How can we stop the holocaust from happening again?

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How can we stop the Holocaust from happening again?

The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler

Offering acerbic insight ... this arresting account asks and answers all the right questions

Laurence Rees asks, as always, the right questions, and provides excellent answers. Blending the oral testimony of contemporaries with documentary evidence, he offers sharp insight into the adulation of Hitler by millions of Germans that underpinned his 'charismatic rule'

Laurence Rees has done more for good history on television in this country than anyone else. Over several series, he has examined the most terrible aspects of the Second World War with a passionate longing to understand, while rejecting facile moral judgment

Laurence Rees is currently producing the best documentaries ever made about the Nazi era

Laurence Rees is the writer and producer of the major BBC television documentary series World War II: Behind Closed Doors, War of the Century, Horror in the East and Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'. He won the British Book Award for History Book of the Year in 2006 for his international bestseller Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'. 
 
Rees' career as a writer and filmmaker, focusing on the Nazis and World War II, stretches back nearly 20 years. His body of work has won him several awards, including a BAFTA and a Grierson Award. 
 
Educated at Solihull School and Oxford University, Rees is the former Creative Director of BBC TV History programmes.

Fuelled by hate. Unable to form normal human relationships. Unwilling to debate political issues. 
 
In many ways Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, yet he inspired millions, leading Germany into the cataclysmic events of the Second World War. 
 
But how was Hitler able to exert such power over those around him? 
 
 Award-winning historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees draws on twenty years of research into the Third Reich, as well as contemporary accounts of people who knew Hitler, to examine the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveal the role his unique 'charisma' played in his success. 
 
'Offering acerbic insight ... this arresting account asks and answers all the right questions' 
Daily Telegraph

People Tested to the Extreme in WWII

Their Darkest Hour

A lasting contribution to our understanding of the Second World War and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis

Chilling collection of eye-witness testimonies ... bringing nuance to our understanding of the horrific experience of war

An incredible, well-written, must-read book

Laurence Rees has done more for good history on television in this country than anyone else. Over several series, he has examined the most terrible aspects of the Second World War with a passionate longing to understand, while rejecting facile moral judgment ...Their Darkest Hour comes from a selection of his interviews with both perpetrators and victims ...The cumulative effects of Rees's observations, to say nothing of the stories themselves, become deeply disturbing

Rees has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Second World War. His great urge to comprehend the mentalities of those who took part in the conflict is fired by a passionate curiosity, and his wide body of work is distinguished by a fierce intellectual honesty

Rees is one of the few people - perhaps the only one - who has met and interviewed at length not only hundreds of people who suffered from the barbarities of World War Two right across the globe but also, crucially, many of the perpetrators ... All this has given Rees a comparative, cross-cultural perspective on the horrors of the war that no academic could match

Daniel Snowman, author of HISTORIANS and THE HITLER EMIGRES

Laurence Rees has devoted much of his life to trying to understand how the atrocities of the Second World War were possible. Nobody else has penetrated as far into the motivation and psyche of such a varied group of people from the war. We should be grateful to him for his work - and we should all read this book

Andrew Roberts, author of A HISTORY OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES SINCE 1900

The absence of high-profile participants and broad range of source material gives this emotive, elegantly written work an indelible authenticity that will be difficult to erase.

Laurence Rees is the critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of a large canon of books, including Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'. His longstanding career as a writer and filmmaker, focusing on the Nazis and World War II, includes the acclaimed television series Nazis: A Warning from History, War of the Century, Horror in the East and Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'. The body of work has won him a myriad of awards including a BAFTA. a Grierson Award and an international Documentary Award. He was educated at Oxford University and held the post of Creative Director of BBC TV History programmes.

How could Nazi killers shoot Jewish women and children at close range? Why did Japanese soldiers rape and murder on such a horrendous scale? How was it possible to endure the torment of a Nazi death camp? 
 
Award-winning documentary maker and historian Laurence Rees has spent decades wrestling with such questions in the course of filming hundreds of interviews with people tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. 
 
In Their Darkest Hour he presents 35 of his most electrifying encounters. 
 
'A remarkably powerful collection' Antony Beevor, Daily Telegraph 
 
'An incredible, well-written, must-read book' Glasgow Evening Times 
 
'A lasting contribution to our understanding of the Second World War and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis' Independent

Horror In The East

The brutality of Japanese soldiers towards both allied prisoners of war and millions of civilians in Asia during the Second World War was one of the greatest horrors of the Twentieth Century. Here Laurence Rees, award-winning historian and author of Auschwitz and The Nazis: a Warning from History, turns his attention to a crucial question: why were these atrocities carried out? 
 
In this classic and seminal study, Rees talks openly with perpetrators and victims alike, and asks how seemingly ordinary people were driven to mass murder, rape and suicide. Uncovering startling first-hand testimonies of cruelty and barbarity, Horror in the East looks to individual experiences to understand this dark and violent chapter of human history. 
 
'Another stunning slice of history from Laurence Rees' 
Daily Telegraph review of Horror in the East, BBC TV

The Tyrants and the Second World War

Hitler and Stalin

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI MIND 
 
'You have to read it' Volodymyr Zelensky 
 
'Laurence Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account' Professor Sir Ian Kershaw 
 
'In this fascinating study of two monsters, Rees is extraordinarily perceptive and original' Antony Beevor 
 
Two tyrants. Each responsible for the death of millions. 
 
This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years' work - examines the two leaders during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. 
 
Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But as bestselling historian Laurence Rees shows, at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt-of suffering - in Hitler's case, most infamously the Holocaust - in order to build the utopias they wanted. 
 
Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers, civilians and those who knew both men personally, Laurence Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians.

In this fascinating study of two monsters, Rees is extraordinarily perceptive and original

Coming from one of the world's experts on the Second World War, this is an important and original - and devastating - account of Hitler and Stalin as dictators. A must read

Professor Robert Service, author of Stalin: A Biography.

Laurence Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account of how two terrible dictators led their countries in the most destructive and inhumane war in history

Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler – Hubris and Hitler – Nemesis

A brave and remarkable work. Revelatory, gripping and hugely relevant, it shows Hitler and Stalin as you've never known them. Truly a story of our time, with so many lessons for the troubled world we inhabit today, it will revolutionise your understanding of these two foremost tyrants

Laurence Rees's 'Hitler and Stalin' is an excellent addition to a subject that fascinates and horrifies in equal measure. Presenting this complex history with his usual clarity, his latest study is an enthralling read. By weaving many fresh eyewitness accounts into the narrative, offering new insights and commanding his reader's attention despite the huge scope of his task, Rees has written a book that will appeal to readers of biography and history alike

Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third Reich

Laurence Rees has produced a vivid and terrifying portrait of the twentieth century's two most brutal tyrants. His mastery of the subject shines through on every page. Provocative, gripping and full of fresh insights, Hitler and Stalin is narrative history at its very best.

Henry Hemming, author of Churchill's Iceman

A fascinating history... always compelling

Impressive . . . well paced and well informed with an eye for telling anecdotes and colourful character sketches . . . Rees' decision to add personal stories to his narrative adds an important layer to our understanding of both the dictators themselves and their victims

[There are] many gems in this impressive book

This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years' work - examines the two tyrants during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. Yet despite the fact they were bitter opponents, Laurence Rees shows that Hitler and Stalin were, to a large extent, different sides of the same coin. Both were prepared to create undreamt-of suffering, destroy individual liberty and twist facts in order to build the utopias they wanted, and while Hitler's creation of the Holocaust remains a singular crime, Rees shows why we must not forget that Stalin committed a series of atrocities at the same time. 
 
Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers of the Red Army and Wehrmacht, civilians who suffered during the conflict and those who knew both men personally, bestselling historian Laurence Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians.

