A timely, riveting book that presents for the first time an alternative history of 1930s Britain, revealing how prominent fascist sympathizers nearly succeeded in overturning British democracy—using the past as a road map to navigate the complexities of today’s turn toward authoritarianism. Hitler’s Girl is a groundbreaking history that reveals how, in the 1930s, authoritarianism nearly took hold in Great Britain as it did in Italy and Germany. Drawing on recently declassified intelligence files, Lauren Young details the pervasiveness of Nazi sympathies among the British aristocracy, as significant factions of the upper class methodically pursued an actively pro-German agenda. She reveals how these aristocrats formed a murky Fifth Column to Nazi Germany, which depended on the complacence and complicity of the English to topple its proud and long-standing democratic tradition—and very nearly succeeded. As she highlights the parallels to our similarly treacherous time, Young exposes the involvement of secret organizations like the Right Club, which counted the Duke of Wellington among its influential members; the Cliveden Set, which ran a shadow foreign policy in support of Hitler; and the shocking four-year affair between socialite Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler. Eye-opening and instructive, Hitler’s Girl re-evaluates 1930s England to help us understand our own vulnerabilities and poses urgent questions we must face to protect our freedom. At what point does complacency become complicity, posing real risk to the democratic norms that we take for granted? Will democracy again succeed—and will it require a similarly cataclysmic event like World War II to ensure its survival? Will we, in our own defining moment, stand up for democratic values—or will we succumb to political extremism?

This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe — especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s — and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 — from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella — the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.

In the mountain of books that have been written about the Third Reich, surprisingly little has been said about the role played by the German nobility in the Nazis' rise to power. While often confidently referred to, the 'fateful' role played by the German nobility is rarely, if ever, investigated in any real detail. Nazis and Nobles now fills this gap, providing the first systematic investigation of the role played by the nobility in German political life between Germany's defeat in the First World War in 1918 and the consolidation of Nazi power in the 1930s. As Stephan Malinowski shows, the German nobility was too weak to prevent the German Revolution of 1918 but strong enough to take an active part in the struggle against the Weimar Republic. In a real twist of historical irony, members of the nobility were as prominent in the destruction of Weimar democracy as they were to be years later in Graf Stauffenberg's July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler. In this skilful portrait of an aristocratic world that was soon to disappear, Malinowski gives us for the first time the in-depth story of the German nobility's social decline and political radicalization in the inter-war years - and the troubled mésalliance to which this was to lead between the majority of Germany's nobles and the National Socialists.

Adolf Hitler was hardly the modern world’s only murderous tyrant and imperialist. Yet he and the regime he ruled over for 12 years exerted an enormous impact on the history of the 20th Century. We are still living with the consequences. Interpretations of his life and legacy continue to extert a range of influences – some beneficial and other deleterious – on our politics and popular culture. “For the world to be done with Hitler,” the German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner wrote in 1978, “it had to kill not just the man, but the legend as well.” That legend has proven to be like the mythical hydra. Adolf Hitler: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures Hitler’s life, his works, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction offers a brief account of his life, a dictionary section lists entries on people, places, and events related to him. A comprehensive bibliography offers a list of works by and about Hitler.

"A textured picture of Hitler's histrionic personality and his insane mission for glory, presaging the genocide to come in the cold-blooded obliteration of one young woman." — Publishers Weekly Hitler's Niece tells the story of the intense and disturbing relationship between Adolf Hitler and the daughter of his only half-sister, Angela, a drama that evolves against the backdrop of Hitler's rise to prominence and power from particularly inauspicious beginnings. The story follows Geli from her birth in Linz, Austria, through the years in Berchtesgaden and Munich, to her tragic death in 1932 in Hitler's apartment in Munich. Through the eyes of a favorite niece who has been all but lost to history, we see the frightening rise in prestige and political power of a vain, vulgar, sinister man who thrived on cruelty and hate and would stop at nothing to keep the horror of his inner life hidden from the world.

In this powerful expose about Hitler's secret funding, James Pool tells the full story of the financial calculation, exploitation, and greed at the core of the Third Reich--including startling revelations about those who provided Hitler with money and the moral support he needed. The current furor over Nazi money held in Swiss banks makes this book extremely timely. photos. Print reviews.