How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?

Eight decades after the second world war ended, for how much longer will we produce massive books about Hitler and the Nazis? Richard J. Evans, the former regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge, is one of the senior gardeners in this noxious orchard, having devoted a lifetime’s study to the subject. As a minor under-gardener in the same field, I believe that we now know all we need to about the Führer and the crimes of his vile regime, and, barring the unlikely discovery of something new, it is time that historians moved on.

The damning facts can be briefly stated, and are cogently summed up by Evans in his conclusion: Hitler was a fanatic, brought to power by a German middle class traumatised by defeat in the first world war and the economic woes that followed. Although the Nazis never attained an electoral majority, once in office they destroyed their enemies and demolished the unpopular democracy of the Weimar Republic with ruthless violence. Then Hitler himself, sweeping aside the caution of his conservative generals, embarked on an aggressive and acquisitive foreign policy, leading to a war he ultimately could not hope to win.

The raison d’être underpinning Hitler’s entire life, from his Viennese youth to his last will and testament in the Berlin bunker, was a maniacal anti-Semitism, horrifically realised in the Holocaust. In this latest, most readable and authoritative book, informed by unmatched knowledge of the vast subject, Evans asks the question: who supported Hitler’s crazed projects and why?

He structures his answer in the form of 23 potted biographies – of Hitler himself and a selection of his enablers. These range from the leading paladins – Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and co – to less familiar names such as Field-Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the head of the Nazi women’s organisation.