Hitler. Eine Biographie.

Hitler

by Joachim Fest

Joachim Fests große Hitler-Biografie, 1973 erstmals im Propyläen Verlag erschienen, wurde zum Weltbestseller. Seinerzeit ein bahnbrechendes Werk der Hitler-Forschung, gilt sie noch heute als maßgeblich und unerreicht. Neben der brillanten Deutung des Diktators ist es vor allem das hohe literarische Niveau, das diese Biografie auszeichnet.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, World War II, Germany, Politics, War

1190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Joachim Clemens Fest (1926-2006) was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance to Nazism. He was a leading figure in the debate among German historians about the Nazi period.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this biography of Hitler—published in 1973 it was the first ever by a German writer—fell into my hands as serendipitously as such books always do (my reading is planful and curricular only when it comes to New World slavery, and Virginia Woolf), I did open it seeking answers to some definite questions. One of which is: in what milieu, and under what conditions, was Adolf Hitler considered not only a serious statesman, but a National Redeemer, and an inexorable Man of Destiny? And yeah, we so-called educated people can robotically recite the Humiliation of Versailles, the Trauma of Defeat, recall inflationary wheelbarrows of reichsmarks, the mass unemployment of the Depression, and even the discredited yet complacent German ruling classes; but those are clichés from textbooks, and I wanted an idea of a vanished social texture, which is after all why we read histories. How did the ineffectual loner-fantasist of 1912, in thrall to masturbatory Wagnerian visions of white knights and usurious trolls, and the pallid, blear-eyed, drug-addicted bunker-dwelling troglodyte of 1945, achieve a midlife of mass persuasion and practical, not to say total political power, and what did that midlife look like? Joachim Fest’s 800-page answer might be boiled down to a single passage:

The policy of appeasement had been partly based on and sustained by the bourgeois world’s fear of Communist revolution. In the script of English statesmen, Hitler was assigned the role of militant defender of the bourgeois world. That was why they had endured all his slaps in the face, his provocations and outrages. But this was the only reason. By coming to an agreement with the Soviet Union, he indicated that he was not the opponent of revolution that he had pretended to be; he was no protector of the bourgeois order, no “General Wrangel of the world bourgeoisie.” Although the pact with Stalin was a masterpiece of diplomacy, it contained an inconspicuous flaw: it abrogated the premises on which Hitler and West carried on their dealings. Here was something that could not be glossed over, and with rare unanimity the British, including the stoutest spokesmen for appeasement, now showed their resolve to oppose him. Although Hitler had a deserved reputation for psychological acuity, it became clear in this decisive moment that, after all, he was the psychologist only of the exhausted, the resigned, the doomed. And he was far better able to estimate the moves of victims than of adversaries.

