Brendan Simms - 5 Sept

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First published 2019

Copyright Brendan Simms, 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover photograph: The Print Collector/Getty Images

ISBN: 978-0-141-92866-1

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For Katherine

In the end man takes his livelihood from the earth, and the earth is the trophy which destiny gives to those peoples who fight for it.

Adolf Hitler, 1943, quoted in Helmut Krausnick, Zu Hitlers Ostpolitik im Sommer 1943, Vierteljahrshefte fr Zeitgeschichte, 2 (1954), pp. 31112

In order to reduce the already very large number of references, documents from these collections, which are easily available, have been cited in shortened form.

My greatest debt is to my wife, Anita Bunyan, for all her support over more than thirty years and for help on this project. I also thank Christopher Andrew, Mark Austin, Maximilian Becker, Ilya Berkovich, Tim Blanning, James Boyd, Christopher Clark, Norman Domeier, Alan Donahue, Andreas Fahrmeir, Bill Foster, Eric Frazier, Allegra Fryxell, Bernhard Fulda, Claire Gantet, Manfred Grtemaker, Christian Goeschel, Bobby Grampp, Tom Grant, Neil Gregor, Henning Grunwald, Christian Hartmann, Daniel Hedinger, Winfried Heinemann, Lukas Helfinger, Dorothy Hochstetter, Luisa Hulsroj, Nora Kalinskij, Gerhard Keiper, Jennifer Jenkins, Klaus Lankheit, Charlotte Lee, Clara Maier, Heinrich Meier, Mary-Ann Middlekoop, David Motadel, Marlene Mueller-Rytlewski, William Mulligan, Fred Nielsen, Mikael Nilsson, Jeremy Noakes, Wolfram Pyta, Phillips OBrien, Darren OByrne, William OReilly, James Carleton Paget, Nathalie Price, Helen Roche, Gabriel Rolfes, Ulrich Schlie, Klaus Schmider, K. D. Schmidt, Klaus Schwabe, Constance Simms, Daniel Simms, Maja Spanu, Alan Steinweis, Benedict Stuchtey, Hans Ulrich Thamer, Liz Wake, Thomas Weber, Steffen Werther, Jo Whaley, Samuel Garrett Zeitlin and Rainer Zitelmann. I dedicate this book to my youngest daughter, Katherine.

By July 1918, the First World War had raged for nearly four years. Private First Class Adolf Hitler of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment had served in it almost from the very beginning. He had seen the German Reich defy the mighty coalition consisting of the Entente empires Britain, France and Russia as well as a number of smaller powers. Towards the end of the previous year, one of them the Tsarist Empire had been brought to its knees by a combination of military defeat and revolution. In the meantime, however, the Reich had provoked the antagonism of another and even more formidable power: the United States.