Hitler's Rise to PowerLike this list

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• In the Garden of Beasts

  Love, Terror, and An American Family in Hitler's Berlin

  Larson, Erik, 1954-

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  This book may read like the most riveting fiction, but it is a true story, carefully documented with sources and footnoted. It is about the U.S. ambassador to Nazi Germany during the years 1933 to 1937, William Dodd, as the Nazis consolidated their…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Travelers in the Third Reich

  the Rise of Fascism, 1919-1945

  Boyd, Julia, 1948-

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  Hitler Germany was a tourist destination for half a million Americans a year. "Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Takeover

  Hitler's Final Rise to Power

  Ryback, Timothy W.,

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  A dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin. In the critical election in November 1932, "the Nazis lost two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• I Will Bear Witness

  a Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941

  Klemperer, Victor, 1881-1960

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  This is the first volume of Klemperer's memoir, in which he describes day by day how the Nazi takeover was experienced by normal civilians. In other words, it's not a history book seen from 30,000 feet up, but always from the perspective of someone…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Tobacconist

  Seethaler, Robert

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  An amazing book about a young man from the Austrian countryside who moves to Vienna to seek his fortune--at the very same time Austrian Nazis are terrorizing everyone, and of course especially Jews. The boy works for a Jewish tobacconist who was…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Tobacconist

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  The movie version of the novel by Robert Seethaler stars (among others) the phenomenal Swiss actor Bruno Ganz as Sigmund Freud. Like the novel, it describes the friendship between a young man from the country and the world-famous psychologist as the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Coming of the Third Reich

  Evans, Richard J.

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  "The clearest and most gripping account I've read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis." —A. S Byatt

• Cabaret

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  We all know the movie, which is about a young American cabaret performer, but it is also very much the story of the destruction of the vibrant Berlin culture scene in the early 1930s as Hitler and his private uniformed army of violent enforcers, the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Berlin Stories

  Isherwood, Christopher, 1904-1986

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  Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1932 and witnessed life in Berlin--the poverty, the unemployment, the rise of the Nazis, and the street fighting between Nazis and the Communists--during the declining years of the Weimar Republic. He fled…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Vertigo

  the Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany

  Jähner, Harald, 1953-

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  The seeds for the Nazi takeover were sown in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic. The poverty in the wake of World War I, especially given the crushing reparations payments Germany had to make, turned many Germans to take the savage rhetoric of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Hitler in Los Angeles

  How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America

  Ross, Steven Joseph,

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  No, Hitler never visited Los Angeles, but the Nazis invested enormous effort in seizing control of Hollywood movies--and they did so nearly successfully by threatening the families back in Germany of the many emigre actors, producers, and studio…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Rocketeer

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  A fun but largely fictitious movie with a foundation in actual fact: the Nazi attempt to seize control of Hollywood in the 1930s. For more on the factual basis for "The Rocketeer," see the book _Hitler in Los Angeles_, also included in this list…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Origins of Totalitarianism

  Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975

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  Although this book is an effort to understand totalitarianism wherever it arises, Hannah Arendt had particular expertise to understand how it came to Germany--she was there. She understood that anti-Semitism was vital for totalitarianism to succeed…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Time of Gifts

  on Foot to Constantinople : From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

  Fermor, Patrick Leigh

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  In 1933, when the author was 18, he set off by foot to cover the entirety of Europe, all the way to Istanbul. His path led right through Germany, not long after Hitler had seized power. As he writes in this book, "Appalling things had happened since…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• History of Nazi Germany

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  "The ascension of the Nazi Party from fringe fanatics to the undisputed rulers of a mighty Germany was a blood-soaked march that seized the lives and minds of a generation and bent them towards war. Commandeered by an ambitious young loner by the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sound of Music

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  The Sound of Music is not only about music and the romance between Captain von Trapp and the governess of his (many) children, it's also about the end of Austria as an independent country in 1938--called the Anschluß, or annexation. We see how the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Crowds and Power

  Canetti, Elias, 1905-1994

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  Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981 for his body of work, which includes both this book and the novel Auto-da-Fé , Elias Canetti was a brilliant Bulgarian-born writer who--like Hannah Arendt and, more recently, the American Timothy…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Defying Hitler

  a Memoir

  Haffner, Sebastian

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  Sebastian Haffner's memoir was originally published (in German) in 1939, in other words before all the horrors of Nazism had begun to leak out. After January 1933, Haffner witnessed as a law student the deployment of the SA as an "auxiliary police…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Man Who Stalked Einstein

  How Nazi Scientist Philipp Lenard Changed the Course of History

  Hillman, Bruce J.,

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  "By the end of World War I, Albert Einstein had become the face of the new science of theoretical physics and had made some powerful enemies. One of those enemies, Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, spent a career trying to discredit him. Their…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• On Tyranny

  Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century

  Snyder, Timothy,

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  The author, a professor of history at Yale, has written many books on Hitler, the Holocaust, and the nature of dictatorships. He also has a substack called "Thinking about . . ." in which he comments on current events from his very knowledgeable…Read moreRead more of this annotation