Hitler’s People, Richard Evans Interview

Richard Evans is a prominent historian of the Second World War and famously appeared as a key witness at the 2000 libel trial brought by David Irving against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt.

In his new book, historian Richard Evans has selected twenty-four Nazis, examined the historiography, and written biographies on each in an attempt to understand why they did what they did. The traditional view post-War is that the names in here were monsters. We then tend to dismiss their humanity since their actions were so horrific, murderous and criminal that to try to get to know them perhaps brings us closer to them. We might recognise some of their very real emotions in ourselves: jealousy, humiliation and anger to name but a few. This is the reason for Hitler’s People. So with my first question I made the mistake of describing the book as almost an extended version of Who’s Who.