Highly readable drama of highborn traitors who enthusiastically aided the Nazi ascent to power.
A character-driven chronicle of the numerous British and American elites who abetted Hitler’s efforts to seize and maintain power.
Many of these names (the Mitford sisters, Sir Oswald Mosley) will be well known to students of fascist history. However, British American biographer Ronald, author of Hitler’s Art Thief, among other books, capably unearths the efforts of dozens of others who helped pave the way for getting Hitler’s “big lie” accepted by so many. The inability to accept Germany’s defeat in World War I and the ramifications of the punitive Treaty of Versailles fed the fantasy that the old order of ruptured aristocracies could be restored. Shady characters with aristocratic ties—e.g., Ernst “Putzi” Sedgwick von Hanfstaengl, a German American businessman and “Nazi English-speaking foreign press service,” and Princess Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a wily spy and monarchist—acted as Hitler’s go-betweens in wooing the British and American upper crust to advocate for the Nazi regime, write favorable stories about Hitler, and infiltrate the embassies. Putzi coached Hitler on his rhetoric, while Princess Stephanie enlisted the favors of Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, the British press baron, and got Hitler to appoint Joachim von Ribbentrop as head of the German foreign office in England. In this keen study, Ronald emphasizes the shocking extent to which American corporations like Du Pont and General Motors supported the pro-German fascist groups in the U.S., not to mention the behind-the-scenes support of Hitler’s own “alchemists” like I.G. Farben. The biggest-name sympathizers were, of course, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, ultimately exiled by Churchill to govern the Bahamas to keep them out of mischief. Even Martha Dodd, the daughter of William Dodd, the fervently anti-Nazi American ambassador to Germany, was seduced by the Nazi machine, and she went on to become an unrepentant spy.
Highly readable drama of highborn traitors who enthusiastically aided the Nazi ascent to power.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781250276551
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.
A spirited history of homegrown noncompliance.
There’s the history we know, and then, below that iceberg’s tip, all that we don’t. Stoermer, a public historian and teacher, does yeoman work in digging up stories that are far from the “safe, sanitized, often nationalistic version of the past.” Early on in his narrative, for example, come complex events out of early colonial New England. First is the revolt of Indigenous peoples led by the sachem Metacomet, a revolt that blossomed into “proportionally, the deadliest war in American history for the colonials,” one that textbooks would prefer to forget in favor of rosy stories of the first Thanksgiving. A decade later follows the not-unconnected Salem witchcraft trials, met by dissenters called the Unconfessed, who refused to accept the inquisitors’ assertions of heresy and sorcery, rebuking “a state that demanded its citizens validate its lies.” Given the flood of lies that inundates the country today, their resistance is a particularly valuable lesson. Almost unknown outside specialist circles is Stoermer’s account of the so-called Six, abolitionists who, prosperous and influential, “had accepted that tactical violence was necessary” in resisting slavery, financing, and otherwise supporting John Brown’s rebellion. Their story does not end happily; when the bullets flew, most of them withdrew. Throughout, Stoermer draws lessons to offer by way of a primer for today’s dissenters—for instance, “When systematic oppression operates at scale, resistance needs people who can build sophisticated infrastructure,” and, in doing so, who can contribute to a machinery of resistance to combat the machinery of the state. Usefully, he also reminds readers that even in defeat can come victory of sorts, as with the anti-Federalists who demanded that the Constitution contain amendments that “would later be used to challenge Jim Crow, expand civil rights, and protect individual liberty against state power.”
An inspiration for those fighting for democratic rights in the face of authoritarianism.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781586424367
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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