"The Hitler Myth" is essentially a charting of the effectiveness of--though not an in-depth investigation of--the propaganda machine relative specifically to how the German populace viewed Adolf Hitler from the late 1920's through the duration of the war. Kershaw measures the propaganda machine's effectiveness through 1) opinion poll results, 2) voting figures, and 3) anecdotal documentation, especially reports from Nazi Party functionaries regarding what might today be called "the word on the street."
What ends up being Kershaw's most strongly stressed observation in the text is the persistence in Nazi Germany of public "excusablility" of Hitler (my clumsy term, not Kershaw's) or a sort of "blame transfer" (again, my inadequate term) that existed relative to any negative news or regime mistakes.
In other words, when things went wrong, the public--in a seemingly maniacal way--held onto a "BUT IT'S NOT THE FURHER'S FAULT" mentality. Concomitant to this reality is the extent to which the Nazi Party was actually actively disliked by huge swaths of the population of Germany from quite early on (pre-war), and even more so by the beginning of hostilities with the Allies. Nonetheless, none of that displeasure seemed to get applied to Hitler himself until much, much later. Kershaw's fairly convincing stream of written evidence shows that the public persistently disassociated Hitler from the over-zealous policies, corruption, or flat-out bad ideas and brutish stupidity of the Nazi regime by assuming that Hitler was being misinformed by sycophants, or was being foiled by the pernicious British, or was simply too absorbed with genius foreign policy and thus distracted from domestic concerns, etc. In fact, the evidence suggests that during many points of the Third Reich's embarrassing reign, at least up until the defeat at Stalingrad, when the popularity of the Nazi Party worsened, Hitler's personal popularity actually increased.
The "why" behind all this is tricky, and Kershaw is honest enough to say so, admitting that he doesn't have a complete answer. But, his exhaustive research over the years has helped. Clearly, he thinks that the Nazi propaganda machine and its persistent application is the principle reason for the amazing success of the "Hitler myth." Or, to put it in modern pundit parlance: "It's the media, stupid." Control of communications by savvy, Machiavellian manipulators like Joseph Gobbles allowed for Hitler to always be positioned (literally, too!) in the best possible light, no matter what the national or international circumstances.
A secondary but important factor in the vitality of the Hitler myth was simply a desperate German thirst for leadership (decisive leadership or at least decisive-sounding) in the wake of 20 years of highly dysfunctional adolescent democracy burdened by rank corruption and destabilized by what was at the time the compelling Communist alternative, Communism having not then been discredited anywhere in the world nearly to the extent it has been now.
While Kershaw does not apply the lessons of the Hitler myth directly to any aspect of today's political environment, some parallels are there, and he discretely suggests as much in a few places in the text. Kershaw wisely leaves it up to you, the reader, to plumb them. I suspect that Kershaw, being a British citizen and longtime observer of the media of the past, cannot help but find some slight comparisons--arguably worrying--between the inability of the German media to respond critically to Hitler and the inability of the modern media to do the same relative to national leaders or powerful and essentially conservative or nationalistic movements, particularly in the United States and in those large regions of the Middle East served by Al-Jezeera's news service. Of course media observers, including some of Kershaw's professional colleagues, outside of the U.S. and some within (where it is considered fairly "politically incorrect") have drawn parallels to the staging of Hitler-focused Nazi propaganda events and rallies and those staged by the current American presidential administration. Parallels have also been drawn--much more often in Kershaw's native Britain than in the U.S.--between the Third Reich's control of the media the corporate control of the media today. (Incidentally, Kershaw does somewhat discuss public partisan events, especially Nazi rallies in small communities and parades in Berlin and elsewhere, and it is interesting to read the obsessively detailed accounts of official Nazi reports citing how many people were in the crowds during parades, what percentage of them seemed to be executing the Nazi salute, and so forth.) Granted, the media's inability to serve genuine public discourse today and be properly critical (I use "critical" in the same sense of the word as it is used in the term "critical thinking;" that is, "critical" meaning the qualities of being careful, objective, and intellectually rigorous, not necessarily "negative") is less severe today that than in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. But, that begs the question: just how un-critical is uncritical *enough* to cause great harm to a society, nation, or culture, particularly a Western one?
If there is a glaring omission in Kershaw's book, it is that of technological and sociological context relative to media. His entire text is about propaganda, media, and public perception, and yet there is no examination of just how many of the German people read newspaper, how many newspapers there were, how many of the people listened to radio, how many hours, and what radio shows existed, and what the options were. In fact, at times it seems Kershaw was too close to his own material, and failed to realize that the basics of the media landscape of Germany from the 1920's through the 1940's isn't something even erudite readers are likely to understand today. Granted, he touched on points of this landscape: there are brief mentions of posters and their use, or the number of Hitler's speeches and their frequency; there are citations throughout from specific newspapers, including underground anti-Nazi publications (some of which, in retrospect, seem to have been stirringly prescient and clear-sighted, so much so as to make me shake my head at times while reading their predictions and worries about what Hitler would bring to the German people and Europe). But, it was not nearly a coherent enough picture. Even just one or two pages of text giving an overarching view of the German media landscape during the 1920's and 1930's would have been extremely helpful.
