How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?

Eight decades after the second world war ended, for how much longer will we produce massive books about Hitler and the Nazis? Richard J. Evans, the former regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge, is one of the senior gardeners in this noxious orchard, having devoted a lifetime’s study to the subject. As a minor under-gardener in the same field, I believe that we now know all we need to about the Führer and the crimes of his vile regime, and, barring the unlikely discovery of something new, it is time that historians moved on.

The damning facts can be briefly stated, and are cogently summed up by Evans in his conclusion: Hitler was a fanatic, brought to power by a German middle class traumatised by defeat in the first world war and the economic woes that followed. Although the Nazis never attained an electoral majority, once in office they destroyed their enemies and demolished the unpopular democracy of the Weimar Republic with ruthless violence.