From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales & overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his 30-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried & rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of WWI. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitler's rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 20s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right & the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 & then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews & others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race. In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a drummer sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch &, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people. This volume, 1st of two, ends with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg laws that pushed German Jews to the outer fringes of society, & with the march of the German army into the Rhineland, Hitler's initial move toward the abyss of war.

The New Yorker declared the first volume of Ian Kershaw's two-volume masterpiece "as close to definitive as anything we are likely to see," and that promise is fulfilled in this stunning second volume. As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by large segments of the population and firmly supported by the Nazi regime, Hitler is poised to subjugate Europe. Nine years later, his vaunted war machine destroyed, Allied forces sweeping across Germany, Hitler will end his life with a pistol shot to his head. "[M]ore probing, more judicious, more authoritative in its rich detail...more commanding in its mastery of the horrific narrative."—Milton J. Rosenberg, Chicago Tribune

Knjiga nam v 28 poglavjih jasno izriše portret Hitlerja kot pogosto pretepenega otroka, ki so ga zasvojile pustolovske zgodbe Karla Maya, malega kolovodja v igri ravbarji in žandarji, bizarnega posebneža v dunajskem zatočišču za ubožne, sanjača, pivniškega agitatorja, kanclerja in firerja tretjega rajha. Naniza vsa srhljiva dejstva in dogodke v družbi, ki se je pogreznila v barbarstvo, in korake »totalne« vojne. Odgovarja na vprašanja: kako je lahko Nemčija v Hitlerju videla svojega »odrešitelja«, številne ženske pa seksualni simbol ... Hitlerjeva diktatura je obveljala za propad moderne civilizacije – pokazala je, česa smo zmožni, prižgala pa tudi alarmno luč – kot svarilo… Iz poglavij: ... o Hitlerjevi družini, ljubeči materi in zatiralskem očetu, razvoju v čudaško osebnost in obsedenca s slikarstvom in Wagnerjevimi operami ... o odkritem agitatorskem talentu za mobilizacijo množic »Ljubi bog, ta pa ima gobec. Lahko bi ga uporabili,« je ob nekem Hitlerjevem nastopu v pivnici pripomnil Drexler, vodja nemške delavske stranke. ... kako se je kalil diktator v veliki splošni krizi nemške družbe po 1. svetovni vojni, idealnem »gojišču« Hitlerja ... o »trudu za firerja« in vojnih operacijah z osupljivimi in zanesljivimi podatki (na sliki Hitler in Mussolini) ... spletke in zarote v najožjem krogu: od poskusa atentata do dvomljivega zdravljenja … v zadnjih mesecih in urah v bunkerju pred vdorom Sovjetov