I couldn’t quite picture Hitler’s early political and diplomatic ascendancy because I lacked a really vivid sense of the social disarray, the limping frailty, of European societies after World War One. In his To Lose a Battle: France 1940 Alastair Horne takes an epigraph from the letters of Marc Boasson, a French sergeant killed at Verdun in 1916 (one of the 700,000 French and German troops killed in the battle) who shortly before his death wondered: “What kind of nation will they make of us tomorrow, these exhausted creatures, emptied of blood, emptied of thought, crushed by a superhuman fatigue?” Boasson probably knew the answer, just from a glance over the poilus in his dugout: nations of exhausted survivors; societies conscious of their mortality, of the folly of their elites; a postwar order few believed in and few would enforce; the widespread feeling of having been senselessly spared, absurdly, artificially prolonged; nations feeling helpless before history, vaguely doomed, and haunted by the threat of revolution, or should we say dissolution. In short, a situation to which Hitler’s talents—as a demagogue, as a chameleon promising restoration to some and revolution to others, as a jackal upon a dying system—were nightmarishly suited. His was a vacant, lethargic personality that drew energy from social collapse, coherence from moral chaos. He said the happiest periods of his life were his four years in the trenches—from which he took not a day of voluntary leave—and the very worst year of the Depression in Germany, during which he coolly surfed a tsunami of rage and panic to the gates of established power. Fest discusses the strident simplicity of the Nazi party’s propaganda, its mastery of new media, of the technologies of omnipresence (radio, the private plane in which Hitler crisscrossed the nation), Hitler’s celebrity sexual charisma*, and the overwhelming, operatic stagecraft of the rallies—but what mattered most of all, he says, when it came to the hijacking of the German state and the use of its authority and organization to prosecute a genocidal war of continental conquest, was the very simple fact that “no one seemed to grasp who Hitler really was.” No one, at least, among his domestic backers and Western European appeasers (Joseph Roth knew); they all realized too late that Hitler didn’t want their approval—he wanted to destroy and replace them. He didn’t want to don a top hat and tails; he couldn’t be “tamed” or “boxed in”; and he hadn’t regimented the restive masses for them, but for his own nihilistic revolution, one as insanely murderous as the Bolshevik revolution he was credited with having contained or forestalled. During his rise to power Hitler relied upon his private army of brownshirt thugs for street fights with the Communists, and to impress and intimidate the wider public. A year after becoming chancellor, Hitler brutally purged the leaders of the brownshirts—an act that, for all its blatant mayhem (though Hitler was personally involved, for a few minutes I pictured a Godfather-like montage with him brooding in the halls of respectable power while gunmen of the nascent SS shot down incredulous allies) nonetheless reassured the army and the industrialists of Hitler’s moderation to the mainstream, his willingness to accept traditional power structures. In fact, Hitler had simply mutated. They had not co-opted him; he was corrupting them. His perversion of the German state and society had only just begun:

Machiavelli pointed out in a famous aphorism that power is not maintained with the same following that has helped to win it. Mussolini is said to have made this comment to Hitler when they [first] met in Venice. In the course of the conquest of power a limited degree of revolution from below had been permitted. By destroying the top leadership of the SA, Hitler choked off that limited revolution. The Röhm affair concluded the so-called period of struggle and marked the turning point away from the vague, utopian phase of the movement to the sober reality of a disciplined state. The romantic barricade fighter was replaced by the more modern revolutionary types such as the SS produced: those passionless bureaucrats who supervised a revolution whose like had never been known. Thinking not in terms of the mob but in terms of structures, they placed their explosive charges deeper than perhaps any revolutionaries before them.

“Ultimately,” Fest writes, the SS “became a genuine subsidiary government that penetrated all existing institutions, undermined their political power, and gradually began replacing them.” It would also work “to bind the nation to the regime by complicity in an enormous crime, to engender the feeling that all the ships had been burned.” “The annihilation policy in the East, which began almost immediately,” Fest writes, “was one of the ways of making the war irrevocable.” In a telling statement of the fatigue and resignation that always enabled Hitler, a top general refused to participate in an early coup attempt because, he said, “this man is Germany’s fate and this fate will go its way to the end.”


A completely absorbing book, though I was made uneasy by the first few chapters. I got queasy reading Fest’s detailed account of young Hitler’s shitty petit-bourgeois conceit—his embrace of entho-linguistic chauvinism as the only food for his monstrous and undeserved pride—and knowing that he was to be the most influential European of the twentieth century. Young Hitler is like one of Nabokov’s grotesques, an artist manqué who tries to stylize life but only deforms it; someone at once uptight and crazy, stiffly over-correct and a cesspool of manias. Fest on Hitler the painter:

The intellectual ferment, like the artistic experimentation of the period, passed Hitler by in Munich as it had in Vienna. Vassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee, who also lived in the Schwabing neighborhood and were opening new dimensions in painting, meant nothing to Hitler. Throughout all the months he lived in Munich he remained the modest postcard copyist who had his visions, his nightmares, and his anxieties, but did not know how to translate them into art. The pedantic brushwork with which he rendered every blade of grass, every stone in a wall, and every roofing tile, shows his intimate craving for wholeness and idealized beauty. But the phantom world of his complexes and aggressions remained completely unexpressed.

