Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis

(Paperback)

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It is impossible to offer an adequate parallel to Hitler's situation in 1936. With the peaceful resolution of the Rhineland crisis, Hitler became both the adored object of the vast majority of Germans and an international symbol of modernity and dynamism. He managed this while in reality being the dictator of a system of single-minded viciousness new to human experience. In this book, drawing on a vast range of material, Ian Kershaw allows us to understand both the dictator himself and the society that made him. Perhaps this book's greatest achievement is to make clear the often conflicting dynamics that led from the seemingly stable, successful Germany of 1937 to the brutalised military state of the 1940s. By concentrating on the figure of Hitler, Kershaw both gives an immediate texture to these terrible events and shows the options available to Germany and its ruler at each point in the unfolding disaster. At the heart of the book lies Hitler's decision to unleash annihilatory war in the East and the terrifying new moral universe this brought into being: the degradation of enemies into "beasts" and the hatching of the "Final Solution". This is the story of a poisoned world and of a man who was both shaped by that world and - to a catastrophic degree - created it.

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Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and the inaugural British Academy Book Prize. Prizes and awards

Author Bio

IAN KERSHAW's other books include Hitler 1889-1936- Hubris; Making Friends with Hitler; Fateful Choices- Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-4; and The End- Hitler's Germany, 1944-45. Hitler 1936-1945- Nemesis received the Wolfson History Prize and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize. Until his retirement in 2008, Ian Kershaw was 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. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.