Bill Niven is professor of contemporary German history at Nottingham Trent University and the author of many works on twentieth-century German history, including Facing the Nazi Past and The Buchenwald Child. He lives in Edwalton, UK.
“Niven’s study is packed with expert opinion and fascinating
tidbits.” — Thomas Doherty, Film Quarterly
“Bill Niven’s book is important for social and cultural historians
as well as biographers of Hitler. It expertly shows how an
authoritarian ruler can influence an entire people through
carefully administered doses of select propaganda. In the
Third Reich, apart from having to please Hitler personally, films
were made to serve exactly that purpose.”—Michael H. Kater, author
of The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third
Reich
“Ground-breaking. Niven offers fascinating new insights into
Hitler's obsessive and surprising viewing habits and how he
exploited the arts of cinema and documentary to pursue his
destructive political ambitions.”—Christopher Hale, author
of Hitler's Foreign Executioners: Europe's Dirty Secret
“Hitler and Film carves out new territory in a densely
populated field. Written with a precision and clarity that is the
hallmark of Niven’s work, the book sheds significant new light both
on Hitler as Nazi ideologue, on the one hand, and film fan on the
other. Extraordinary.”—Paul Cooke, author of Contemporary
German Cinema
"A fascinating exploration of Hitler the consumer, aficionado,
collector, censor, exhibitor, performer, and manipulator of film.
Niven offers an eminently readable and meticulously researched
history that leaves no doubt about Hitler’s voracious appetite for
the movies, and his understanding of the film
medium.”—Frances Guerin, author of Through Amateur Eyes: Film
and Photography in Nazi Germany
“Niven expertly pieces together Hitler’s complex, multi-faceted
relationship to cinema, showing how Hitler – who had a genuine
passion for the medium, as well as an acute awareness of its
propaganda potential – stood at the very heart of the German film
industry.”—Roger Moorhouse, author of The Devils' Alliance:
Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941
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