And it’s of course galling that Hitler wasn’t killed in World War One. During the first battle of Ypres, in November, 1914, Hitler’s regiment suffered fifty-percent casualties. 50%, really? And not a bullet for Adolf? Really? But like I said, the book soon becomes absorbing. Especially in the “Interpolations,” the book’s almost separable meditations on German history and culture, Fest’s writing is very pungent and personal. His early years were of course lived under the shadow of Hitler. For refusing the join the Nazi party, his father, a Catholic intellectual, was fired from his teaching post and banned from taking any other, or even doing private tutoring, and the family lived in a proud destitution for the next decade. Fest recalls overhearing his parents argue one night, his mother suggesting that “common people” sometimes had to just go with the flow, if only to get their bread—to which Fest’s father replied, “We're not common people, not when it comes to these matters.” In 1944, Fest turned 18 and decided he should enlist in the army to forestall being drafted into the SS—a compromise intolerable to his father, who shouted—or rather hissed, with a glance at the windows—“one doesn’t volunteer for Hitler’s criminal war!” Fortunately, Fest was deployed to the Western front, and surrendered to American forces. Fest Sr. even had a problem with the Nazi focus of his son’s literary career; a serious historian doesn’t write about such trash as the Nazis, he said. That remark may sound odd to us, but does covey the shame the man must have felt, as he realized that the Nazis were now inseparable from Germany and its history, that Adolf Hitler was irrevocable.



-------

* He preferred the Rhineland temperament, and years later happily recalled how when he visited Cologne that crowd had begun to rock back and forth out of sheer enthusiasm. “The greatest ovation of my life.” (p. 521)


The sound recordings of the period clearly convey the peculiarly obscene, copulatory character of mass meetings: the silence at the beginning, as of a whole multitude holding its breath; the short, shrill yappings…The writer René Schickele once spoke of Hitler’s speeches as being “like sex murders.” (p. 337)

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE 10-31-17 ...

Today's research for the sequel to A FLOOD OF EVIL ... In July 1939, Adolf Hitler said to Admiral Donitz: on no account must a war with Great Britain be allowed to develop .. A war with England would mean nothing less than "finis Germaniae" ... in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, after which England (and France) declared war on Germany ... This is the way dictators end up killing 60 million people and destroying their own countries ... we must never forget that Trump wants to be a dictator ... we must object to any step he makes down that path.

*** A Flood of Evil

***
UPDATE 6/12/13 ...

Fest's description of the events of January 1933 is utterly brilliant. So much detail, presenting in such an interesting manner. Plus there are observations and analysis that are, in my reading, unique. So many things had to come together to allow Hitler's terror to come to the world, some related to his own strategy, tactics and persistence, but more to the ignorance and lack of energy spread liberally among those who might have effectively opposed him.

***

PRIOR COMMENTS ...

I have now read 300 pages. The first section, until 1923, I read more than a year ago as research for the first section of my novel-in-progress (CHOOSING HITLER). Now I have read Fest's presentation and analysis of Hitler's activities from the time he left prison in 1924 through the national political campaign of 1930.

It is the most enlightening description I have yet read. Hitler's persistence, patience, deviousness, ruthlessness, and ultimately his political brilliance, are put forward in a clear and detailed manner. I gained many insights into how and why the German people became enamored with Hitler, who many perceived as the only plausible alternative to an incompetent democracy that could not solve Germany's problems.

As my character is increasingly and inextricably pulled into Hitler's vortex, I have no choice but to go with him if I am to present a convincing case for Berthold Becker's thoughts and actions. Fortunately, I will have an easier time extracting myself at the end of the journey.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page 252 my book Hitler

“Such a struggle is not waged with ‘intellectual’ weapons, but with fanaticism.”

This book is overall a psychological/behavioral analysis of Hitler. The author convincingly stipulates that Hitler had a completely political and ideological outlook on life. For Hitler, war was an extension of politics.

He was obsessed by racial purity (Aryan) and wanted the German people to ruthlessly acquire more territory (referred to as Lebensraum – living space). Hitler was filled with hate and very effectively transmitted this to the German people – hatred for the Treaty of Versailles, for democracy (Weimar Republic), and in particular for Jews who he saw as a dire and perpetual threat to the “German race”.

