Hitler's Charisma (53 page)

First section:
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek / Archiv Heinrich Hoffmann;
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Rex Features;
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bpk/Heinrich Hoffmann; bpk;
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bpk/Heinrich Hoffmann;
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Roger Viollet/Getty Images; bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann;
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bpk/Heinrich Hoffmann;
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AFP/ Getty Images;
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Time &
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Life Pictures/Getty Images;
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Courtesy Everett Collection/Rex Features;
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Time &
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Life Pictures/Getty Images;
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Heinrich Hoffmann;
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek /Heinrich Hoffmann;
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bpk/ Atelier Bieber/Nather;
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann

Second section:
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Getty Images;
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bpk/Karl H. Paulmann;
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann;
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann;
2.5
Time &
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Life Pictures/Getty Images;
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Walter Frentz Collection, Berlin;
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Walter Frentz Collection, Berlin;
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bpk/Walter Frentz;
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bpk;
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bpk/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Heinrich Hoffmann;
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Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images; bpk;
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,
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,
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Walter Frentz Collection, Berlin ;
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Getty Images; bpk;
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Time &
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Life Pictures/Getty Images;
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Mondadori via Getty Images

Laurence Rees
is the writer, director and producer of the BBC TV series
The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler
. The former head of BBC Television History programs, he has specialized for the last twenty years in writing books and making television documentaries about the Nazis and World War II. Previous projects that were both series and books include
Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution
and
World War II Behind Closed Doors
.

In 2006 Rees won the British Book Award for History Book of the Year for
Auschwitz
. Educated at Oxford University, he was appointed in 2009 a senior visiting fellow in the International History Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2010 he launched the multimedia website
WW2History.com
, which won best in class awards in the education and reference categories at the 2011 Interactive Media Awards. He lives in London.

Also available in eBook format by Laurence Rees:

World War II Behind Closed Doors:
Stalin, the Nazis, and the West
• 978-0-307-37861-3

For more information about Pantheon Books, please visit:

http://www.pantheonbooks.com

Adolf Hitler, seated far right, as an ordinary soldier in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, known as the “List” Regiment after the name of its colonel. A number of Hitler’s comrades thought him a bit odd. (
illustration credit i1.1
)

Hitler in the early 1920s as an embryonic politician in Munich. Note the deliberate attempt to appear “respectable” with newly-trimmed moustache and bourgeois clothing. (
illustration credit i1.2
)

Hermann Göring, who joined the Nazi party in 1922 and was wounded during the Beer Hall Putsch the following year. He was one of the most strident believers in the “charisma” of Adolf Hitler. (
illustration credit i1.3
)

Ernst Röhm in the uniform of a German officer. Hugely influential during the early days of the Nazi party, Röhm would later command the Nazi stormtroopers and then be murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934. (
illustration credit i1.4
)

Dietrich Eckart, a dissolute writer and vicious anti-Semite who was one of the first to recognise the political potential of Adolf Hitler. Eckart died in 1923 but remained one of the few people that Hitler spoke of with reverence. (
illustration credit i1.5
)

Joseph Goebbels, who held a PhD in German literature, was instrumental in creating the “Hitler myth”—the idea that Hitler was infallible. Working across print, radio and film, Goebbels became the most powerful propagandist the world has ever seen. (
illustration credit i1.6
)

General Erich Ludendorff (left) and Adolf Hitler (right) at the time of their trial in 1924 for involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch. Ludendorff, a hero of the First World War, was initially helpful to Hitler, but was soon discarded once Hitler decided that he, and he alone, was the leader Germany needed. (
illustration credit i1.7
)

Nazi stormtroopers and other far-right paramilitary units arrive in Munich to take part in the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. The putsch was an incompetent attempt to start a revolution, but Hitler later turned this failure into a heroic myth. (
illustration credit i1.8
)

Hitler outside Landsberg prison in Bavaria in December 1924 on his release after serving just nine months of a five-year sentence for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch. He emerged from prison, having written
Mein Kampf
, convinced that he was Germany’s saviour. (
illustration credit i1.9
)