Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis

"This work is worthy of serious attention. The way in which the nationalist, socialist, and antisemitic view of Hitler and his political party fit with the preferences of many Germans surely deserves the exposure that this book affords them." -- The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This sweeping account draws on career-long research by one of the foremost scholars of Nazism today. Hitler's True Believers gets at the core of a perennial question: why did people choose to follow Hitler? Rather than focusing on the leader himself, Gellately delves deeply into an ideology defined by nationalism, socialism, and antisemitism. Nazi socialism must be taken especially seriously, he argues, and he shows that Germans often shared the party's ideas before they joined it, just as the party drew on popular impulses. To learn how the Nazis obtained and maintained the support of millions of Germans, this outstanding book will be essential reading for many years to come." -- Julia Torrie, Professor of History, St. Thomas University

"A remarkable read. Gellately argues with conviction that if we want to fully understand why millions of ordinary Germans became 'true believers' in Nazism, then we need to look beyond Hitler's 'charisma' and take seriously the presence of National Socialist dreams and desires in the plural." -- Matthew Stibbe, Professor of Modern European History, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

"Robert Gellately's Hitler's True Believers provides a powerful rebuttal of the tendency to present National Socialism as 'nonsensical and irrational.' Its arguments - that Hitler was a man of ideas and that we cannot understand Nazi Germany's considerable staying powers unless we take the regime's socialist attitudes and expectations seriously - are as provocative as they are persuasive. Gellately's book is the most important and original book on the history of the Third Reich published in a generation." -- Thomas Weber, author of Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi

"It's tempting to draw parallels between the Hitler era and the present age of ascendant nationalism, and Gellately offers reasons to do so...A thoughtful, timely study of how Nazism moved from the political fringe to the heart of German life." --Kirkus

"As with his earlier book, Backing Hitler, Gellately substantively revises our understanding of the process whereby average Germans became active participants or indifferent bystanders to Nazi atrocities. This work, an impressive synthesis of scholarship and archival sources, will be beneficial for all libraries."--Frederic Krome, Library Journal

"Gellately's study is a thorough treatment of an intellectually and emotionally difficult subject, as well as a sobering reminder of people's willingness to forget that their fellow human beings are, in fact, human. Hitler's True Believers sheds light on one of the twentieth century's most puzzling yet crucial questions." --Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews

"In the scholarly-and more comprehensive-Hitler's True Believers, Robert Gellately, a distinguished historian of 20th-century totalitarianism, travels the whole length of the National Socialist arc-from grubby origins to miserable conclusion-in his attempt to explain how "ordinary people became Nazis." Mr. Gellately differs from many in the weight he places on the appeal of the "socialist" element in an ideology that, almost from its earliest days, had combined nationalism and anti-Semitism with a distrust of capitalism. --Andrew Stuttaford, The Wall Street Journal

"A clear and accessible account of an atrocious yet widely popular regime." -- Moritz Föllmer, American Historical Review