Hitler saw life through the paradigm of power and force. Life, for him, was a constant struggle with the powerful dominating the weak. There was a void of humanitarianism in him.

The German people, for the most part, embraced Hitler and his ideology. Those who didn’t, like communists and Jews, were sent off to the newly formed concentration camps like Dachau.

Hitler was a prime manipulator and extremely cunning. The author aptly demonstrates this during Hitler’s long rise to power from the early 1920s to the culmination in 1933 of becoming German Chancellor.

In the early 1920s, Hitler discovered his charismatic speaking abilities. He refined this through the years. His speeches became dramatic theatrical presentations – with light shows, storm troopers marching, singing followed by a long and almost messianic speech by Hitler. It had features of a religious revival, with Hitler, at times, referring to himself as a prophet of his people (the volk, which has distinct racial and nationalistic connotations).

Page 290

The paucity of the actual Nazi program, as against the energy and noise level of its agitation, caused many people to underestimate the Nazi Party.

Hitler could not form personal relationships, but spoke in long monologues to his followers. When others spoke, he would drift off and become self-absorbed.

Page 432 after 1932

Now that it had conquered power, the regime set about conquering people.

The path to totalitarianism and worshipful dictatorship was relentless after the Nazis seized power. Hitler went from Chancellor to “der Führer”, and this was followed by “Heil Hitler”.

Page 445

It would be a mistake to see nothing but coercion in the multitudinous organizations of the party… for the majority of the German people, the demand for selfless service frequently had a far greater appeal than the intellectuals’ demand of freedom for the individual.

Hitler was their leader (Führer)

Page 157

History sometimes loves to concentrate itself in a single human being, when the world whereupon obeys; time and the man enter into a great mysterious covenant.

As the author points out Hitler was a revolutionary. He wanted to create a warped world with a dominant German people (volk). All others were to be eliminated (Jews) or made to be slaves. Poland and Russia were to be colonized solely by Germanic blood.

He also provides us with an excellent analysis of Mein Kampf.

Page 218

The concept of cosmic struggle runs all through Mein Kampf.

The author totally disregards those who postulated of the terror, the concentration camps (page 224) “If only the Führer knew!” But there they showed how utterly they misunderstood their ruler.

The Nazi Party was composed of all elements of German society – from the working class to intellectuals to industrialists. Its program was not rigid and appealed to all (page 283) – offer room to persons of every background, every age, every motivation.

Throughout the years Hitler’s grip on reality was always questionable. He had a canny ability to evaluate those around him – but over time his adversaries in the outside world became much more formidable and he came to rely on spiritual strength to overcome superior forces.

There is an extensive examination of Hitler’s consolidation of power over the German people in the 1930s, but in this 800 page book, less than 200 pages are devoted to the war years. There is little discussion of the events of the Holocaust, but I emphasize that the author brings up Hitler’s relentless hatred of the Jewish people. He fails to emphasize the connection between anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to the German population. Could this be because the author is German and did not want to dwell on the Holocaust?

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A penetrating portrait of evil by a German psychoanalyst who as a youth fought in the Wehrmacht. This book was so well researched and written that I may read it again. I did re-read sections on several occasions which will lead me to take on Ian Kershaw's most thorough biography.
****April 2, 2025.

I just finished watching the Netflix series "Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial", I highly recommend it to everyone, especially the young who probably feel so distant from WWII.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really is a biography of Hitler, not a history of WWII draped over the events of his life. Indeed, only the last 150 pages or so of this 875 page book (not counting the many pages of photographs) cover the war years and those are substantially treated insofar as they inform us as regards his character. That, as one might imagine, was flawed, in part because of Hitler's meager education, in part because of class resentment, in part because of his growing up during war, defeat, revolution and depression.

Richard and Clara Winston translated this text into English so well that one would never guess that the original was in German. I've read many biographies of Hitler. This, despite its datedness (1973), is the best of the lot.

