“Kaleidoscopic . . . A fascinating exploration of individual agency that never loses sight of the larger context . . . Just the kind of probing, nuanced and unsparing study to help us think things through.” —The New York Times

Through a connected set of biographical portraits of key Nazi figures that follows power as it radiated 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?