Making Friends with Hitler

Britain, as the most powerful of the European victors of World War One, had a unique responsibility to maintain the peace in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. The outbreak of a second, even more catastrophic war in 1939 has therefore always raised painful questions about Britain's failure to deal with Nazism. Could some other course of action have destroyed Hitler when he was still weak? In this highly disturbing new book, Ian Kershaw examines this crucial issue. He concentrates on the figure of Lord Londonderry - grandee, patriot, cousin of Churchill and the government minister responsible for the RAF at a crucial point in its existence. Londonderry's reaction to the rise of Hitler-to pursue friendship with the Nazis at all costs-raises fundamental questions about Britain's role in the 1930s and whether in practice there was ever any possibility of preventing Hitler's leading Europe once again into war.

Ian Kershaw is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and one of the world's leading authorities on Hitler. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994 and knighted in 2002, and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004. He is the author of Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis.