If Britain was solidly stable and France not much less so, Germany was more enigmatic. It fitted neatly into neither the model of relatively well-est… - Ian Kershaw

I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about.

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.

The question of 'historical greatness' was usually implicit in the writing of conventional biography — particularly so in the German tradition. The figure of Hitler, whose attributes — distinguished from his political aura and impact — were scarcely noble, elevating or enriching, posed self-evident problems for such a tradition.