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The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Paperback)

by Ian Kershaw (Author) "'HEROIC' leadership was a significant element in the ideas of the nationalist and volkisch Right long before Hitler's spectacular rise to prominence ..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich + Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History) + Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; Reissue edition (27 Sep 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0192802062
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192802064
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 54,709 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #4 in  Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Propaganda
    #8 in  Books > History > Other Historical Subjects > Historians > Kershaw, Ian
    #12 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Communication Studies > Media Studies

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Before writing Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris the first volume of his substantial biography of Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw focused on the popular appeal of the Nazi dictator in The Hitler Myth. Arguing that "the sources of Hitler's appeal must be sought...in those who adored him, rather than in the leader himself," Kershaw shows how Hitler's public image welded together antagonistic forces within the Nazi state, mobilised the nation for war, and contributed to the ethos that animated systematic and genocidal violence.

Responding to historians who maintain that Hitler's personality or ideological fixations accounted for his broad acceptance, Kershaw argues that, in the early 1930s a sizeable plurality of Germans hungered for an omnipotent Führer to stand above the political disharmonies of the Weimar state. Later, foriegn policy and military victories attracted many more to the Hitler legend. However, victories were the price for popularity; and Hitler became more and more bloodthirsty as both his image and regime foundered under the blows of the Allied powers. The Hitler myth, then--a cultural phenomenon the Reich Minister Joeseph Goebbels claimed as his greatest propaganda triumph--became a fundamental cause for the collapse of the Nazi State.

Kershaw's authoritative history of political culture in Hitler's Germany forcefully demonstrates that the Führer's popularity rested less on "bizarre and arcane precepts of Nazi ideology, than on social and political values...recognisable in many societies other than the Third Reich." In our present political environment, which repeatedly features outcries for "leadership" from pundits and public servants alike, the disturbing lessons of The Hitler Myth are an urgent warning. --James Highfill --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



Product Description

Few twentieth-century political leaders enjoyed greated popularity among their own people than Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. This remarkable study of the myth that sustained one of the most notorious dictators, and delves into Hitler's extraordinarily powerful hold over the German people. In this 'major contribution to the study of the Third Reich' (Times Literary Supplement), Ian Kershaw argues that it lay not so much in Hitler's personality or his bizarre Nazi ideology, as in the social and political values of the people themselves. In charting the creation, rise, and fall of the `Hitler Myth', he demonstrates the importance of the manufactured 'Führer cult' to the attainment of Nazi political ends, and how the Nazis used the new techniques of propaganda to exploit and build on the beliefs, phobias, and prejudices of the day.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A revelatory read, 29 April 2005
By Teemacs (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This fascinating study gives a whole new slant to what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945. The Germans, angry and hurt after the defeat of the Great War, bothered by unemployment, dissatisfied with party politics, fearful of Bolshevism and seeking a strong leader who would be above politics and who would restore Germany's rightful greatness, found him in the apparently unlikely person of an embittered, Jew- and Communist-hating, Austrian ex-corporal incapable of normal human warmth. The creation of the mythical Hitler to fulfil expectations, often standing the facts of Hitler's actual person on their head, was a masterpiece of Goebbels's propaganda (Goebbels personally regarded the creation of the Fuehrer Myth as his greatest achievement). As a result, Hitler's personal popularity was almost universal, even among sections of the population who detested Nazism itself. He was given the benefit of the doubt every time. "If only the Fuehrer knew," people would say, after the latest bout of Nazi excesses.

However, the Hitler Myth carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. For one thing, Hitler came to believe it himself, and as a result became ever more divorced from ever more uncomfortable reality. Moreover, its prolongation required a continual stream of triumphs and successes, and when they faltered in the early 1940s (beginning with the Stalingrad catastrophe), so did it. However, it maintained a considerable hold right to the very end, even in the face of impending disaster. Professor Kershaw teases out the details of a complex story in a scholarly yet highly readable and informative way, and ends with an excellent concluding review chapter. The book was written in 1987, before the fall of the Wall, the subsequent reunification of Germany and the upsurge of extremist right-wing sentiment as a result of high unemployment, poor economic performance and dissatisfaction with the current government - now, where have we heard this before? It would be hard to improve on Professor Kershaw's masterly final paragraph as a commentary on modern-day affairs - and not only those of Germany:

"Old myths are however replaced by new as the combination of modern technology and advanced marketing techniques produce ever more elaborate and sophisticated examples of political image building around minority personality cults, even in western democracies, aimed at obfuscating reality among the ignorant and gullible. The price for abdicating democratic responsibilities and placing uncritical trust in the 'firm leadership' of seemingly well-intentioned political authority was paid dearly by Germans between 1933 and 1945. Even if a collapse into new forms of fascism is inherently unlikely in any western democracy, the massive extension of the power of the modern State over its citizens is in itself more than sufficient cause to develop the highest level possible of educated cynicism and critical awareness as the only protection against the marketed images of present-day and future claimants to political 'leadership'".

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26 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Shattering Third Reich and Nazi Apologists' Myths, 22 Jan 2003
By Dobester (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
The "myth" which Prof Kershaw exposes as a naked, squirming lie is the belief that hitler was above political intrigue and corruption, and was an innocent duped by self-serving, greedy, conniving underlings. This myth was very popular in Nazi Germany, where there was a general desire for a strong, single leader to clear away the messy, bickering mess that Weimar democracy had proved to be. The naive faith in the führer can still be seen on the faces of his former devotees in TV documentaries such as "The Nazis - A Warning From History".

The book is a detailed, broad examination of the social values and motives of the vast majority of Germans and austrians in those years, from the early thirties right up to the final collapse and Soviet invasion of 1945. It reveals the self-delusion that otherwise intelligent, rational people will employ to deny that they are supporters - whether active or passive - of a criminal state bent on mass murder and the enslavement of nations in their name.

Although the title might be misunderstood as an apologia for Hitler, perhaps seeming to be a defence of Hitler against anti-nazi, anti-aryan propaganda lies, this is to be welcomed. If even one confused potential nazi-supporter reads this and has their opinions overturned by Ian Kershaw's overwhelming evidence and arguments, the world will be a better, safer place.

A great book.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Image and Reality, 16 April 2008
A remarkable book , you will never view Hitler's Germany in the same light again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. It wasn't too long compared to Kershaw's other books (I'm not implying they're bad though), the different points were well... Read more
Published 9 months ago by MG

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Kershaw masterpiece!
Kershaw is the best and he reminds us of this again as he takes us through the propaganda machine that was so important in Hitlers rise to power and the face of the Third Reich.
Published on 6 Sep 2000

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