Hitler's Court: The Inner Circle of The Third Reich and After

Hitler was not a lonely, aloof dictator. Throughout his rise in the  NSDAP, he gathered a loyal circle around him, which later took on the  features of a regular court, and was surrounded by people who  celebrated, flattered and intrigued him.

Who belonged to this  inner circle around Hitler? What function did this court fulfill? And  how did it influence the perception of history after 1945? Using  previously unknown sources, Heike Görtemaker explores Hitler's private  environment and shows how this inner circle made him who he was.

Biographies  of Hitler often concentrate on his obsession with self-image: "If you  subtract what politics is about him, little or nothing remains," said  Ian Kershaw, and Joachim Fest asserted: "He did not have a private  life." For Alan Bullock the "Führer" was an "uprooted man without a home  or family". Hitler's inner circle, the Berghof Society, was his private  retreat. But the court was more than that. It provided him with the  support he needed to be able to take on the role of "Führer" at all,  while at the same time allowing him to use its members as political  front men. Most of all, it represented a conspiratorial community whose  lowest common denominator was anti-Semitism.

In this book, Heike  Görtemaker asks new questions about the truth behind Hitler's inner  circle and, for the first time, also examines the "circle without  leaders"; the networking of the inner circle after 1945.