New Books In Genocide Studies

Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of that eras main figures. In the past three years, three important new books have reassessed Hitler's life, beliefs and actions. Two of the authors, Volker Ulrich and Peter Longerich, are historians of Germany who are German. The third, our guest for today's interview, is British. In his new book Hitler: A Global Biography (Basic Books, 2019), Brendan Simms  offers us a different Hitler, one much more focused on global capitalism and on the Anglo-American world than either Ulrich of Longerich.  Simms argues that fears that Germany would lose the economic and demographic competition with Britain and especially the US sat at the heart of Hitler's world view. Anti-Semitism, fears of German particularism, scientific understandings of race, all of these appear in Simms' portrait of Hitler. But they are joined by a constant fear