Hitler’s People

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Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.

Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler’s orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways.

Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.


©2024 Richard J. Evans (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

A meticulously researched, sobering look at the Nazi era and the people who helped bring its evil intents to fruition
Kirkus Reviews
An important [and] sobering book that depicts the duplicity of manipulators, opportunists and psychopaths to convince gullible multitudes into becoming mass murderers. Professor Evans has produced an incisive commentary on the continuing fragile nature of the human condition.
The Jewish Chronicle
[Richard J. Evans] argues persuasively that only by examining individual personalities can we understand u2018the perverted morality that made and sustained the Nazi regimeu2026 . His book is enriched by the findings of recent scholarship and his pen portraits have all the excitement of novelty. Even his depiction of Hitler feels fresh
Literary Review
A fascinating exploration of individual agency that never loses sight of the larger context... Evans has provided us with just the kind of probing, nuanced and unsparing study to help us think things through
The New York Times
Evans dispenses his judgments about how Nazism happened and developed in bite-sized, almost laconic, pieces attached to the short biographies. This has the effect of inviting the readers to draw some of their own lessons.... if Evansu2019s purpose is getting the reader to think about what is particular and what is universal about the descent of one of the worldu2019s most u201ccivilisedu201d nations into genocidal barbarism, then I believe it succeeds
The Financial Times
Evans has chronicled Nazi Germany before, but never with such urgencyu2026 His previous books, which include a masterful trilogy on the rise, rule, and destruction of the Nazi movement, are models of historical writing, a combination of narrative and exploration, scholarship for the sake of scholarship and yet volumes that are immensely readable, even novelistic in styleu2026 Hitleru2019s People is similar in its polish and power. But the motivation and purpose of this latest work, a sweeping examination of Adolf Hitler and his subalterns and subjects, is more utilitarian
The Boston Globe
What drove Germanyu2019s citizens and leaders to support a regime committed to war, genocide and dictatorship? Evans, a prominent historian of Nazism, tackles a question that remains even now a conundrum, seeking, through portraits of diverse Third Reich figures u2014 including Hermann Gu00f6ring, Rudolf Hess and Hitler himself as well as the architect Albert Speer and the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl u2014 a common human denominator
The New York Times
In his new book, Hitleru2019s People, Professor Richard Evans, leading Cambridge historian of modern Germany, complicates the picture. In a range of two dozen biographical portraits of prominent Nazis, drawn from his own deep learning and taking account of the latest research developments, Evans shows that the immediate post-war attempts to dismiss the Nazis as psychopaths and/or gangsters were comforting but wrong.
The Standard
Engaging... a book worth reading. It is recommended to anybody with an interest in human behaviour, the Third Reich, and the role that individuals played in it, be they the paladins of the regime or u2018ordinary peopleu2019
CHACR Critique

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