What Hitler Knew

"What Hitler Knew is an incisive study of how the climate of fear in Nazi Germany influenced Hitler's advisers and shaped the decision-making process. Zachary Shore argues persuasively that the inherent instability of the Third Reich led its diplomats to manage and control their "information arsenal" with obsessive intensity, in a desperate battle to defend their positions and safeguard their lives. The result, Shore concludes, was a chaotic flow of information between Hitler and his advisers that may have accelerated the march toward war." "In the process of tracing how information traveled in the corridors of Nazi power, Shore discovers surprising new facts relating to Hitler's major foreign policy decisions, from his seizure of power right up to the hours before the outbreak of war. Drawing on multinational primary research, including records from the KGB archives, Shore provides fresh insights into Hitler's daring recapture of the Rhineland, Germany's dramatic decision to align with Poland, the intrigues over arms deals with Ethiopia, and the fall of Hitler's first foreign minister. He also offers new and provocative interpretations of Stalin's decision to sign the Nazi-Soviet pact, and Chamberlain's intentions for a non-aggression pact with Hitler." "Zachary Shore takes the reader into the tortured, uncertain world of the Nazi hierarchy, telling for the first time the compelling story of What Hitler Knew."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.