A Warning From History

The Nazis

Following the success of Rees' bestselling Auschwitz, this substantially revised and updated edition of The Nazis - A Warning from History tells the powerfully gripping story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. 
 
During a 16-year period, acclaimed author and documentary-maker Laurence Rees met and interviewed a large number of former Nazis, and his unique insights into the Nazi psyche and World War 2 received enormous praise. 
 
At the heart of the book lies compelling eyewitness accounts of life under Adolf Hitler, spoken through the words of those who experienced the Nazi regime at every level of society. An extensive new section on the Nazi/Soviet war (previously published in Rees' War of the Century) provides a chilling insight into Nazi mentality during the most bloody conflict in history. 
 
Described as one of the greatest documentary series of all times The Nazis - A Warning from History won a host of awards, including a BAFTA and an International Documentary Award.

Auschwitz

Thank God that occasionally books of the stature of Laurence Rees's superb Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution are published... Fascinating.

A key to understanding man's inhumanity to man

Well-written with striking testimonies from bystanders, perpetrators and victims. The interviews with SS men, and sundry European Fascists, are genuinely revealing, and must have been exceptionally difficult to negotiate

Devastating. Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid. Ultimately he does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved some 40 years ago at the level of philosophy: he forces the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all too human. Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions

This magnificent book is exciting and disturbing at the same time

Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions. Rees, a distinguished journalist and historian at the BBC, layers these details with little fanfare but great craftsmanship. Reading this book is an ordeal - not through any failure of the author's but because of his success. Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid. Rees also makes good use of the records that became available only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites. spare, heartbreaking prose.

I believe that Rees's book will be included in the canon of fundamental works shaping our knowledge about the Holocaust.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Polish Foreign Minister and one-time inmate of Auschwitz

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 
 
'Superb' ANDREW ROBERTS 
 
In this classic book, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history - part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed. 
 
Auschwitz examines the mentality and motivations of the key Nazi decision makers, and perpetrators of appalling crimes speak here for the first time about their actions. Drawing on Rees's landmark documentary and material from the Russian archives, which challenged many previously accepted arguments, this book reveals significant and disturbing facts - from the operation of a brothel to the corruption that was rife throughout the camp. 
 
This is the story of murder, brutality, courage, escape and survival, and a powerful account of how human tragedy of such immense scale could have happened.

A New History

The Holocaust

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE NAZI MIND AND PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY'S MOST-READ BOOK, HITLER AND STALIN 
 
'By far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development' Antony Beevor 
 
'Groundbreaking. You might have thought that we know everything there is to know about the Holocaust but this book proves there is much more' Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday 
 
Two fundamental questions about the Holocaust must be asked: 
 
How did it happen? And why? 
 
More completely than any other single work of history yet published, Laurence Rees's Holocaust definitively answers them. 
 
'Rees provides an exemplary account of how the greatest crime in modern history came about' The Times 
 
'Rees has distilled 25 years of research into this compelling study, the finest single-volume account of the Holocaust . . . demands to be read' Saul David, Telegraph 
 
'Anyone wanting a compelling, highly readable explanation of how and why the Holocaust happened, drawing on recent scholarship and impressively incorporating moving and harrowing interviews need look no further than Laurence Rees's brilliant book' Professor Ian Kershaw, bestselling author of Hitler

Anyone wanting a compelling, highly readable explanation of how and why the Holocaust happened, drawing on recent scholarship and impressively incorporating moving and harrowing interviews need look no further than Laurence Rees's brilliant book

You might have thought that we know everything there is to know about the Holocaust but this book proves there is much more...

Absorbing, heart-breaking...he has drawn skilfully on speeches, documents and diaries of the Third Reich, and on the vast library of secondary literature, to weave together a powerful, inevitably harrowing revelation of the 20th century's greatest crime

This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, but also the best in explaining both its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development

A fine book. Rees is a gifted educator, who can tell a complex story with compassion and clarity, without sacrificing all nuances...it comes alive through the voices of victims, killers and bystanders.

