Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

Product Description

From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939—a riveting account of the dictator’s final years, when he got the war he wanted but led his nation, the world, and himself to catastrophe.

“Skillfully conceived and utterly engrossing…. Accomplished.” —The New York Times Book Review

In the summer of 1939, Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Having consolidated political control in Germany, he was at the helm of a newly restored major world power, and now perfectly positioned to realize his lifelong ambition: to help the German people flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Beginning a war allowed Hitler to take his ideological obsessions to unthinkable extremes, including the mass genocide of millions, which was conducted not only with the aid of the SS, but with the full knowledge of German leadership. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies.

Now, Volker Ullrich, author of
Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939, offers fascinating new insight into Hitler’s character and personality. He vividly portrays the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures. When he ultimately realized the war was not winnable, Hitler embarked on the annihilation of Germany itself in order to punish the people who he believed had failed to hand him victory. A masterful and riveting account of a spectacular downfall, Ullrich’s rendering of Hitler’s final years is an essential addition to our understanding of the dictator and the course of the Second World War.

Review

A Time Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the YearAn AirMail Best Book of the Year

“The impulsiveness and grandiosity, the bullying and vulgarity, were obvious from the beginning; if anything, they accounted for Adolf Hitler’s anti-establishment appeal. . . . Ullrich argues that the very qualities that accounted for the dictator’s astonishing rise were also what brought about his ultimate ruin.”
⁠—New York Times
“Ullrich’s work is much more than just a biography. It is a work of synthesis, certainly, but a thorough and thoroughly readable one nonetheless, which stands muster alongside Hitler’s most significant earlier biographers: Bullock, Toland, Fest and Kershaw. Elegantly written, engaging and insightful, [
Hitler] is a new standard work on its subject.” —
BBC History

“The reader who plunges in is rewarded with insight, understanding, fine judgements and read-me narrative drive. [Ullrich’s] biography of Hitler makes essential reading . . . deeply researched, beautifully written and finely judged.” —
Daily Mail

“Smoothly written and splendidly translated, Ullrich’s book gives us a Hitler we have not seen before, at once cold-blooded and idealistic, chillingly narcissistic and cloyingly sentimental. . . . Probably the most disturbing portrait of Hitler I have ever read.” —
The Sunday Times

“Ullrich’s work is a remarkable treatise on the malevolence of power in modern times. Take care, lest we fall into the trap of autocracy.” —
New York Journal of Books

“Magisterial. . . . Lucidly formulated for a new generation of readers and scholars.”

⁠—Library Journal

“An endlessly revealing look at the Nazi regime that touches on large issues and small details alike.”
—Kirkus (starred)

About the Author

VOLKER ULLRICH is a historian and journalist whose previous books in German include biographies of Bismarck and Napoleon, as well as a major study of Imperial Germany,
Die nervöse Grossmacht 1871–1918 (The Nervous Superpower). From 1990 to 2009, Ullrich was the editor of the political book review section of the influential weekly newspaper
Die Zeit.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

HITLER by Volker Ullrich
 
“Hitler As Human Being”
 

Excerpt (pgs. 382-386)
As a rule, people who got a close look at the Fü