Hitler: A Global Biography

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From a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph Hitler Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary. The war against the Jews was driven both by his anxiety about combatting the supposed forces of international plutocracy and by a broader desire to maintain the domestic cohesion he thought necessary for survival on the international scene. A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Abbreviations Acknowledgements Prologue Introduction PART ONE Humiliation 1 Sketch of the Dictator as a Young Man 2 Against a ‘World of Enemies’ 3 The ‘Colonization’ of Germany PART TWO Fragmentation 4 The Struggle for Bavaria 5 Anglo-American Power and German Impotence 6 Regaining Control of the Party PART THREE Unification 7 The American Challenge 8 Breakthrough 9 Making the Fewest Mistakes PART FOUR Mobilization 10 The ‘Fairy Tale’ 11 The ‘Elevation’ of the German People 12 Guns and Butter PART FIVE Confrontation 13 ‘Living Standards’ and ‘Living Space’ 14 ‘England is the motor of opposition to us’ 15 The ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-Nots’ PART SIX Annihilation 16 Facing West, Striking East 17 The Struggle against the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘Plutocracy’ 18 The Fall of ‘Fortress Europe’ Conclusion Discover More About the Author Praise for "Hitler" Notes