[Nathaniel Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just in case you feel compelled to read through the nightmarish rise and catastrophic fall of history's most infamous person, here you go. Five stars for this doorstop work of non-fiction personality horror.

Joachim Fest's 1973 bio, the only Hitler bio I've read, is an impeccable analysis of the times, the man, the mood of the age, the nature of totalitarianism and dictatorship, and the social psychology of leader-narcissism and mass-delusion. The nightmare that descended upon Germany, and then Europe and the world, belongs, in the analysis of its central nature and purpose, to Hitler himself. Thus as Fest points out, the most appropriate category term for National Socialism was not merely "fascism" or even "German fascism," but "Hitler-fascism." It’s so telling that nothing of the Hitler movement survived him, even, as one might expect, in the kind of pockets of holdout resistance that Goebbels prophesied at the bitter end. Instead it collapsed completely, because the man was the movement. He was its ideology. He was its violence. For 15 or so years, he was Germany. No one in history has ever gathered in the anxieties, nostalgias, hatreds, and hopes of his time, perverted them so totally, and refracted them so destructively back into the world around him.

And yet Fest is so careful not to exculpate Europe and the world. Hitler was not possible without the times into which he was born and rose, without the widespread political weakness, the capitulation and cowardice of European leadership between the wars. Towards the end of the book Fest sums up: "ultimately it must be granted that he could not have destroyed Europe without the help of Europe."

Yet if historians can speculate that even without Hitler there would have been another world war, still Fest demonstrates how all the delusions, fears, and sentimentalities of post WWI Europe were radicalized and weaponized in Hitler himself, such as they could not have been with anyone else. My impression after Fest's book is that there can never be another Hitler. There may be petty imitators or sick admirers, but history will simply be unable repeat this. He was just too extreme, too bound up in perverse eschatology, too effective a psychologist of the masses, too indifferent to the victims of his own violence.... just too damn defaced of a human being for there ever to be a second one. Perhaps the reign of Stalin challenges this notion; indeed, the fact that these two, haunted by such mutual hatred and yet mutual admiration, arrived not just in the same century but at exactly the same time... is just staggering.

After nearly every chapter you think "it can't get much worse than this." And then, inexplicably, it does. You think you know Nazism's essential character, but then you find you don't. You think your mind has encircled the nature of this pall of evil, and then the merciless phantasmagoria just keeps expanding and devouring everything in its path. The one who called himself “the greatest liberator of humanity” simultaneously referred to “the saving doctrine of the unimportance of the individual human being.” This is a glimpse through the doorway of hell.

Hitler's complete life is presented in narrative color: from unknown loser of petty-bourgeois origins, through the founding of the Nazi party, the devilish manipulation of Weimar's various weaklings, extremists, and appeasers, the careful orchestration of mass leader-hysteria, the failure of his adversaries - or the dumb luck - that gave him the edge over and over again (reader, you will facepalm so much); the dozen or more failed assassination attempts, the self-delusion of invincibility and the me-or-the-world doom complex. The incurable poison of anti-semitism and its nightmarish results, the "unalterable will" for war and the choking, paroxysmic rage with which he hurled the world into the violent destiny he dreamed for it. Through his near defeat of the Allies, his hubristic invasion of the Soviet Union, all the way to the final thinning, cracking, and crumbling of the regime as the Soviet artillery thundered into Berlin, even as its Fuhrer still gibbered and ranted that triumph would certainly be his at any moment. From master thief of the will of his nation, to quivering, bunker-bound, shattered, "cake-gobbling human wreck," the perversion of mind on display in this story is paralyzing. The only thing more flabbergasting than the existence of such a person is that he, in a measure, succeeded. He seemed never to falter in the conviction that his destining will would become reality; and it's as if, uncannily, sickeningly, history obeyed him.

