The Hitler Conspiracies

Resumen del libro

The idea that nothing happens by chance in history, that nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight, that everything that occurs is the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating everything from behind the scenes is as old as history itself. But conspiracy theories are becoming more popular and more widespread in the twenty-first century. Nowhere have they become more obvious than in revisionist accounts of the history of the Third Reich.

Long-discredited conspiracy theories have taken on a new lease of life, given credence by claims of freshly discovered evidence and novel angles of investigation. This book takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common.

This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times.

Biografía del autor

Richard J. Evans es una de las autoridades más destacadas del mundo sobre el Tercer Reich. Es catedrático emérito de Historia en la Universidad de Cambridge y rector del Gresham College de la ciudad de Londres. Ha ganado numerosos premios por sus libros, entre ellos el Premio Wolfson de Historia, el Premio y la Medalla Leverhulme de la Academia Británica y la Medalla Cívica de Hamburgo para las Artes y las Ciencias. En 2012 fue nombrado caballero por los servicios prestados a la erudición. Es autor de numerosos libros sobre la historia moderna de Alemania y Europa, los más recientes La lucha por el poder: Europa 1815-1914 (Crítica, 2017) y Hitler y las teorías de la conspiración (Crítica, 2021). Alcanzó el éxito mundial con su trilogía La llegada del Tercer Reich (Península, 2005), El Tercer Reich en el poder (Península, 2007) y El Tercer Reich en guerra (Península, 2011).