Bücher von Volker Ullrich

Provides the rounded portrait of Hitler to date. This book sets out to correct our perception of the Fuhrer. It also includes his charming and repulsive traits, his talents and weaknesses, his deep-seated insecurities and murderous passions.

As the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography, written in exile, "I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions." He was referring to the situation in Germany in 1923. It was a "year of lunacy", defined by hyperinflation, a political system on the verge of collapse and separatist movements that threatened Germany's territorial integrity. Most significantly, Adolf Hitler launched his infamous Beer Hall Putsch in Munich-a failed coup that nonetheless drew international attention and demonstrated the Nazis' ruthless determination to seize power.In Germany 1923, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich draws on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles and other sources from the time to present a captivating new history of those explosive twelve months. The crisis began when the French invaded the Ruhr Valley in January to force Germany to pay the reparations it owed under the Treaty of Versailles, which had ended the Great War. For years, German leaders had embraced inflationary policies to finance the costs of defeat, and, as Ullrich demonstrates, the invasion utterly destroyed the value of the German mark. Before the war, the exchange rate was 4.2 marks to the dollar. By 20 November 1923, a dollar was worth an incomprehensible 4.2 trillion marks and a loaf of bread cost 200 billion. Facing the abyss, many ordinary Germans called for a national messiah. Among the figures to vie for that role was Hitler, a thirty-four-year-old veteran who possessed a uniquely malevolent personal magnetism. Although the Nazi coup in November was put down and Hitler arrested, the putsch showed just how tenuous the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic, was at its core.As Ullrich's panoramic narrative reveals, other Germans responded to the successive crises by launching a cultural revolution: 1923 witnessed the emergence of a multitude of new movements, from Dada to Bauhaus, and of such iconoclasts as Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz and Franz Kafka. Yet most observers were amazed that the Weimar Republic was able to survive, and the more astute realised that the feral undercurrents unleashed could lead to much worse. Publishing a century after that fateful year, Germany 1923 is a riveting chronicle of one of the most challenging times any modern democracy has faced, one with haunting parallels to our own political moment.

Woher stammte Hitler? Wie erklärt sich die Wirkung von Hitlers Reden? Inwieweit hat die Großindustrie Hitler unterstützt? Wie übte Hitler seine Herrschaft aus? Welche Einkünfte bezog Hitler? War Hitler auf militärischem Gebiet ein Dilettant? Ohne Hitler kein Holocaust? Auch mehr als siebzig Jahre nach dem Ende des Dritten Reiches ist Adolf Hitler noch ein Faszinosum. Wer dieser Mann war und welche Rolle er im NS-Regime spielte, das Krieg, Zerstörung und millionenfachen Massenmord über Europa brachte, dem geht dieser Band der Reihe «101 Fragen» nach. Volker Ullrich, Autor der großen zweibändigen Hitler-Biographie, stellt darin die wichtigsten Fragen zu Hitler und gibt kompetent, präzise und allgemeinverständlich die Antworten.

Am 9. November 1918 erreicht die revolutionäre Welle, die mit dem Matrosenaufstand in Kiel ihren Ausgang genommen hatte, Berlin. Erst mit dem Versailler Vertrag und der Verabschiedung der Weimarer Reichsverfassung findet das besiegte Deutschland im August 1919 zu einem Zustand prekärer Ruhe zurück. Bis heute werden die Handlungsspielräume dieser "Novemberrevolution" kontrovers diskutiert. Volker Ullrichs glänzend geschriebener Band schildert auf dem neuesten Forschungsstand die Phasen der Revolution und fragt zugleich nach ihrer Bedeutung für die Geschichte Weimars.

'Superb' David Aaronovitch, The Times'A punchy account that is a proper page-turner' Financial Times'The last days of the Third Reich have often been told, but seldom with the verve, perception and elegance of Volker Ullrich's rich narrative' Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War1 May 1945. The world did not know it yet, but the final week of the Third Reich's existence had begun. Hitler was dead, but the war had still not ended. Everything had both ground to a halt and yet remained agonizingly uncertain.Volker Ullrich's remarkable book takes the reader into a world torn between hope and terror, violence and peace. Ullrich describes how each day unfolds, with Germany now under a new F hrer, Admiral D nitz, based improbably in the small Baltic town of Flensburg. With Hitler dead, Berlin in ruins and the war undoubtedly lost, the process by which the fighting would end remained horrifyingly unclear. Many major Nazis were still on the loose, wild rumours continued to circulate about a last stand in the Alps and the Western allies falling out with the Soviet Union.All over Europe, millions of soldiers, prisoners, slave labourers and countless exhausted, grief-stricken and often homeless families watched and waited for the war's end. Eight Days in May is the story of people, in Erich K stner's striking phrase, stuck in 'the gap between no longer and not yet'.'A fast-paced, brilliant recounting of the turbulent last days of the Third Reich, with all the energy and chaos of a Jackson Pollock canvas' Helmut Walser Smith, author of Germany: A Nation in its Time