The Peculiar Sex Life of Adolf HitlerChapter 1: Incest, violence, criminality & insanityIncestuous marriage; savage beatings; impotent as a heterosexual; guilty of indecent assault; sending his feces to the school principal; craving for a strong male; castration anxiety; the rest of Hitler's family; insane cousin gassed to death; Jewish relativesChapter 2: Mother FixationMother's darling; Oedipus complex; seeing his parents having sex; lying to his mother; racked with guilt; love and tenderness; poem to his motherChapter 3: August KubizekNocturnal excursions; first girl crush; mentally unbalanced; jealousy and arguments; young Hitler's sexuality; incest incarnate; Brokeback Mountain?Chapter 4: Reinhold HanischDream factory; lover's quarrel; pederasty and theft; Jewish advisers; Hitler's unknown male companion in MunichChapter 5: Ernst SchmidtWW1; glorious meaning of a male community; sexual bullying (or a small penis); guilty of pederastic practices with an officer; in Munich with Schmidt; smear campaignChapter 6: Landsberg Love TriangleBisexual bodyguards; casual gay lovers; only one testicle; my splendid Maurice; sex with Rudolf Hess; Mein Kampf; increasing aspirationsChapter 7: "Brotherhood of Poofs"Sexual perversion records destroyed; openly gay; getting rid of Queen Ernst Roehm; whip in hand, Night of the Long Knives; new anti-gay laws; gay Nazis married offChapter 8: Julius SchreckRubber bludgeons; Schreck as doppelganger; car lovers; trysts at Hotel Bube; Hitler's fantasies come true; primitive and brutal; state funeral for Fuhrer's chauffeur and loverChapter 9: Feminine characteristicsDr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde; weeping like a baby; submissive, feminine role; chewing the carpet; threats of suicideChapter 10: Physical profileHeight, weight and missing testicle; hypnotic eyes; vegetarian diet & general health; heart attack; Parkinson's diseaseChapter 11: Addictions & obsessionsObsession with syphilis; blow-up sex dolls; bed compulsion; being attacked from behind; hypochondriac; insomniac; master of the syringe; junkieChapter 12: The feminine massesHitler's views on women; lashing himself into a frenzy; mother figures; royalty; fear of humiliation; Movie stars; Leni Riefenstahl and Jenny Jugo; sex shows; pornography & art; myth of the Aryan woman; fear of producing a cretin; underage Catholic girls; was Hitler a pedophile?Chapter 13: Dark desiresSadomasochist; Hitler's whip; urine and feces; coprophilia and undinism; degrading himself; back to his mother's wombChapter 14: Suzi LiptauerMunich 1921; young maids and secretaries; attempted hanging; the actress Pola Negri; hush money and marriage; Hitler's internal struggleChapter 15: Maria ReiterHorse whipped; woodland fairy; suicide attempt; sex with a minor; blackmail; sworn affidavit; one night of passion; sexual tastes too extremeChapter 16: Geli RaubalDoomed angel; more and more obsessive; virtual confinement; sex with the chauffeur; sexual perversions; squatting over Hitler's face; pornographic drawings; sexual confession; in love with a Jew; final argument; Bushido; gunshot to the chest; was it suicide or Hitler's first murder?Chapter 17: Renate MuellerMasochistic gratifications; begging for violent sex; torture techniques; blacklisted; Jewish lover; Gestapo surveillance; addicted to morphine; confined in a sanatorium; jumped to her deathChapter 18: Unity MitfordStalker; yearning for sex; anti-Semite; orgies with SA and SS men; propaganda coup; Hitler's arousal; necromancy; bullet in the brain; 9 years to dieChapter 19: Inge LeyMezzo-soprano; turbulent marriage, constant pain; refuge in morphine; premature birth; bullet in the brainChapter 20: Eva BraunWasted glamor, Eva's despair, two suicide attempts, sex with other men, Fuhrer bunker Berlin, death by cyanide poisoningChapter 21: Hitler's childrenOne son and nine grandchildren

An extraordinary expedition into the war zone of Hitler theories.

World War II historian Andrew Nagorski recounts Adolf Hitler’s rise to and consolidation of power, drawing on countless firsthand reports, letters, and diaries that narrate the creation of the Third Reich. “Hitlerland is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Reading about the Nazis is not supposed to be fun, but Nagorski manages to make it so. Readers new to this story will find it fascinating” (The Washington Post). Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s march to the abyss, as seen through the eyes of Americans—diplomats, military officers, journalists, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes—who watched horrified and up close. “Engaging if chilling…a broader look at Americans who had a ringside seat to Hitler’s rise” (USA TODAY), Hitlerland offers a gripping narrative full of surprising twists—and a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.

“A rare and fascinating insight into Hitler’s inner circle.” —Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler As secretary to the Führer throughout the time of the Third Reich, Christa Schroeder was perfectly placed to observe the actions and behavior of Hitler, along with the most important figures surrounding him. Schroeder’s memoir delivers fascinating insights: she notes his bourgeois manners, his vehement abstemiousness, and his mood swings. Indeed, she was ostracized by Hitler for a number of months after she made the mistake of publicly contradicting him once too often. In addition to her portrayal of Hitler, there are illuminating anecdotes about Hitler’s closest colleagues. She recalls, for instance, that the relationship between Martin Bormann and his brother Albert, who was on Hitler’s personal staff, was so bad that the two would only communicate with one another via their respective adjutants, even if they were in the same room. There is also light shed on the peculiar personal life and insanity of Reichsminister Walther Darré. Schroeder claims to have known nothing of the horrors of the Nazi regime. There is nothing of the sense of perspective or the mea culpa that one finds in the memoirs of Hitler’s other secretary, Traudl Junge, who concluded “we should have known.” Rather, the tone that pervades Schroeder’s memoir is one of bitterness. This is, without any doubt, one of the most important primary sources from the prewar and wartime period.

How did an unremarkable boy from rural Austria become the dictator who led Germany into a bloody world war? Follow Hitler's rise to power, through failure as a student to success as a speaker, and discover how his bitter determination led ultimately to destruction.

From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.

Any consideration of the 20th century would be incomplete without a discussion of Nazi Germany, an extraordinary regime which dominated European history for 12 years, and left a legacy that still echoes with us today. The incredible force of the destructive vision at the heart of Nazi Germany led to a second world war when the world was still aching from the first one, and an incomprehensible death count, both at home and abroad. In this Very Short Introduction, Jane Caplan's insightful analysis of Nazi Germany provides a highly relevant reminder of the fragility of democratic institutions, and the ways in which the exploitation of national fears, mass political movements, and frail political opposition can lead to the imposition of dictatorship. Considering the emergence and popular appeal of the Nazi party, she discusses the relationships between belief, consent, and terror in securing the regime, alongside the crucial role played by Hitler himself. Covering the full history of the regime, she includes an unflinching look at the dark stains of war, persecution, and genocide. At the same time, Caplan offers unexpected angles of vision and insights; asking readers to look behind the handful of over-used images of Nazi Germany we are familiar with, and to engage critically with a history that that is so abhorrent it risks seeming beyond interpretation. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Highlights the surprising ways in which the Nazi regime permitted or even fostered aspirations of privacy.