Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

A special word of thanks is owing to Meir Michaelis for his repeated generosity in providing me with archival material drawn from his own researches. Gitta Sereny, likewise, not only offered friendly support, but also gave me access to valuable papers in her possession, related to her fine study of Albert Speer. A good friend, Laurence Rees, an exceptionally gifted producer from the BBC with whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of cooperating on the making of two television series connected with Nazism, and also Detlef Siebert and Tilman Remme, the able and knowledgeable heads of the research teams on the programmes, have helped greatly, both with probing inquiries and with material derived from the films they helped create. Two outstanding German historians of the Third Reich, whose own interpretations of Hitler differ sharply, have been of singular importance to this study. Eberhard Jäckel has given great support as well as expert advice throughout, and Hans Mommsen, friend of many years, has been unstinting in his help, generosity, and encouragement. Both have also made unpublished work available to me. Finally, I am most grateful to two British experts on Nazi Germany, Ted Harrison and Jeremy Noakes, for reading and commenting on the completed typescript (though, naturally, any errors remaining are my own responsibility). The particular inspiration I derived from Jeremy’s work I was keen to acknowledge in the first volume, and am equally keen to underline on this occasion.

In a different way, I would like to express my thanks to David Smith, Director of the Borthwick Institute in York (where papers on Lord Halifax’s meeting with Hitler sitting alongside archival deposits from medieval Yorkshire correspond to my intellectual schizophrenia as a historian of Nazi Germany who still dabbles in the history of monasticism in Yorkshire during the Middle Ages). Through the generous offer of his time and expertise, it has proved possible to see through the press our edition of the thirteenth-and fourteenth-century account-book of Bolton Priory without interrupting the work needed to complete this volume. Without David’s help and input, this would not have been feasible.

Given the need to accommodate the writing of this book to my normal duties at the University of Sheffield, I have had to make notable demands on the patience of my editors, both at Penguin and abroad. I have been most fortunate in my editor at Penguin, Simon Winder, who has been an unfailing source of cheerful encouragement and optimism, as well as a perceptive reader and critic. I am extremely grateful to Simon, also for his advice on the photographic material and maps for the book, and to Cecilia Mackay for searching out and assembling the photographs. In this connection, I would also like to thank Joanne King of the BBC, and, for the notable assistance provided by the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart, its Director, Dr Gerhard Hirschfeld (excellent scholar and long-standing friend), and Irina Renz, who supervises its extensive photographic collection. In preparing the lengthy text for the printers, I owe a large debt of gratitude, as with the first volume, to the expert copy-editing of Annie Lee, the superb indexing skills of Diana LeCore, and the great help and support of all the excellent publishing team at Penguin.

Outside Britain, I am hugely indebted to Don Lamm, my editor at Norton in the USA, who never ceased to keep me on my toes with his extensive knowledge, his many insights, and his inexhaustible queries. To Ulrich Volz and Michael Neher at Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, and to my editors at Flammarion, Spektrum, and Ediciones Peninsula, who either did not panic or concealed their panic from me when delivery of a lengthy typescript still needing translation became delayed, I offer my gratitude for their patience and forbearance. And to the translators of the German, French, Dutch, and Spanish editions who worked miracles to enable the simultaneous appearance of the book in those languages, my warm thanks for their efforts are combined with my utmost admiration for their skills.