Includes bibliographical references (pages 475-580) and index.

• Preface
• Prologue: The lady at the trial
• PART I. The leader. Introduction
• The dictator: Adolf Hitler
• PART II. The paladins. Introduction
• The 'iron man': Hermann Göring
• The propagandist: Joseph Goebbels
• The soldier: Ernst Röhm
• The policeman: Heinrich Himmler
• The diplomat: Joachim von Ribbentrop
• The philosopher: Alfred Rosenberg
• The architect: Albert Speer
• PART III. The enforcers. Introduction
• The deputy: Rudolf Hess
• The collaborator: Franz von Papen
• The 'worker': Robert Ley
• The schoolmaster: Julius Streicher
• The hangman: Reinhard Heydrich
• The bureaucrat: Adolf Eichmann
• The loudmouth: Hans Frank
• PART IV. The instruments. Introduction
• The general: Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb
• The professional: Karl Brandt
• The killers: Paul Zapp and Egon Zill
• The 'witch' and the 'beast': Ilse Koch and Irma Grese
• The mother: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink
• The star: Leni Riefenstahl
• The denunciator: Luise Solmitz
• Epilogue: The lady on the train
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index.

"Through a connected set of biographical portraits of Nazi leaders and followers that tracks power as it radiated out from Hitler to the inner and outer circles of the regime's leadership, one of our greatest historians answers the enduring question: How does a society come to carry out a program of unspeakable evil? Richard J. Evans, author of the acclaimed Third Reich Trilogy and over a dozen other volumes on modern Europe, is our preeminent scholar of Nazi Germany. Having spent half a century searching for the truths behind one of the most horrifying episodes in human history, in Hitler's People he brings us back to the original site of the Nazi movement--namely, the lives of its important and representative figures. Working in concentric circles out from Hitler and his closest allies, Hitler's People forms a typological framework of German society under Nazi rule, from the top down. With a novelist's eye for detail, Evans explains the Third Reich through the personal characteristics and professional ambitions of its members, from its most notorious deputies--such as Goebbels, the regime's propagandist, and Himmler, the Holocaust's chief architect--to the crucial enforcers and instruments of the Nazi agenda that history has largely forgotten, such as the schoolteacher Julius Streicher or the actress and film director Leni Riefenstahl. Drawing on a wealth of recently unearthed historical sources, Hitler's People lays bare the characters whose choices caused the deaths of millions. Nearly a century after Hitler's rise, the leading nations of the west are once again being torn apart by an untamed will to power. By telling the stories of these infamous individuals as human lives, Evans asks us to grapple with the complicated nature of agency and complicity, showing us that the distinctions between individual and collective responsibility--and even between pathological evil and rational choice--are never easily drawn"-- Provided by publisher.