Book excerpt: What Hitler Knew is a fascinating study of how the climate of fear in Nazi Germany affected Hitler's advisers and shaped the decision making process. It explores the key foreign policy decisions from the Nazi seizure of power up to the hours before the outbreak of World War II. Zachary Shore argues persuasively that the tense environment led the diplomats to a nearly obsessive control over the "information arsenal" in a desperate battle to defend their positions and to safeguard their lives. Unlike previous studies, this book draws the reader into the diplomats' darker world, and illustrates how Hitler's power to make informed decisions was limited by the very system he created. The result, Shore concludes, was a chaotic flow of information between Hitler and his advisers that may have accelerated the march toward war.