GERMANY AUTHOR · BIOGRAPHY · POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Also known as: Ralf George Reuth, Reuth, Ralf Georg
German historian
The realization of a man's ambition is possible only within the limitations imposed by his physiology and psychology.
— from Rommel
Hitler
1973
This book is a major new biography -- an extraordinary, penetrating study of the man who has become the personification of evil. For all the literature about Adolf Hitler there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler’s childhood to his failures as a young man in Vienna to his experiences during the First World War to his rise as a far-right party leader. Ullrich deftly captures Hitler’s intelligence, instinctive grasp of politics, and gift for oratory as well as his megalomania, deep insecurity, and repulsive worldview. Many previous biographies have focused on the larger social conditions that explain the rise of the Third Reich. Ullrich gives us a comprehensive portrait of a postwar Germany humiliated by defeat, wracked by political crisis, and starved by an economic depression, but his real gift is to show vividly how Hitler used his ruthlessness and political talent to shape the Nazi party and lead it to power. For decades the world has tried to grasp how Hitler was possible. By focusing on the man at the center of it all, on how he experienced his world, formed his political beliefs, and wielded power, this riveting biography brings us closer than ever to the answer. - Publisher.
Rommel
Product Description: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was the most popular soldier of World War II. Under his leadership the German Africa Corps advanced all the way to Egypt. Known as the 'Desert Fox', Rommel was considered invincible. That is the story told in the history books. Ralf Georg Reuth paints a different portrait of Erwin Rommel: a picture of a man, who owed his fame in part to the Nazi propaganda and whose role in the resistance is still unclear. Reuth shows us the image of a soldier who was promoted by Hitler and who continued to stay true to him until the end, when he committed suicide at the behest of his Fuhrer. His personal fate is the mirror image of the German tragedy of that time: 'to have followed the Fuhrer to the end and to believe that one had thereby done one's patriotic duty.'
Goebbels
Ralf Georg Reuth's biography is meticulously researched, comprehensive, definitive. With unusual objectivity Reuth reconstructs history from eyewitness accounts, Goebbels's own diaries, and archival material -- some of which was held by the East Germans and Russians and only recently became available. It is the story of a small, spindly, highly intelligent man with a clubfoot and an inferiority complex who rose to power with Hitler and was, of all the Nazis, the greatest advocate of the extermination of the Jews. - Jacket flap.