Hitler appears as the book’s key figure and central villain. In the rise of Hitler and his murderous Third Reich, there is a strange paradox. From the beginning of his political career—in the Nazi Party platform, in his many speeches, and in the publication of Mein Kampf—Hitler told the world exactly what he believed and what he would do once he came to power. Notwithstanding this unmistakable transparency, Hitler somehow deceived nearly every non-Nazi in Germany and every important world statesman with the notable exception of Winston Churchill. Hitler told one lie after another and broke one promise after another in pursuit of broad objectives he had never made the slightest attempt to conceal. This is one reason Shirer describes Hitler as “a person of undoubted, if evil, genius” (5).

Even Hitler’s Nazi career began in deceit, for he first encountered the then-fledgling German Workers’ Party in his capacity as a spy for the Army. After he joined the Nazis, he revealed his “peculiar genius” by adopting “symbols” and “pageantry” to “arouse” the masses, such as the

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