Adolf Hitler's membership card for the German Workers ' Party.

In even greater degree the same rule applied to the remainder of Eastern Europe, where the upper classes had generally collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of sending millions of their peasants into Russia as a part of Hitler's armies.

Not through fear of disobeying orders, as Eichmann kept trying to explain, but through a peculiar giddiness that began in a half-acceptance of the vicious absurdities contained in the Nazi interpretation of history and grew with each of Hitler's victories into a permanent light-mindedness and sense of magical rightness that was able to respond to any proposal, and the more outrageous the better, `` Well, let's try it ''.

A veteran diplomat with an extraordinary knowledge of Russian language, history and literature, Kennan recalls how, at the time of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he penned a private note to a State Department official, expressing the hope that `` never would we associate ourselves with Russian purposes in the areas of eastern Europe beyond her own boundaries ''.

* 1945 – Adolf Hitler's designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz.

Adolf Hitler's correspondence with his economists also reveals that his intent was to wage war in 1943 – 1945 when the resources of central Europe had been absorbed into the Third Reich.

Those critical of Hitler's agenda, especially his close ties with industry, were suppressed, intimidated or murdered.

An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down — November 9, 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918 and the defeat of Hitler's first coup in 1923.

On January 1933, Hermann Göring, Hitler's minister without portfolio, was appointed the head of the Prussian Police and began filling the political and intelligence units of the Prussian Secret Police with Nazi Party members.

After forming a pact with the Soviet Union in 1939, Hitler's blitzkrieg swept nearly all of Western Europe.

Himmler developed the SS into a powerful group with its own military, and, following Hitler's orders, set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps.

Upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden in 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's approval ; he still carried out his duties at propaganda headquarters.

Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others.

Finkelstein has published heavy criticisms of several books in his career, as he did to Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Johnah Goldhagen, which he calls " replete with gross misinterpretations of source material and internal contradictions ", and says " the book is devoid of scholarly value ".

As Hitler began his aggressions, Mussolini decided to occupy Albania as a means to compete with Hitler's territorial gains.

The second, ' Nemesis ', gives details of Hitler's role in the Second World War, and concludes with his fall and suicide in 1945.

Goebbels ' letter informed Chuikov of Hitler's death and requested a ceasefire, hinting that the establishment of a National Socialist government hostile to Western plutocracy would be beneficial to the Soviet Union, as the betrayal of Himmler and Göring indicated that otherwise anti-Soviet National Socialist elements might align themselves with the West.

" The remains of the Goebbels family were repeatedly buried and exhumed, along with the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, General Hans Krebs and Hitler's dogs.

He was emotionally dependent on Hitler's favour to the extent that he suffered from psychosomatic illnesses if Hitler was unhappy with him.

Ribbentrop became Hitler's favourite foreign-policy adviser, partly by dint of his familiarity with the world outside Germany, but also by shameless flattery and sycophancy.

Hitler's meeting with de Brinon had a huge impact on French public opinion, and helped to put an end to the calls for a preventive war by convincing many in France that Hitler was a man of peace who only wanted to do away with Part V.

That Ribbentrop possessed the power to set up meetings with Hitler and represented himself as Hitler's personal envoy made him for a time a much-courted figure in Britain.

Following the lead of Andreas Hillgruber, who argued that Hitler had a Stufenplan ( stage by stage plan ) for world conquest, Hildebrand argued that Ribbentrop may not have fully understood what Hitler's Stufenplan was, or alternatively in pressing so hard for colonial restoration was trying to score a personal success that might improve his standing with Hitler.

This degree of unity within the German government with both the diplomats and the military united in their support of Hitler's anti-Polish policy, which stood in contrast to their views the previous year about destroying Czechoslovakia, very much encouraged Hitler and Ribbentrop with their chosen course of action.

There he met Rudolf Höss, who was later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Walther Darré, whose book, The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race, caught Hitler's attention, leading to his later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture.

King Ottokar's Sceptre could be read against the background of Hitler's Anschluss or in the context of the struggle between the Romanian Iron Guard and the King of Romania, Carol II, whereas later albums-for example, The Calculus Affair-depict the Cold War.

In particular, Ribbentrop acquired the habit of listening carefully to what Hitler was saying, memorizing the Führer's pet ideas, and then later presenting Hitler's ideas as his own – a practice that much impressed Hitler as proving Ribbentrop was an ideal National Socialist diplomat.

Hitler's interpreter Paul Schmidt later recalled that it was " felt that our Foreign Minister would prove a disturbing element " at the Berchtesgaden summit.

" Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell stated: " I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany ".

Hitler's personal SS protection unit was later enlarged to include combat units and after April 13, 1934, was known as the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler ( LSSAH ).

Watson was awarded an Order of the German Eagle which he later returned — much to Hitler's vexation.

Hitler remarked privately in later years that his choice of Rosenberg, whom he regarded as weak and lazy, was strategic ; Hitler did not want the temporary leader of the Nazis to become overly popular or hungry for power, because a person with either of those two qualities might not want to cede the party leadership after Hitler's release.

Raeder later claimed when on trial for his life at Nuremberg that the Hossbach conference was a flight of fancy on Hitler's part that nobody took seriously, and he did not object because there was nothing to object to.

* Grille-built to be the official German State yacht ( 1935 ), converted to minelayer at the beginning of World War II, later reconverted to State Yacht of the 3rd Reich, Hitler's official maritime conveyance.

Another hindrance was the homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders such as his deputy Edmund Heines ( both of whom would later be sentenced to death on Hitler's orders ).

A week later on 2 May, Irving reversed himself and asserted that the diaries were genuine ; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler's physician Dr. Theodor Morell.

Hitler's strategy was to build up German military and economic strength through re-armament, while seeking to avoid an early war by diplomatic engagement with France, Britain and later, the Soviet Union ( Stalin-Hitler Pact ).

In Trevor-Roper's opinion, what really mattered about the Hossbach Memorandum was that Hitler clearly expressed an intention to go to war sooner rather than later and it was Hitler's intentions rather than his plans at the time which mattered.

In November 1945, Trevor-Roper was ordered by Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin ( and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession ) to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler's death and to rebut the propaganda of the Soviet government that Hitler was alive and living somewhere in the West.

* Secret Conversations, 1941-1944 ( published later as Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944 ), 1953.

It is not clear whether Canaris, who had an extensive intelligence network at his disposal, was misinformed or was attempting to sabotage Hitler's plans ( Canaris would be executed much later in the war for supposedly participating in the 20 July Plot ).

General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German general staff, noted that Hitler's change of heart in favour of quick action was due to Czech defences still being improvised, which would cease to be the case 2 – 3 years later, and British rearmament not coming into effect until 1941 / 42.

" These words were to haunt him when Hitler's continued aggression made war unavoidable less than a year later.

He later remarked, " I would have been Hitler's best friend … if Hitler had been capable of having friends.

The problem was that the BIS, formed in 1930, had as the main proponents of its establishment the then Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and his colleague Hjalmar Schacht, later Adolf Hitler's economics minister.

He later wrote German Catholics and Hitler's Wars and In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter.