In The Hitler Conspiracies by Richard J Evans the author looks at five conspiracy theories about the Nazis. He examines how true these are, who believed that they were true and what the effect of the theories was. He also explains how conspiracy theories are generated and why they are often believed even when the truth is known. This is a short book but not a word is wasted and it is all fascinating, especially as we currently live in a time when conspiracy theories and “fake news” seem to be all around us.
The five theories that the author considers are these : The effect on Nazi thinking of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the German army was “stabbed in the back” by the Jews in WW1 which is why they lost, that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag to seize power, that Rudolf Hess fled to Scotland at the command of Hitler, and that Hitler survived the war and went to ground in South America.
I have heard all these theories before and they have been addressed to some extent in various books I have read about the war. I think that you need to have some knowledge of the events of the rise to power of the Nazis and the chronology of WW2 to understand this book properly but you don’t need to have a detailed understanding as the context is well explained.
I thought that the book was very fair minded as it showed what some people believe but also the true events and explained why the conspiracy theories were useful to some people or fed into what they already believed. Even when some people accepted that the theories weren’t factual they still clung to them because they felt true to them and confirmed their opinions. Some of them also had a kernel of truth.
I was fascinated about what this book showed about how conspiracy theories are developed and about how they become embedded in popular thinking. I thought that the book was easy to understand and illuminating and I would like to read more about this type of thing.
Anne Is Reading 