The Nazi Mind

Author Laurence Rees
Narrator John Sackville
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 23 January 2025
Run Time 14 hours and 19 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Comparative politics, European history, Far-right political ideologies and movements, History, Physiological and neuro-psychology, biopsychology, Political structures: totalitarianism and dictatorship, Politics and government, Second World War, Social, group or collective psychology, Society and Social Sciences, The Holocaust.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A groundbreaking narrative history of the motivations and mentalities behind the Nazis and their supporters, from the bestselling author of THE HOLOCAUST and President Zelenskyy’s most-read book, HITLER AND STALIN.

How could the Nazis have committed the crimes they did? Why did commandants of concentration and death camps willingly – often enthusiastically – oversee mass murder? How could ordinary Germans have tolerated the removal of the Jews? In THE NAZI MIND, bestselling author Laurence Rees combines history and the latest research in psychology to help answer some of the most perplexing questions surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Ultimately, he delves into the darkness to explain how and why these people were capable of committing the worst crime in the history of the world. Rees traces the rise and eventual fall of the Nazis through the lens of ‘twelve warnings’ – from talk about ‘them’ and ‘us’ to the escalation of racism – whilst also highlighting signs to look out for in present day leaders.

Rees uses previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system, and in-depth psychological insights including cutting edge work on obedience, authority and the brain. THE NAZI MIND is a revelatory new way of understanding how so many people committed the most appalling crime of the 20th century.

'I will recommend to everyone' Alastair Campbell

'This disturbing book is timely, relevant and important' Sir Ian Kershaw

© Laurence Rees 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

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

co-host of The Rest is Politics

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

Telegraph

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

Independent

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.

author of A Village in the Third Reich

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.

author of 1939: A People's History

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

author of The Shape of Battle

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

author of Berlin and Dresden

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

author of Naples 1944

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

Sunday Times

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