THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER

A History Today Best Book of the Year 2025

‘Elegantly written and powerfully argued … it ranks among the best works on this terrible period’ - Sunday Times

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 this major work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans utilizes a wealth of recently unearthed evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich, presenting 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 including 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-travelers who helped the regime in myriad ways.

Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work that 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.

Pages: 624, Dimensions: 12.8x12.8cm