Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis - Softcover

Kershaw, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141004185 ISBN 13: 9780141004181

Publisher: Penguin, 2001

Synopsis

Following the enormous success of HITLER 1889-1936 HUBRIS this book triumphantly completes one of the great modern biographies. No figure in 20th century history more clearly demands a close biographical understanding than Adolf Hitler; and no period is more important than the Second World War. Beginning with Hitler's startling European successes in the aftermath of the Rhineland occupation and ending nine years later with the suicide in the Berlin bunker, Kershaw allows us as never before tounderstand the motivation and the impact of this bizarre misfit.

About this title

Review:

George VI thought him a "damnable villain" and Neville Chamberlain found him not quite a gentleman, but to the rest of the world Adolf Hitler has come to personify modern evil to such an extent that his biographers have always faced an unenviable task. The two most renowned biographies of Hitler--by Joachim C Fest (Hitler) and by Alan Bullock (Hitler: A Study in Tyranny)--painted a picture of individual tyranny which, in the words of AJP Taylor, left Hitler guilty and every other German innocent. Decades of scholarship on German society under the Nazis now make that verdict unsafe, and so the modern biographer of Hitler must account both for his terrible mindset and his charismatic appeal. In the second and final volume of his mammoth biography of Hitler, covering the climax of Nazi power, the reclamation of German-speaking Europe, and the horrific unfolding of the final solution in Poland and Russia, Ian Kershaw manages to achieve both these tasks. Following on from Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936 the epic Hitler: Nemesis 1936-1945 takes the reader from the adulation and hysteria of Hitler's electoral victory in 1936 to the obsessive and remote "bunker" mentality which enveloped the Fuhrer as Operation Barbarossa (the attack on Russia in 1942) proved the beginning of the end. Chilling yet objective: a definitive work.--Miles Taylor

Review:

'...Hitler the man jumps out at the reader from virtually every page. [He ] comes across as a cold, friendless, lonely, unfeeling and utterly self-centred creature whose private life was virtually non-existent. Hitler was driven by the goal of total and ruthless success in politics and war. Power, the total domination of the new racially-pure Germany over a racially and ethnically cleansed Europe, and the ideas and practices of war were all that mattered to him - and God help those crossed him.' -- John P. Fox, The Independent on Sunday

'Extraordinary scholarship' -- Judges' verdict for the Whitbread book award shortlist, The Guardian

'Ian Kershaw's two volumes on Hitler must rank as one of the greatest scholarly and biographical achievements of our time.' -- David Cesarani, Literary Review

'Kershaw demonstrates brilliantly and painstakingly how, step by step, hat and fear was brought about, and so horrifyingly used...[Kershaw is] a historian of a new generation and a new century...' -- Gitta Sereny, The Times

'Nemesis is an achievement of the very highest order, by the historian who is Britain's uncontested expert on Nazi Germany...It will be some decades before anyone will need to shine a searching light once more into the rank darkness of that German bunker.' -- Michael Burleigh, The Financial Times

'This is unquestionably an outstanding biography'. -- Frank Mclynn, The Herald

'To understand Hitler's brief walk with the Devil, there can be no better starting point than Mr Kershaw's book.' -- The Economist

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141004185
• ISBN 13: 9780141004181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1168