A fascinating and controversial new perspective on Hitler's rise to power; Provides startling evidence of Britain and America's financial support for the Third Reich; Suggests that the western elite deliberately supported Nazism in the pre-war period to destabilise any alliance between Germany and Russia Nazism is usually depicted as an eerie German phenomenon, 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. Guido Giacomo Preparata shows that the truth is very different: using meticulous economic analysis, he reveals that Hitler's extraordinary rise to power was actually facilitated over the course of a decade following WWI - and eventually financed - by the British and American political classes. Tracing events in the Third Reich, Preparata offers a startling history of Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the early twentieth century. He explains that Britain, still clinging to its empire, was terrified of an alliance forming between Germany and Russia. He shows how Britain, through the Bank of England, came to exercise some control over Weimar and how Britain's financial support for Hitler enabled the Nazis to seize power. Nazism was not regarded as an aberration: for the British establishment of the time, it was a convenient way of destabilising Europe, and driving Germany into conflict with Stalinist Russia. In this way Britain ensured that it would prevent the formation of any rival continental power block. Guido Giacomo Preparata lays bare the economic forces at play in the Third Reich, and identifies the key players in the British and American establishment who aided Hitler's meteoric rise.

Exploring the genesis of the German Nazis, Preparata (political economy, U. of Washington) makes the rather extraordinary argument that the Nazis and the war they so disastrously plunged Europe into were in fact the successful end product of long standing intrigue on the part of the elites of the British Empire to prevent a feared "Eurasian embrace" between Germany and Russia that would pose a great danger to British power. In sum, he argues that Britain began WWI as an attempt to break German political and economic structures. When this failed, Britain conspired to bring to power a reactionary regime that could be prodded into a two-front war in the West and against Russia, which itself had experienced British installation of the Bolsheviks in pursuit of this wider goal. The British and colluding American elites engaged in a complex economic gambit that had the premeditated purpose of providing the political preconditions necessary for the germination of the Nazis and their eventual rise to state power. The history of WWII, as well, is the result of this grand scheme, with the British feigning a lack of commitment to the Western Front (and keeping the Americans out) in order to lure the Germans into the trap of the Eastern Front, which allowed the Anglo- Americans to annihilate the German threat once and for all. Distributed in the US by the U. of Michigan Press.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Exploring the genesis of the German Nazis, Preparata (political economy, U. of Washington) makes the rather extraordinary argument that the Nazis and the war they so disastrously plunged Europe into were in fact the successful end product of long standing intrigue on the part of the elites of the British Empire to prevent a feared "Eurasian embrace" between Germany and Russia that would pose a great danger to British power. In sum, he argues that Britain began WWI as an attempt to break German political and economic structures. When this failed, Britain conspired to bring to power a reactionary regime that could be prodded into a two-front war in the West and against Russia, which itself had experienced British installation of the Bolsheviks in pursuit of this wider goal. The British and colluding American elites engaged in a complex economic gambit that had the premeditated purpose of providing the political preconditions necessary for the germination of the Nazis and their eventual rise to state power. The history of WWII, as well, is the result of this grand scheme, with the British feigning a lack of commitment to the Western Front (and keeping the Americans out) in order to lure the Germans into the trap of the Eastern Front, which allowed the Anglo- Americans to annihilate the German threat once and for all. Distributed in the US by the U. of Michigan Press. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)