The Hitler Conspiracies: Secrets and lies behind the rise and fall of the Nazi Party - Tapa dura

The history and legacy of Hitler and the Third Reich remain in great part a history of conspiracy. Hitler came to power by promulgating conspiracy theories; in power, the regime was driven and riven by conspiracies and even in defeat a miasma of conspiracy surrounded the Third Reich. However, the Nazi regime was also conspired against by ordinary Germans and those of senior rank, as the July 1944 Bomb Plot showed. As The Hitler Conspiracies shows, during his rise to power Hitler's greatest political skill was to explain Germany's post-World War 1 problems to those who were most receptive to a simple explanation of events, and then offer them radical solutions. At the heart of Hitler's German view was betrayal, betrayal born of conspiracy. World War 1 was lost, he argued, not because Germany had been defeated on the battlefield but because it had been betrayed by a conspiracy of supposedly self-seeking politicians, bankers, and others in senior positions whose activities had been co-ordinated by a so-called 'Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy'. Once in power, Hitler acted ruthlessly. He had two chief objectives: first, to remove those in the old German establishment and even the Nazi hierarchy (both of which conspired against him) who might threaten his power; second, to create a wholly centralised state. Hitler made the major decisions, but his chosen representatives had enormous, self-centred leeway to achieve them. Hitler did not, however, silence all opposition. In Nazi Germany, there were some Germans - members of the pre-Hitler elite, religious leaders, students and workers - who were willing to conspire against the regime. As The Hitler Conspiracies makes clear, after the years of European conquest and the instigation of draconian, racist policies throughout Nazi-dominated Europe, ordinary Germans still continued to conspire against Hitler. Few, however, were able to escape the clutches of the Third Reich's security services, such as the infamous Gestapo, and many paid with their lives. Written by an expert on the Third Reich, The Hitler Conspiracies throws a new light on the history of Adolf Hitler's Germany.

Professor David Welch is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Centre and the Study of Propaganda at the University of Kent at Canterbury. His research interests include late 19th and 20th century German history, focusing on the relationship between public opinion, politics and propaganda in German society. He is the General Editor of Routledge's Sources in History series. His published works include Germany: Propaganda and Total War 1914-1918, Modern European History: A Documentary Reader 1871-2000, The Third Reich, Politics and Propaganda, Hitler: Portrait of a Dictator and Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933-1945. He currently lives in the South of England.