Himmler, Speer, Goebbels, and Borman -who then fought for personal power and attention. Ok, but there were also local leaders to take care of daily problems. So what do we take from this?

But the regime worked in complex ways and while there was an appearance of chaos, there was considerable regularity as well. Professor Longerich knows this and it would have made an interesting section to bring together the analysis he provides in one section to discuss it. The book is filled with running story lines about how to organize things, ranging from the evolution of Hololcaust and why it developed they way it did to issues of how to handle the propaganda and stage management issues when the largest cities in the realm are getting regularly flattened by allied bombing and there appears to be little that can be done about it.

The year provided sufficient crises to merit almost continual reorganization in response to external shocks. There is a lot to keep track of but it reads very well and Longerich appears to have crafted a very effective bio, even when compared with the masterpieces of the literature. It is long, however, so be prepared for a bit of a slog from time to time.

But this works well and is worth reading. Dennis Humphries. Still wish there was more personal info. Hitler is back again. There is comedy movie streaming on Netflix, and his book "Mein Kampf" has been reissued in Germany. Now we have a new biography written by Peter Longerich, a professor at London University. Hitler understood that he could gain a lot if he embraced anti-Semitism.

What we can learn from this biography is that the danger of tyranny is still alive. A single political figure is a factor that should not be underestimated. We need only to look at what is happening in the US with Donald Trump, and his crusade against muslims or mexicans. Brenda Deets. Very thorough and at times overwhelming. I wanted to understand the mental state of this man and what in his background produced such a monster.

Longerich focuses his attention upon Hitler's control over the NSDAP, including serious consideration of his tactics pre Longerich makes the case that Hitler was far less effective governing than previously credited thanks to his inability to delegate any real authority to either his henchmen or the military. His tactic, established from almost the beginning, was to divide and conquer any potential threats to his authority by making his personal support contingent upon loyalty to the Fuhrer.

The ley lines of power criss-crossed each other throughout the Third Reich as those beneath Hitler had responsibilities constantly blurred and overlapped and yet somehow the Nazis were able to keep on fighting until Hitler removed himself from the board. Longerich never brings up the resurgence of fascism in our own day, but the reader will have no trouble drawing parallels to Trump.

Even down to petty details: Hitler, like Trump, turned out to be congenitally lazy. Highly recommend. This book is extremely detailed. You would see hundreds of references for each chapter a meaningful effort. Establishing the Regime. List of Illustrations. An internationally renowned authority on the Nazis, he has published widely on the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including Holocaust: The Nazi Murder and Persecution of the Jewswhich is widely recognized as the standard account of the Nazi machinery of mass murder and the steps by which it unfolded, and Himmlerdescribed by the London Review of Books as "one of the landmark Nazi biographies.

A Nobody. The Public Self.

Peter longerich hitler biography his book

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