[Richard J. Evans] argues persuasively that only by examining individual personalities can we
understand 'the perverted morality that made and sustained the Nazi regime... . His book is
enriched by the findings of recent scholarship and his pen portraits have all the excitement of
novelty. Even his depiction of Hitler feels fresh - Piers Brendon Literary Review A
biographical study of Hitler's inner circle offers a new way to understand the horrors of the
Nazi regime Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they
come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long the Nazis have been
presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work renowned
historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away
the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic
view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us. Evans offers rounded
fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi
Germany beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring
Goebbels and Himmler enforcers of Hitler's orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich propagandists
like Leni Riefenstahl low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown
sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways. Hitler's People is a
chilling brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values
of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints
have disappeared.
