Saarbruecken, Saarland, Germany · January 13, 1935 On this date in 1935 Germans held a plebiscite in the only part of Germany that remained under foreign occupation following their country’s defeat in World War I—the Saar region, or Saarland in German. The wealth of its coal deposits and their large-scale industrial exploitation, coupled with its location…
Moscow, Soviet Union · January 11, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Germans intercepted a Soviet radio transmission that ominously declared, “Everything is ready.” The Soviet offensive on the Eastern Front between the Baltic Sea in the north and the Carpathian Mountains in the south began the next day with an artillery barrage that…
Stalingrad, Soviet Union · January 10, 1943 On this date in 1943 the Soviets launched Operation Ring, their name for the action that tightened the noose around the 250,000-plus soldiers of the German Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad (now Volgograd). Operation Ring had been preceded by Operation Uranus (November 19–23, 1942), a one-million-man-plus Soviet offensive…
Washington, D. C. · January 6, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, D.C, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his State of the Union Address to the U.S. Congress to outline his desire for a world based not on a “new order of tyranny”—an allusion to the “new European order” championed by Adolf Hitler’s…
Berlin, Germany · January 5, 1939 On this date in 1939, eight months before the armed forces of Nazi Germany surged over Polish borders to launch World War II in Europe, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler told Poland’s visiting Foreign Minister Józef Beck that Germany would guarantee his country’s frontiers were a “final settlement” reached over the…
The Nazi regime was essentially a religious cult relying on the hypnotic personality of Adolf Hitler, and it was fated to die with him. But while it lasted, his closest lieutenants competed feriously for power and position as his chosen successor. This peculiar leadership dynamic resulted in millions of deaths and some of the worst excesses of World War II. This book examines these lieutenants, both as individuals and as a group. It focuses on the three most important Nazi paladins – Goring, Goebbels and Himmler – with their nearest rivals – Bormann, Speer and Ribbentrop – in close attendance. It shows how these personalities developed, and how their constant jealousies and intrigues affected the regime, the war and Hitler himself.
The classic biography of Hitler that remains, years after its publication, one of the most authoritative and readable accounts of his life. Here in an abridged edition.