Stephan Malinowski

Jefferson Chase

A highly detailed and scrupulously researched book... Malinowksi’s work is a near-masterpiece, relating a story not synthesised in this way before, and about which any number of self-serving myths exist... (he) presents a devastating case why, with regards to their conduct during the Third Reich, the Hohenzollerns were the authors of their own misfortune

Brilliant… at its heart is a detailed investigation of the actions of the former ruling family between 1918 and the consolidation of Nazi power in the 1930s. In places, it reads like a historical novel… [in this] deeply researched and well-written book, Malinowski makes a convincing case that the Hohenzollern family played an important role in the destruction of democracy in Germany, and remained supportive of the regime well into the Second World War…. There is every reason to believe that Malinowski’s fine book has settled the question of Hohenzollern compensation once and for all

Stephan Malinowski's brilliant book strikes a balance between the forensic analysis of individual behaviour and a new understanding of how the toxic political culture of a defeated monarchy helped to disrupt democracy in Germany

As Stephan Malinowski shows… there can be no doubt that the Hohenzollerns broadly ‘collaborated’ with the Nazi regime

With his great book The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis, Stephan Malinowski has achieved a masterpiece of historical enlightenment

A groundbreaking book... Malinowski tells a large audience how members of the monarchical family became Hitler's stirrup holders

A History of Collaboration

The disappearance of the Hohenzollern family from the history of Germany in November 1918 as the Kaiser fled into Dutch exile is one of the most startling, rapid instances of a once all-powerful royal family becoming almost overnight irrelevant and marginal. Except this is not exactly what happened. 
 
Stephan Malinowski’s German bestseller is an extraordinary work of recovery. It suited both the Weimar Republic and then the Third Reich to view the Hohenzollerns with contempt, and yet the royal family’s hatred of the former and approval of the latter were for millions of Germans a significant factor in their own view of their country and its government. 
 
With forensic and often shocking detail, Malinowski shows that, far from being ridiculous, marginal figures the Hohenzollerns lay at the heart of Germany’s ongoing nightmare. Despite formally losing power, the members of the royal family remained prominent, catastrophically allowing many other conservative Germans to stay distanced from the new republic and to eventually betray conservative traditions and values. Battered from both left and right, the Republic collapsed in 1933 in part because conservative forces, fearful of both Communism and Fascism, had abandoned their own principles just as much as the leading members of former royal family had, who were themselves beguiled by and fooled by Hitler. 
 
This is an important and shocking book, as well as a devastating picture of an inadequate and trivial royal family painfully underequipped to fulfil its role.

Stephan Malinowski

Praise for The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis

A highly detailed and scrupulously researched book... Malinowksi’s work is a near-masterpiece, relating a story not synthesised in this way before, and about which any number of self-serving myt ...

Brilliant… at its heart is a detailed investigation of the actions of the former ruling family between 1918 and the consolidation of Nazi power in the 1930s. In places, it reads like a historical novel ...