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1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Peter Longerich 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published as Hitler: Biographie by Siedler Verlag © Peter Longerich, 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962563 ISBN 978–0–19–879609–1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Acknowledgements I should like to express my thanks to everyone who helped me write and publish this biography. It could not have been written without the sup- port of the staff of the various archives and libraries I consulted. I am very grateful to them all, and in particular, once again, to the staff at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich for their tireless efforts. In the early stages of this book I had the opportunity to discuss its sub- ject’s personality with a group of psychoanalysts in Hamburg and a circle of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in Munich. I am grateful for the help I received from Sabine Brückner-Jungjohann, Christiane Adam, Gundula Fromm, Ulrich Knocke, Rüdiger Kurz, Astrid Rutezki, Dirk Sieveking and Gudrun Brockhaus, Falk Stakelbeck, Heidi Spanl, and Corinna Werntz. My sincere thanks go to Thomas Rathnow and Jens Dehning of Siedler Press and to all their colleagues at Siedler, and also to Daniel Bussenius and Jonas Wegerer for their work in editing the text. Munich, October 2015 Contents Abbreviations x Introduction 1 Prologue: A Nobody 7 I. THE PUBLIC SELF 1. Back in Munich: Politicization 49 2. Joining the Party 63 3. Hitler becomes Party Leader 82 4. The March to the Hitler Putsch 98 5. The Trial and the Period of the Ban 120 II. CREATING A PUBLIC IMAGE 6. A Fresh Start 143 7. Hitler as a Public Speaker 164 8. A New Direction 173 9. Conquering the Masses 191 10. Strategies 224 11. On the Threshold of Power 247 III. ESTABLISHING THE REGIME 12. ‘The Seizure of Power’ 279 13. First Steps in Foreign Policy 333 14. ‘Führer’ and ‘People’ 346 15. Breaking out of the International System 358 16. Becoming Sole Dictator 368 viii Contents IV. CONSOLIDATION 17. Domestic Flashpoints 403 18. Initial Foreign Policy Successes 415 19. The Road to the Nuremberg Laws 425 20. A Foreign Policy Coup 438 21. ‘Ready for War in Four Years’ Time’ 447 22. Conflict with the Churches and Cultural Policy 477 23. Hitler’s Regime 500 V. SMOKESCREEN 24. Resetting Foreign Policy 527 25. From the Blomberg–Fritsch Crisis to the Anschluss 540 26. The Sudeten Crisis 555 27. After Munich 584 28. Into War 612 VI. TRIUMPH 29. The Outbreak of War 651 30. Resistance 674 31. War in the West 689 32. Diplomatic Soundings 705 33. The Expansion of the War 718 34. Operation Barbarossa 741 35. The Radicalization of Jewish Policy 763 36. The Winter Crisis of 1941/42 777 37. The Pinnacle of Power 796 38. Hitler’s Empire 827 VII. DOWNFALL 39. The Turning Point of the War and Radicalization 845 40. With His Back to the Wall 878 Contents ix 41. Defeat Looms 905 42. 20 July 1944 914 43. Total War 924 44. The End 935 Conclusion 949 Notes 967 Bibliography 1215 Illustrations 1287 Index 1289