U.S. journalists of the 1930s had a term for Germany as the Nazi
Party rose to power in the 1930s. They called it "Hitlerland."
In the opening session of the International Conference on World
War II in New Orleans Thursday, author and former Newsweek
senior editor Andrew Nagorski shared U.S. interpretations of
Adolf Hitler and the spell he cast over Germany in the early
years of the Third Reich. "This is, in Hollywood terms, the
prequel," said Nagorski, whose critically acclaimed book,
"Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power,"
examines western accounts of Hitler's massive influence in
Germany before World War II. Nagorski was the keynote speaker of
the conference, titled "Stemming the Nazi Tide: The End of the
Beginning 1942-43." His portion of the conference dealt with the
years leading up to the Allied effort to repel Hitler's advance
through Europe. "The Americans who lived (in Germany) longest
became increasingly alarmed that they were seeing something the
world had not seen before,"