Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power

PRAISE FOR

HITLER LAND

Andrew Nagorski, a deft storyteller, has plumbed the dispatches, diaries, letters, and interviews of American journalists, diplomats, and others who were present in Berlin to write a fascinating account of a fateful era.

Henry Kissinger

Andrew Nagorski once again turns his perceptive, seasoned foreign correspondents eye to a dramatic historical subject. This eye-opening account of the Americans in 1920s and 1930s Berlin offers a totally new perspective on a subject we thought we already knew.

Anne Applebaum , author of Gulag: A History

Andrew Nagorskis Hitlerland is a fresh, compelling portrait of Nazi Germany, as seen through the eyes of a fascinating array of Americans who lived and worked there during Hitlers rise to power. The extraordinary saga of Putzi Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate who became Hitlers court jester, is just one of the many page-turning stories that make Hitlerland a book not to be missed.

Lynne Olson , author of Citizens of London

The rise of Hitler and the Nazi state, one of the most consequential and profound narratives in all of world politics, receives compelling new treatment in Andrew Nagorskis outstanding Hitlerland . By illuminating the disparate experiences of the eras preeminent American diplomats, journalists, intellectuals, and others, Nagorski has created an engrossing, harrowing, and vividly drawn mosaic of eyewitness accounts to one of historys most phenomenal catastrophes.

Gordon M. Goldstein , author of
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam

At times deliciously gossipy, at times thoroughly chilling, Hitlerland offers countless novel insights into Germanys evolution from struggling democracy in the 1920s to totalitarian dictatorship in the 1930s. The intimate portraits from Hitler down add an almost tangible sense of the foibles, ambitions, insecurities, and perversities of the relatively small top Nazi elite whose actions plunged our world into a catastrophe from which we are yet fully to recover. The Americans themselves come alive as a group of intense, enterprising journalists and diplomats faced with the greatest challenge of their lives.

Misha Glenny , author of The Balkans 18041999

Hitlers rise to power, Germanys march to the abyss, as seen through the eyes of Americansdiplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athleteswho watched horrified and up close. By tapping a rich vein of personal testimonies, Hitlerland offers a gripping narrative full of surprising twistsand a startlingly fresh perspective on this heavily dissected era.

Some of the Americans in Weimar and then Hitlers Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind; a few were Nazi apologists. But most slowly began to understand the horror of what was unfolding, even when they found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe.

Among the journalists, William Shirer, Edgar Mowrer, and Dorothy Thompson were increasingly alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith stood out among the American diplomats because of his passion and courage. Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, was an astute political observer and a remarkably resourceful military attach. Historian William Dodd, whom FDR tapped as ambassador in Hitlers Berlin, left disillusioned; his daughter Martha scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers from her initial infatuation with Nazis she took up with. She ended as a Soviet spy.

On the scene were George Kennan, who would become famous as the architect of containment; Richard Helms, who rose to the top of the CIA; Howard K. Smith, who would coanchor the ABC Evening News . The list of prominent visitors included writers Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Wolfe, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, the great athlete Jesse Owens, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and black sociologist and historian W.E.B. Dubois.

Observing Hitler and his movement up close, the most perceptive of these Americans helped their reluctant countrymen begin to understand the nature of Nazi Germany as it ruthlessly eliminated political opponents, instilled hatred of Jews and anyone deemed a member of an inferior race, and readied its military and its people for a war for global domination. They helped prepare Americans for the years of struggle ahead.

Andrew Nagorski , award-winning journalist, is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute, a New Yorkbased international affairs think tank. During a long career at Newsweek, he served as the magazines bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. He is the author of four previous books and has written for countless publications. He lives in Pelham Manor, New York.

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Copyright 2012 by Andrew Nagorski

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2012

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nagorski, Andrew.

Hitlerland : American eyewitnesses to the Nazi rise to power / by Andrew Nagorski.1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. GermanyPolitics and government19181933. 2. GermanyPolitics and government19331945. 3. Hitler, Adolf, 18891945. 4. NazisHistory. 5. AmericansGermanyBiography. 6. World War, 19391945Personal narratives, American. 7. World War, 19391945Social aspectsGermany. 8. GermanySocial conditions19181933.
9. GermanySocial conditions19331945. I. Title.

DD253.N225 2011

940.54213dc23 2011017360

ISBN 978-1-4391-9100-2
ISBN 978-1-4391-9102-6 (eBook)

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