Fest does a really remarkable job of outlining the psychology of Hitler without descending into weird theories or rendering diagnoses. For the ever-increasing fashion with which the extremism and totalitarianism unfolded, none of it was inconsistent with who Hitler was from the first. His evaluation of Hitler as an "unperson" is absolutely compelling. He remarks on, at the beginning and end of the book, the notable fact that Hitler essentially never changed. There was no growth in personhood. His entire life was spent "carving a monument" of himself to replace his evacuated personality, for the purpose of gathering power and manipulating those around him. From beginning to end he was totalitarian, static, unaltered. The book seeks to uncover something of the mind of a man who was phenomenally effective politically, yet who was close with virtually no one in his entire life; a man who hypnotized a nation with his oratory, yet never coined a single memorable phrase.

In the end, his utter emptiness gives the impression that he wasn't ultimately an ideologue. All of the principled ideologues opposed him at some point, and met their end for their troubles. Instead, Hitler was the climax of narcissistic delusion and self-deification, of Machiavellian cunning, relativizing everything to his perception of his own genius and peak humanity. Even at the height of his "principled" rhetoric of opposition to Bolshevism and "international Jewry," he seems not in thrall to a political program, but to his own self-generated mytho-historic image. In Fest's words: He was "a man without a concept, a program, a goal, who merely used concepts, goals, and programs for the accumulation of power and the cranking up of actions." Only in the last hours of his life does the veil seem to fall, and his imminent destruction and the failure of Nazism seem to penetrate his awareness ever so slightly. There are no words for the narcissistic delusion we find here. Joachim Fest comes as close as you can get.

Possible downsides to this book:

1) the lengthy middle portion concerning Hitler's political rise through the Weimar Republic. Obviously crucial to the story, but a bit of a slog to read through. Still, I'm not dinging the book for it, because it's clearly such an important phase. And,

2) While the holocaust is certainly presented here, Hitler's part in its architecture is somewhat missing. I would've liked (not exactly the word) to read more about this.

Like I said, this is the only Hitler bio that I've read, but I can't imagine this one being much surpassed. It's an ideal balance between readability, detail, and length (even at 800+ pages it is dwarfed by Ian Kershaw's mammoth 2-volume work... no thanks, not for me). I can't recommend Joachim Fest’s book highly enough... but not for everyone. Think long and hard before you descend into the carnival of vileness that is Hitler's life and reign.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, right up there with William L. Shirer's "Berlin Diary" and "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." A must-read for those interested in how Hitler came to power in Germany and the lessons and relevance to modern political demagogues and movements. Very long (700 pages) but it flies by if you're interested in the topic.

[MadZiddi · Rating 5 out of 5]

We might have a Hitler at the helm in Pakistan sometime soon. This is what I inferred by Joachem Fest's classic biography by connecting the dots in Pakistan's political landscape. There was constant interference in the politics of the Weimer republic (unofficially) by the Reichwehr (the German military) ala Pakistan Army in Pakistan today. Hitler with his past of being a decorated corporal, a populist orator pandering to a defeated populace, a failed artist, but as unbalanced that typically artists are, was identified early as a useful provocateur/demagogue for the German nationalism by Warmecht (the German GHQ). Several retired German military officers were instrumental in aiding Hitler's attempts to power. Ludendorff, the quartermaster general during the First World War, was the force behind the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria which failed. Field Marshal Hindenberg, the German President during much of the Weimer Period, although posing as an honest broker between rival politicians, tacitly supported Hitler as a controllable pawn to keep the various rival parties in check, despite the latter's extreme ideals. Next, he signed into law the purges that followed the Reichstag fire which allowed Hitler to Nazify the state,(enabling Hitler to become Fuhrer after his death). Hitler's concepts of Lebensraum, antisemitism, and total war suited them just fine. It was only when Hitler's over vaulting ambition led to a string of defeats in 1944, a bunch of German officers tried to muzzle the beast. But the attempt to assassinate him failed, and Germany was reduced to ashes in the total defeat that followed.
Actually, the real scoundrel, in my view was Fredrick the Great of Prussia, who created the Junkers landowning class, who supplied the principal officers of Wehrmacht. In fact, generalship was so glorified in Prussia that Bismark used to wear a military uniform even though he was a civilian.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars really - a comprehensive look at the life and deeds of one of the central figures of World War II.
We all know about the concentration camps, the Holocaust, the forced sterilization and elimination of those considered "weak" or "feeble-minded". However, to characterize Adolf Hitler as just "evil" or "crazy" is a gross over-simplification. To justify Germany of that time accepting his leadership as somehow, being under hypnosis or trickery is also a disservice to history. The author explores the moods and thoughts of the times and how Hitler was able to utilize these to his advantage and rise to ultimate power.
I have to disagree, though, with the author's conclusion that Hitler's ideas somehow died with him. Even today, there are people out there who believe that those who are different from them, be it by race, religion, sexuality, or ideology, should be eliminated. It is useful to understand how a demagogue could take advantage of fear and ignorance to impose their will upon a nation.

