Language and the Grand Tour: Linguistic Experiences of Travelling in Early Modern Europe

Longerich, Germany itself “had shown itself inferior to the ‘stronger nation in the east’ [the Soviet Union] and the war had left behind only ‘those of inferior quality’” (942). Not sparing himself, Hitler commits suicide on 30 April 1945 and the Third Reich capitulates on 8–9 May 1945. For twelve years, the German Reich had been in the hands of a megalomaniac, a ‘nobody,’ as Longerich calls him, whose actions had caused the death of more than 50 million people. In Longerich’s view, Hitler never accomplished his vision of a national community. Moreover, “vast swathes of Europe lay in ruins, and the German population’s support for this criminal regime now made them appear morally corrupt in the eyes of the world” (949). Longerich’s Hitler is essential reading for those trying to understand this statesman and period. The multiple quotations from source materials, at times contradictory and not always synthesized, speak for themselves, and give this text a sense of objectivity, an element indispensable for this kind of work.