
Four Days in Hitler's Germany
Mackenzie King's Mission to Avert a Second World War
Description
Four Days in Hitler’s Germany is a clearly written and engaging story that addresses how King truly believed that any threat to peace would come only from those individuals who intended to thwart the Nazi agenda, which as King saw it, was concerned primarily with justifiable German territorial and diplomatic readjustments. Mackenzie King was certainly not alone in misreading the omens in the 1930s, but it would be difficult to find a democratic leader who missed the mark by a wider margin.
Reviews
"Brimming with rigorous, original research and startling detail. "
- Peter Black
"[Four Days in Hitler’s Germany] is focused on providing relevant context for, and description of, the brief meetings that Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King had with Hitler and a number of his associates in late June 1937, particularly as revealed in King’s now famous Diaries. The book is much more than that, however, for the author gives us valuable side excursions into the architectural history of Berlin, the uses and abuses of heritage commemoration in the 1930s and after the war, the nature of the new ecological thought in Germany, and the social and racial values in Canada which helped shape much of King’s outlook."
- Graham A. MacDonald
"This book is a valuable addition to the small subfield of Canadian international history, in which there is sadly little debate (in part because the pickings are so slim). […] Four Days in Hitler’s Germany should prompt some important reappraisals of Canada’s longest serving prime minister but also of Canadian history during this period, one where Nazism was not yet widely reviled."
- Asa McKercher, Royal Military College of Canada