The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich - Hardcover

Kershaw, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198219644 ISBN 13: 9780198219644

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1987

Synopsis

Hitler's personality alone can scarcely explain his immense popularity and political effectiveness during the 1930s and `40s. Behind his strong hold over the German people lay the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him and consequently imbued him with larger-than-life characteristics. Based on secret popular opinion reports compiled by both the Nazis and their political enemies, this study of the Nazi state charts the creation, growth, and decline of the "Hitler Myth." Kershaw demonstrates how the manufactured Führer-cult formed a crucial integrating force in the Third Reich and acted as a vital catalyst in attaining Nazi political aims. Translated from German, this book affords readers a chilling look at how these masters of propaganda built on the beliefs, phobias, and predjudices of the day to create a popular image of Hitler that was at great odds with reality.

About this title

Review

Before writing the first volume of his substantial biography of Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw focused on the popular appeal of the Nazi dictator in The "Hitler Myth". Arguing that "the sources of Hitler's appeal must be sought ... in those who adored him, rather than in the leader himself," Kershaw shows how Hitler's public image welded together antagonistic forces within the Nazi state, mobilized the nation for war, and contributed to the ethos that animated systematic and genocidal violence.

Responding to historians who maintain that Hitler's personality or ideological fixations accounted for his broad acceptance, Kershaw argues that, in the early 1930s, a sizable plurality of Germans hungered for an omnipotent Führer to stand above the political disharmonies of the Weimar state. Later, foreign policy and military victories attracted many more to the Hitler legend. However, victories were the price for popularity; and Hitler became more and more bloodthirsty as both his image and regime foundered under the blows of the Allied powers. The Hitler myth, then--a cultural phenomenon the Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels claimed as his greatest propaganda triumph--became a fundamental cause for the collapse of the Nazi State.

Kershaw's authoritative history of political culture in Hitler's Germany forcefully demonstrates that the Führer's popularity rested less on "bizarre and arcane precepts of Nazi ideology than on social and political values ... recognizable in many societies other than the Third Reich." In our present political environment, which repeatedly features outcries for "leadership" from pundits and public servants alike, the disturbing lessons of The "Hitler Myth" are an urgent warning. --James Highfill

About the Author

Ian Kershaw is Professor of History at the University of Sheffield. He has written several works on German history, including Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933-1945, Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, and The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198219644
• ISBN 13: 9780198219644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312