Want to know what books Michael Burleigh recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Michael Burleigh's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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A bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, Joachim Fest's Hitler has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era. Fest tells and interprets the extraordinary story of a man's and a nation's rise from impotence to absolute power, as Germany and Hitler, from shared premises, entered into their covenant. He shows Hitler exploiting the resentments of the shaken, post-World War I social order and seeing through all that was hollow behind the appearance of power, at home and abroad. Fest reveals the singularly penetrating... more A bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, Joachim Fest's Hitler has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era. Fest tells and interprets the extraordinary story of a man's and a nation's rise from impotence to absolute power, as Germany and Hitler, from shared premises, entered into their covenant. He shows Hitler exploiting the resentments of the shaken, post-World War I social order and seeing through all that was hollow behind the appearance of power, at home and abroad. Fest reveals the singularly penetrating politician, hypnotizing Germans and outsiders alike with the scope of his projects and the theatricality of their presentation. Fest also, perhaps most importantly, brilliantly uncovers the destructive personality who aimed at and achieved devastation on an unprecedented scale.
As history and as biography, this is a towering achievement, a compelling story told in a way only a German could tell it, "dispassionately, but from the inside." (Time)
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Michael BurleighHe died a couple of years ago. He was the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He was a very grand German journalist who also wrote marvellous history books. It’s beautifully written and very astute about him. Obviously he finds him to be an appalling individual. He spends a lot of time talking about whether or not he’s a ‘great’ historical figure, who made a huge impact on his time. I’m... (Source)
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Few, if any, twentieth-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him.
Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Ian Kershaw's groundbreaking study charts the creation, growth, and... more Few, if any, twentieth-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him.
Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Ian Kershaw's groundbreaking study charts the creation, growth, and decline of the "Hitler myth." He demonstrates how the manufactured "Fuhrer-cult" served as a crucial integrating force within the Third Reich and a vital element in the attainment of Nazi political aims. Masters of the new techniques of propaganda, the Nazis used "image-building" to exploit the beliefs, phobias, and prejudices of the day. Kershaw greatly enhances our understanding of the German people's attitudes and behavior under Nazi rule and the psychology behind their adulation of Hitler. less Michael BurleighI know he’s written a huge two-volume biography. If that’s what grabs you… but it doesn’t grab me. His earlier book, The Hitler Myth, is much more effective because it looks at how he interacted with the German people and how his image was manipulated after he got into power to turn the negatives into pluses. For example, the fact that he was sexually dysfunctional and had non-relationships with... (Source)
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Michael BurleighHe was a literary scholar who applied much more attention to matters of language, looking at the rhetorical concepts that someone like Hitler was using. So everything gets reduced to these militaristic concepts of struggle and battle. Really, it’s about the way in which someone like that successfully turns his own quite odd life story into the story of a country. All political extremists do this.... (Source)
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What turned Adolf Hitler, a relatively normal and apparently unexceptional young man, into the very personification of evil? To answer this question, acclaimed historian Brigitte Hamann has turned to the critical, formative, years that the young Hitler spent in Vienna. As a failing, bitter, and desperately poor artist, Hitler experienced only the dark underbelly of Vienna, which was seething with fear, racial prejudice, anti-Semitism and conservatism. Drawing on previously untapped sources—from personal reminiscences to the records of shelters where Hitler slept—Hamann vividly recreates the... more What turned Adolf Hitler, a relatively normal and apparently unexceptional young man, into the very personification of evil? To answer this question, acclaimed historian Brigitte Hamann has turned to the critical, formative, years that the young Hitler spent in Vienna. As a failing, bitter, and desperately poor artist, Hitler experienced only the dark underbelly of Vienna, which was seething with fear, racial prejudice, anti-Semitism and conservatism. Drawing on previously untapped sources—from personal reminiscences to the records of shelters where Hitler slept—Hamann vividly recreates the dark side of fin de siècle Vienna and paints the fullest and most disturbing portrait of the young Hitler to date. less Michael BurleighBrigitte Hamann was a contemporary Austrian academic who went to great lengths to study his life. It’s quite tricky because Hitler provided his own account in Mein Kampf, which includes an account of his childhood and his time in both Vienna and Munich before and after WWI, so you appear to know. She used an incredible amount of legwork to separate the reality from the mythology. He constructed... (Source)
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Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to hear the young Adolf Hitler's rousing orations and to recognize his political ingenuity and perverse, self-serving ideology.
As a staff reporter on the Frankfurter Zeitung Heiden was one of the first writers to take a stand against Naziism, and his is the only contemporary document to give the whole story of Hitler's rise to power from the very beginning to the day in 1934 when the Blood Purge eliminated the last opposition, leaving hom absolute dictator of Germany. As Heiden states: "his path of murder and violence was, in... more Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to hear the young Adolf Hitler's rousing orations and to recognize his political ingenuity and perverse, self-serving ideology.
As a staff reporter on the Frankfurter Zeitung Heiden was one of the first writers to take a stand against Naziism, and his is the only contemporary document to give the whole story of Hitler's rise to power from the very beginning to the day in 1934 when the Blood Purge eliminated the last opposition, leaving hom absolute dictator of Germany. As Heiden states: "his path of murder and violence was, in accordance whit Hitler's beliefs, the right path to greatness".
This new edition of Heiden's work shows it to be not only a profound and revealing narrative but an important historical document essential to both historian and layman for a greater understanding of the calamitous events that dominated the twentieth century. less Michael Burleighthe only journalist of the time who got on Hitler’s case from a very early date and recognised that his oratory and so forth were very powerful, and he pursued him relentlessly. So much so that when Hitler came to power Heiden had to go into exile. (Source)
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