Yet the deepest longing of Germans at the time ... was for the restoration of their national pride and recognition in the eyes of the world.

My family’s involvement with Nazism – their first excursion into any kind of politics – was not inspired by hatred of Jews, but by the vision of national revival that Hitler held out to them. ‘You have no idea what a terrible mood of disillusion and defeat there was in Germany before Hitler appeared on the scene and how he turned that round to one of optimism and hope,’ was my mother’s overriding memory of those days. Hitler had an uncanny instinct for touching the button of the innermost yearnings of the German heart. He promised most groups in society – an unhappy society, with a suicide rate three times that of Britain’s at the time – the things they craved: jobs, prosperity, security. Yet the deepest longing of Germans at the time, one that was apparently shared by most of the population, including my mother, was for the restoration of their national pride and recognition in the eyes of the world.

K. Fitzherbert, True to both my selves (1997), loc. 595