Making Friends with Hitler

The conventional explanation of the coming of World War II is a simple story of the West's craven appeasement of Hitler. But acclaimed scholar Ian Kershaw exposes a much more fascinating and complicated reality by focusing on the tragic decisions of one of Britain's most influential aristocrats. Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, was the scion of one of Britain's wealthiest families, cousin of Winston Churchill, confidant of the king, and the only British cabinet member to openly support the Nazis. By tracing Lord Londonderry's remarkable decisions and how they all went horribly wrong for him, Making Friends with Hitler exposes why Nazi views were much more widely held than anyone now likes to think and gives us a groundbreaking reassessment of the miscalculations, on both sides, that proved to be among the most fateful in history.