First published 2021
Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich have gained new momentum in the twenty-first century. Sir Richard J. Evans, a leading historian of Nazi Germany, confronts five persistent claims that refuse to die despite decades of scholarly debunking. Evans applies rigorous historical analysis to examine whether Jews conspired to destroy civilization as described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whether socialists and Jews stabbed the German army in the back in 1918, whether the Nazis torched the Reichstag to grab power, whether Hitler approved Rudolf Hess's 1941 flight to Britain with secret peace proposals that Churchill buried, and whether the Fuhrer escaped his bunker in 1945 to live in South America. Through this forensic investigation, Evans reveals common patterns that link these and other conspiracy theories together. He offers readers analytical tools for navigating an era of alternative facts and post-truth politics.
Genres: history, 20th-century, 21st-century, antisemitism, academic
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, political-thriller
Setting: Germany, South America
Period: 1918, 1941, 1945
275 pages · Paperback · Penguin