Hohenzollerns and the Nazis

?When Kaiser Wilhelm II fled into Dutch exile in November 1918, the disappearance of the Hohenzollern dynasty seemed one of the most sudden and complete downfalls in modern history. But that is not the full story. Stephan Malinowski’s The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis is a groundbreaking work of historical recovery. It reveals how both the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich found it useful to publicly dismiss the former royal family, even as the Hohenzollerns themselves actively despised the republic and embraced the Nazi regime. Their lingering prestige among conservative Germans helped shape public attitudes and contributed to the nation’s tragic political descent. With forensic precision and often shocking insight, Malinowski demonstrates that far from being irrelevant or absurd relics, the Hohenzollerns stood at the center of Germany’s unraveling. Though stripped of power, they remained influential—encouraging conservative Germans to reject democracy and, ultimately, to abandon their own moral and political traditions. The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis is both a devastating portrait of a deluded royal family and a vital reexamination of how their actions helped pave the way for Hitler’s rise.