provided by the Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart, its Director, Dr Gerhard Hirschfeld (excellent scholar and long-standing friend), and Irina Renz, who supervises its extensive photographic collection. In preparing the lengthy text for the printers, I owe a large debt of gratitude, as with the first volume, to the expert copy-editing of Annie Lee, the superb indexing skills of Diana LeCore, and the great help and support of all the excellent publishing team at Penguin.
Outside Britain, I am hugely indebted to Don Lamm, my editor at Norton in the USA, who never ceased to keep me on my toes with his extensive knowledge, his many insights, and his inexhaustible queries. To Ulrich Volz and Michael Neher at Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, and to my editors at Flammarion, Spektrum, and Ediciones Peninsula, who either did not panic or concealed their panic from me when delivery of a lengthy typescript still needing translation became delayed, I offer my gratitude for their patience and forbearance. And to the translators of the German, French, Dutch, and Spanish editions who worked miracles to enable the simultaneous appearance of the book in those languages, my warm thanks for their efforts are combined with my utmost admiration for their skills.
As with the previous volume, much of the checking of the extensive references provided in the notes had to be undertaken in a highly concentrated spell at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich. This time, thanks to Penguin and DVA, I could make use of invaluable assistance from Wenke Meteling (during a break in her own promising historical studies at the University of Tubingen); from my niece Charlotte Woodford (who took time out from her own doctoral research on early-modern German literature at Oxford University, was of great help also in subsequently locating a number of arcane works which I needed, and, not least, compiled so thoroughly and meticulously the List of Works Cited); and from my elder son, David, who, as two years earlier, generously took a week’s holiday from his work in the airline business — somewhat to the amazement of his colleagues — to come to Munich to check references for me. I am deeply grateful to all three of them. Without them, I would have been quite unable to complete the work in time.
As with the preparation of the first volume, the incomparable Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn-Bad Godesberg offered to support the month’s stay in Munich while the references were checked. I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this support, and for all the generosity from which I have been privileged to benefit since I first became a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in the mid-1970s.
I would also like to thank most warmly a long-standing friend, Traude Spat, whose great skills as a language-teacher set me on the path many years ago to research on the darkest chapter in the history of her country, and who provided not only hospitality but also continuing encouragement of my work when, during my time in Munich, I was able to stay at her home.
In the flourishing Department of History at the University of Sheffield, I have at times had to rely more than I would have wished on the tolerance as well as good services of my colleagues and the patience of my students. I would like to thank them all most sincerely for their support, encouragement, and forbearance, and some colleagues quite especially for easing my path through taking on and efficiently carrying out sometimes quite onerous Departmental duties.
Most of all I have to thank Beverley Eaton, whose efficient help and encouragement in ten years of working as my secretary and personal assistant have been of immeasurable value in enabling the completion of this book in the face of many other pressing duties. More than anyone she has borne the brunt of the work — in the day-to-day running of a busy Department, in handling an extensive and mounting correspondence, and in coping with a variety of other tasks — which spilled over from my attempts to combine writing a biography of Hitler with being a professor at a university in a British system currently choking under the weight of its own bureaucracy. She has also been a constant source of support during the entire period of the writing of this work.
Finally, on home ground in Manchester, the Convenor and Fellows of SOFPIK, the club of which I am most proud to be a member, have shown their friendship and support for even longer than it has taken to write these two volumes on Hitler. I can never forget, though it is now many years ago, the sacrifices made by my mother and late father, who lived through Hitler’s war, to give me and my sister, Anne, the priceless opportunity to study at university. And, meanwhile, not just Betty, David, and Stephen, but now also as the years roll on Katie, Becky, and — though she is not yet aware of it — Sophie have lived in the shadow of a biography of Hitler for too long. I hope we can soon move out of this shadow and into the sunlight again. But I would like to thank them all as much as words can express for the different ways in which they have contributed to the making of this work.
‘That this new deed of Hitler is another milestone on the way to the hell’s jaws of destruction seems hardly to have entered the consciousness of anyone.’
I
‘After three years, I believe that, with the present day, the struggle for German equal rights can be regarded as closed.’ The day was 7 March 1936. The words were those of Hitler addressing the Reichstag as German troops, defying the western democracies, crossed into the demilitarized Rhineland. ‘Great are the successes which Providence has let me attain for our Fatherland in these three years,’ Hitler continued. ‘In all areas of our national, political, and economic life, our position has been improved… In these three years, Germany has regained its honour, found belief again, overcome its greatest economic distress and finally ushered in a new cultural ascent.’ In this paean to his own ‘achievements’, Hitler also explicitly stated that ‘we have no territorial claims to make in Europe’. He ended with an appeal — received to rapturous acclaim — to support him in new ‘elections’ (though only one party, the Nazi Party, was standing), set for 29 March.1 The outcome of these ‘elections’ was a vote of 98.9 per cent backing Hitler. But however ‘massaged’ the figures had been, whatever the combined weight
