Hitler, Brendan Simms
Hitler, Brendan Simms
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Hitler
A Global Biography

Author: Brendan Simms

Narrator: Leighton Pugh

Unabridged: 29 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 10/01/2019

Synopsis

From a prize-winning historian, the definitive biography of Adolph Hitler
Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary. The war against the Jews was driven both by his anxiety about combatting the supposed forces of international plutocracy and by a broader desire to maintain the domestic cohesion he thought necessary for survival on the international scene.
A powerfully argued and utterly definitive account of a murderous tyrant we thought we understood, Hitler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and outcomes of the Second World War.

About Brendan Simms

Brendan Simms is a professor of the history of international relations and a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He is the author of Unfinest Hour, Three Victories and a Defeat, and Europe, which was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. Brendan lives in Cambridge, England.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shaun on August 15, 2022

This book is packed with details around Hitler and the growth of his ideology, it's expansion through Germany and then the actions he and his followers took to using the machine of war to spread it to countries who weren't captured by his oral zest before ending his life in depressed misery when his......more

Goodreads review by Andy on September 14, 2020

This is not a good Hitler biography, and the small dividends of Simms's venture into such a research project while not being an expert of the Third Reich are quickly apparent. While somewhat intriguing, one of the main arguments of the book - that the Holocaust was a way of getting back at the US, r......more

Goodreads review by Allan on November 19, 2019

A truly unique book that provides a comprehensive understanding of the ideology that underpinned Adolph Hitler's Third Reich. This book corrects many myths and misunderstandings about Hitler, his rise to power and his objectives. I've read countless books about WW2, but only this book allowed me to......more

Goodreads review by Alan on January 25, 2020

A very, very long read. Detailed narrative on Hitler, his upbringing and his life events that shaped him as the madman and genocidal maniac that he was. He suggests and provides an incredibly convincing argument that Hitlers primary enemies were not Russia and the Jews, instead the US, UK and the Je......more

Goodreads review by Jon on June 16, 2020

Interesting biography of Hitler, focusing on Simms central idea that the real focus of Hitler's ideology was anti-capitalist and anti-Anglo-Saxon, rather than the tradition anti-Bolshevism he's supposed to have espoused. It is somewhat sparse as a biography, focusing instead on a series of specific......more

Quotes

"Fascinating...[Simms] believes that, despite the attention Hitler has received, there is an unknown Hitler that other biographers and historians have missed-the Hitler who spent his political career grappling with the emergence of America as the dominant power of the 20th century. After reading Hitler: A Global Biography, one has to agree. A thought-provoking guide to seeing what happens when dictators read America wrong."—Arthur Herman, Wall Street Journal

"This vivid and painstakingly researched volume revises fundamentally how historians ought to view the geopolitical motivations of the Nazi leader. Simms argues that Hitler did not see the Soviet Union as the primary obstacle to his expansionist ambitions. From the start, his real enemies were the United Kingdom and the United States.... Engaging and essential reading for anyone interested in Hitler's policymaking."—Foreign Affairs

"A powerful new biography."—Timothy Snyder, New York Times

"[Hitler] challenges some of our longstanding ideas about the man who ruled Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945...Highly provocative."—Financial Times

"[Simms] builds on previous scholarship to make a bold thesis-that Hitler's principal obsession was not communism but rather 'Anglo-America' and global capitalism...A vigorous, original study that adds to the ongoing scholarship."—Kirkus

"A radically new assessment of the Fuhrer's world view and the motivation for his plunging the world into a terminal struggle for survival."—Daily Mail

"Simms...challeng[es] much recent scholarship...A preoccupation with Anglo-American capitalism, he contends, drove the Third Reich's ideology in its formative years, more than the oft-cited obsession with Bolshevism...He has made sound use of the Bavarian archives."—Observer

"If many Hitler books are scarcely worth reading, this one commands attention through its originality and sheer intelligence...A thoroughly thought-provoking, stimulating biography which all historians of the Third Reich will have to take seriously."—Irish Times

"Impressive and intriguing...By drawing our attention to the centrality of historical emigration to Hitler's racial vision of a Great Germany, Simms adds a new dimension to our understanding of the thinking that drove history's most notorious figure. Crisply written and well-researched, there is much in this book that enlightens and stimulates."—The Interpreter

"Simms argues forcefully that [Hitler's] primary motivation was a fear that Germany would be crushed by the Anglo-Saxon capitalism epitomised by the US and the British Empire."—History Today

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