Nikolaus Wachsmann, author of 'KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps'

The interview material is largely compelling, always illuminating and on occasion, very moving . . . Like all of Rees's work, it is accurate and carefully researched

Rees has distilled 25 years of research into this compelling study, the finest single-volume account of the Holocaust. It is not a book for the faint-hearted. Some of the first-hand testimony is both shocking and heart-rending. Yet it has important things to say about human nature - what our species is capable of doing if not prevented by civilized laws - and demands to be read

A masterpiece. Laurence Rees's best book yet . . . In compelling prose, Rees tells the full story of the most shameful period in the story of Mankind

With The Holocaust he has set himself the task of writing an accessible chronological account of the murder of six million Jews in conditions of scarcely imaginable horror. He's done it excellently. There is no shortage of books on the Holocaust but Rees's stands out as a readable and authoritative exposition of how and why it happened, and the barbarous methods by which it was pursued. The amount of ground it covers in 500 pages is remarkable - from the anti-Semitism of popular German literature of the 19th century to Hitler's suicide and the surrender of his regime. It's excellently written and skilfully interweaves narrative history, sound interpretation and the recollections (through interviews, listed in the notes as "previously unpublished testimony") of survivors. Rees provides an exemplary account of how the greatest crime in modern history came about.

This landmark work answers two fundamental questions - how, and why, did the Holocaust happen? 
 
Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting and interviewing survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, in his magnum opus, he combines this largely unpublished testimony with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in over three decades. Rees argues that the Holocaust was not just about the Germans and not just about the Jews - although hatred of the Jews was always at the epicentre of Nazi thinking, the Nazis planned to kill millions of non-Jews as well - and shows how there was no single "decision" to start the Holocaust; instead it was a series of escalations that cumulatively created the horror. 
 
Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring the latest historical research and compelling eyewitness testimony, this is the story of the worst crime in history.

Accompanies the TV series We Have Ways Of Making You Think

Selling Politics

Selling Politics investigates the secret world of political consultants, the men who create an image of their clients for the public eye. 
 
Author Laurence Rees argues that the roots of political propaganda lie in Nazi Germany with Hitler’s master of visual propaganda, Dr Josef Goebbels. Goebbels’ passion for cinema led him to discover the ‘Great Truth’, namely that in order for film propaganda to persuade it must entertain rather than inform. Over the past thirty years the use of film and television propaganda had flourished, particularly in the United States where a candidate’s ability to woo voters on the screen is fundamental to his success in a presidential election. 
 
Rees shows how television manipulates its viewers into making judgements based purely on the visual image and explains why propaganda works best when it engages the emotions rather than the intellect. We see clearly how these insidious techniques have also played a key role in contemporary British politics as consultants have followed the example of their American counterparts. 
 
Written in1992, a year that encompassed a general election in Britain and a presidential election in the United States, Selling Politics is a book for our times. It will fascinate readers who care about the practice of politics and the way democracy functions as the 21st century approaches.

Stalin, the Nazis and the West

World War Two: Behind Closed Doors

Laurence Rees' bestselling history of Stalin's relationship with the West - now in paperback

'There are many surprises here... The relationship between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill makes an ugly story, and Rees tells is extraordinarily well'

When do you think the Second World War ended? 
 
If the end of the war was supposed to have brought 'freedom' to countries that suffered under Nazi occupation, then for millions it did not really end until the fall of Communism. In the summer of 1945 many of the countries in Eastern Europe simply swapped the rule of one tyrant, Adolf Hitler, for that of another: Joseph Stalin. Why this happened has remained one of the most troubling questions of the entire conflict, and is at the heart of Laurence Rees' dramatic book. 
 
In World War II: Behind Closed Doors, Rees provides an intimate 'behind the scenes' history of the West's dealings with Joseph Stalin - an account which uses material only available since the opening of archives in the East as well as new testimony from witnesses from the period. An enthralling mix of high politics and the often heart-rending personal experiences of those on the ground, it will make you rethink what you believe about World War II.

Laurence Rees

I will recommend to everyone . . . superbly researched and structured. I just wish it was coming out before November 5. Reading how Hitler warped and won over the German people, it is impossible not to see and feel constant resonances with so many of the styles, strategies and tactics adopted by Donald Trump

Rees is uniquely placed to look at this cautionary tale through a fresh lens . . . This is a brilliant piece of work: learned, compelling and frankly terrifying

Compulsive reading . . . rarely have the tormented questions that accumulate around the conduct of the Third Reich been subjected to such a baleful, brilliant, modern and revelatory interrogation

A fascinating study offering new insights into the psychological forces driving the Nazis - essential reading for anyone seeking answers to the haunting question of how and why Germany became consumed by Hitler’s evil.

The Nazi Mind recounts one by one the chief ways in which Nazism attracted and held its many millions of followers. It is not just an unsparing, detailed reminder of the horrors of the past, based on decades of exhaustive research, but, unmistakably, a challenge to us to check our own no-longer-so-complacent twenty-first century consciences and act accordingly.

A chilling analysis of a mind perverted by relativism, delusion, cravenness, amorality and downright evil

At once frightening and scholarly, urgent and profoundly necessary. Here is history as a flashlight illuminating the darker hinterlands of human nature. In excavating deep beneath the surface of familiar history – exploring rich, unexpected sources - Rees shows us that the reign of the Nazis is not a story of monsters, but much more terribly of recognisable humanity. A book very much for our time, and all times

Chilling, brilliantly researched . . . only Laurence Rees could have written this book

Rees, an expert on the Nazi period, focuses on recalling its hideous highlights

Twelve Warnings From History

How could the Nazis have committed the crimes they did? 
Why did they willingly – often enthusiastically – oversee mass murder? 
How did ordinary Germans tolerate the removal of Jewish people? 
 
And how do we ensure it never happens again? 
 
Bestselling author Laurence Rees combines history and the latest psychological research to help answer the most perplexing questions surrounding the Holocaust and the Nazi state. Through the lens of ‘twelve warnings’ – from talk about ‘them’ and ‘us’ to the escalation of racism – Rees delves into the darkness to explain how and why people were capable of such horrors. 
 
Using previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and cutting-edge psychological discoveries, THE NAZI MIND is a revelatory new way of understanding the most appalling crimes of the 20th century that highlights the warning signs we need to look out for in leaders today.

Laurence Rees

Praise for The Nazi Mind

I will recommend to everyone . . . superbly researched and structured. I just wish it was coming out before November 5. Reading how Hitler warped and won over the German people, it is impossible not to see an ...

Rees is uniquely placed to look at this cautionary tale through a fresh lens . . . This is a brilliant piece of work: learned, compelling and frankly terrifying

Compulsive reading . . . rarely have the tormented questions that accumulate around the conduct of the Third Reich been subjected to such a baleful, brilliant, modern and revelatory interrogation

I will recommend to everyone . . . superbly researched and structured. I just wish it was coming out before November 5. Reading how Hitler warped and won over the German people, it is impossible not to see an ...

Rees is uniquely placed to look at this cautionary tale through a fresh lens . . . This is a brilliant piece of work: learned, compelling and frankly terrifying

Compulsive reading . . . rarely have the tormented questions that accumulate around the conduct of the Third Reich been subjected to such a baleful, brilliant, modern and revelatory interrogation

I will recommend to everyone . . . superbly researched and structured. I just wish it was coming out before November 5. Reading how Hitler warped and won over the German people, it is impossible not to see an ...

Rees is uniquely placed to look at this cautionary tale through a fresh lens . . . This is a brilliant piece of work: learned, compelling and frankly terrifying

Compulsive reading . . . rarely have the tormented questions that accumulate around the conduct of the Third Reich been subjected to such a baleful, brilliant, modern and revelatory interrogation

Books by Laurence Rees

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How can we stop the Holocaust from happening again?

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