Making Friends with Hitler

Making Friends with Hitler

Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War

Summary

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.

About the author

Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw is the author of Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, which received the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for the Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize. His other books include Making Friends with Hitler, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography; Fateful Choices; The End; and his histories of modern Europe, To Hell and Back and Roller-Coaster.
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