This is the John Fugel-Sang Podcast.

I am so thrilled to welcome our guest not because he's one of the UK's most

distinguished historians but because his new book is a powerful read that also

makes an incredible gift for the history lover in your life. Sir Ian Kershaw is the author of

to Helen back the end making friends with Hitler and he is one of the greatest

British historians of 20th century Europe. He's written several biographies of Adolf Hitler in 2002.

He received his knighthood for services to history. He is a fellow of the British Academy,

the Royal Historical Society, and his new book asks the question, how far can a single leader change the course of

human history and how do these leaders use what we call personalities that sometimes

give them the ability to do whatever they wish.

The book is personality and power, builders and destroyers of modern Europe.

And it's an incredible study in which Suriian Kershaw looks at 12 major historical figures,

four dictators, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, a couple of national autocrats, Tito and Franco,

and then Democratic leaders, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl,

De Gaul, Churchill, and for me most fascinatingly, Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who rose in a

totalitarian system, and then ultimately helped destroy it. It's an amazing book about how

strikingly different figures wielded power. It is a great pleasure to welcome Sir Ian Kershaw

to Sirius XM. Hello, it's a great pleasure to of your early works, the Hitler myth, really showed how Hitler's power was dependent on the

image, the propaganda, and the public perception.

But of course there's no way to understand this theory of

of charismatic leadership, the charisma of the leader, and it's created by the following

of his true believers who somehow believe that he or she is to some degree a chosen one.

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