A history of Hitler has to be a history of his power — how he came to get it, what its character was, how he exercised it, why he was allowed to expa… - Ian Kershaw

For the Socialist and Communist left — with only minor differences between them in this regard — Hitler was portrayed as the hireling of big capitalism, the front-man for the imperialists, the political strike-force of the enemies, of the working class. Such views were to persist after 1933 in the left-wing underground resistance organizations, the underestimation of Hitler they contained hindering clear perceptions of the ideological dynamism of Nazism. For Catholics — the other sub-culture which Nazism found greatest difficulty in penetrating, before and after 1933 — Hitler was above all seen as the head of a ‘godless’, anti-Christian movement. In Protestant church-going circles, impression of Hitler varied. Some looked to the dangers of a neo-heathen movement which had roused the base instincts of the masses. Others saw the potential, at a time when church attendance was dwindling and moral and religious values were allegedly being undermined, of Hitler's 'national renewal' bringing in its wake ethical and religious revival. On the nationalist-conservative Right, the relatively sympathetic treatment of Hitler at the time of the Young Plan Campaign had given way to hostility. Hitler was portrayed for the most part as intransigent and irresponsible, a wild and vulgar demagogue, not a statesman, an obstacle to political recovery, the head of an extreme movement with menacing socialistic tendencies. Against these negative images had to be set the adulation of the third of the population that, despite the setbacks of summer and autumn, still saw in Hitler the only hope for Germany's future.

The terrible famine of 1932 was still a searing memory. The heavy hand of Stalinist oppression had not receded since then. ... There was, then, good reason for the deep and widespread hatred for the Soviets among the Ukrainian population, and little wonder that the Germans were welcomed as liberators. Only downright idiocy could have converted that into even greater hatred of the Germans than the Soviets. But that is what the German conquerors achieved.

Never in history has such ruination – physical and moral – been associated with the name of one man. That the ruination had far deeper roots and far more profound causes than the aims and actions of one man has been evident in the preceding chapters. That the previously unprobed depths of inhumanity plumbed by the Nazi regime could draw upon wide-ranging complicity at all levels of society has been equally apparent. But Hitler's name justifiably stands for all time as that of the chief instigator of the most profound collapse of civilization in modern times. The extreme form of personal rule which an ill-educated beerhall demagogue and racist bigot, a narcissistic, megalomaniac, self-styled national saviour was allowed to acquire and exercise in a modern, economically advanced, and cultured land known for its philosophers and poets, was absolutely decisive in the terrible unfolding of events in those fateful twelve years.