☆☆☆☆☆ Highly recommended

Andrew Nagorski’s Hitlerland: American Eyewitness to the Nazi Rise to Power fills a void for American journalistic perspective on Hitler’s Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s. Readers will recognize names such as William Shirer, Howard K. Smith, Richard Helms, and others whose roles as journalists, correspondents, and diplomats placed them in the heart of Berlin, Germany in the years following the First World War. Nagorski writes: “They served as America’s eyes and ears in Germany, and they helped produce the proverbial first draft of history. Like all first drafts, it isn’t always on the mark, but it offers highly unusual, very personal perspectives on Hitler’s rise and Germany’s march to the abyss.” He concludes: “… the Americans in Germany gradually eroded isolationist sentiments and prepared their countrymen psychologically for the years of bloodshed and struggle ahead. This was the real contribution of the Americans in Hitler’s Germany”[1]

Nagorski effectively weaves these American voices into historical context which we know escalated into the Holocaust and Hitler’s failed military leadership. Vivid narrative from this American contingent of writers shows us up close the infamous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 through the 1933 elections to the 1936 Olympics to early victories on the Eastern Front. And myriad events in between.

The author's collection and synthesis of eyewitness accounts as events unfolded in Berlin without the ‘rearview mirror’ of historical perspective and narrative makes Hitlerland an important work. This book will appeal to those fascinated with pre-war Berlin as well as scholars of Adolf Hitler and his early-war conquests before 1942. Nagorski’s Hitlerland is one book you’ll keep in your personal library for subsequent reference and re-reading.

[1] Andrew Nagorski, Hitlerland: American Eyewitness to the Nazi Rise to Power. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013) p. 327.