Conjuring Hitler

Nazism is usually depicted as the outcome of political blunders and unique economic factors: we are told that it could not be prevented, and that it will never be repeated.In this explosive book, Guido Giacomo Preparata shows that the truth is very different: using meticulous economic analysis, he demonstrates that Hitler's extraordinary rise to power was in fact facilitated - and eventually financed - by the British and American political classes during the decade following World War I. Through a close analysis of events in the Third Reich, Preparata unveils a startling history of Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the early twentieth century. Showing that Nazism was not regarded as an aberration: for the British and American establishment of the time, it was regarded as a convenient way of destabilising Europe and driving Germany into conflict with Stalinist Russia, thus preventing the formation of any rival continental power block. In laying bare the economic forces at play in the Third Reich, Guido Giacomo Preparata identifies the key players in the British and American establishment who aided Hitler's meteoric rise.

'The most important book on modern European history since George Lichtheim's Europe in the Twentieth Century'

Guido Giacomo Preparata is a former Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Washington. He is the author of Conjuring Hitler (Pluto, 2005).