ABSTRACT
In The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw aimed to clarify the reasons behind Adolf Hitler's adoration by "millions of Germans who might otherwise have been only marginally committed to Nazism". The structure of Kershaw's lucid analysis is broadly chronological. Kershaw's coinage of the "Hitler myth" as a concept used both in the title of his book and throughout as a term of art was to have a huge impact on all future discussions of Hitler's role in the Third Reich. Kershaw's initial impetus came from an article that Broszat had published in the journal Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, "Social Motivation and the Fuhrer-Bond under National Socialism". It was in this article that the idea of the Fuhrer as a charismatic figure, embodying the diverse desires of an otherwise rather chaotic movement, and uniting them in radical utopianism, was first mooted.