[Kit]

In the introduction of Volker Ullrich's Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939, the author describes the only four seminal biographies of Adolf Hitler.

Of Fest's book he writes:
The thesis that Hitler was basically a power-hungry political opportunist came in for some heavy historical revision in the following decades. Above all, historian Eberhard Jäckel convincingly demonstrated in the late 1960s that Hitler did indeed maintain a consistent world view, no matter how extreme and insane, and that this perspective guide his actions. Jäckel argued that the two most important elements of Hitler's world view were the "removal of the Jews" and the conquest of "living space in the east." Ever since the 1920s, Jäckel showed, Hitler held true to these two axiomatic, fixed ideas with rigorous consistency. Both Fest and Kershaw adopted this insight, and the present book will reaffirm it as well.

Joachim Fest's Hitler biography, coming more than twenty years after Bullock's, is impressive for its style—Jäckel gushed that "No one since Thomas Mann has written about Hitler in such good German prose"—while historian Karl-Dietrich Bracher praised "the author's talent for dense and sweeping interpretation." Somewhat sheepishly, many academic historians asked why the journalist Fest, and not one of their own, had been able to achieve this.

Fest not only came up with an unprecedented psychological portrait of Hitler's personality, he also located the Führer firmly in the context of his epoch. Fest identified the most important phenomenon in Hitler's rise as the convergence of individual and general factors, "the difficult-to-decipher correspondence between the man and the times and the times and the man." To illustrate what he meant, Fest interspersed his chronological narrative with "intermediary reflections" that brought together individual biographical details and collective historical developments. The result was the paradoxical conclusion that Hitler, who despised revolution, was "the German form of revolution," idiosyncratically combining both modern and reactionary elements.

Fest's interpretation, based on already published sources rather than original archive research, has attracted criticism. Some scholars have rightly pointed out that Fest dramatically downplays the role of the conservative elites who ushered Hitler through the doors of power. And it is impossible to overlook the educated, bourgeois contempt for the half-ignorant arriviste that Fest displays on several occasions, for instance, in his snide critique of Hitler's poor writing in Mein Kampf. Fest's assessment of Hitler is also heavily influenced by the Führer's favorite architect and Nazi armaments minister, Albert Speer. As a journalist, Fest had helped Speer write his 1969 memoirs; in return Speer provided information for Fest's Hitler biography. As a result, Fest's account guilelessly passes on a number of legends, for instance the idea that Speer was an apolitical specialist who fell under the helpless sway of the dictator.

Yet despite all these objections, Fest landed a real coup. In one review, historian Klaus Hildebrand predicted that Fest's pioneering work would represent "the definitive book on Adolf Hitler for quite some time." That held true for twenty-five years until another British historian, Ian Kershaw, took up the challenge of a major Hitler biography. Kershaw had access to sources not available to Fest, most significantly the diaries of Joseph Goebbels from his years as Gauleiter of Berlin and then propaganda minister.

[Kayla A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is quite daunting-- I mean, who wants to spend hours reading over 800 pages about someone as shitty as Hitler? But on the other hand, aren't you curious how an average, solitary Austrian kid became the ruler of the third Reich and a conductor of genocide? Well, I was a little curious, and my Papa left this book behind when he passed away, so I decided to ruin a number of summery days reading about Adolf Hitler.

This is a remarkable biography, probably the best ever written of Hitler and maybe one of the best ever written about anybody. Through each step of Hitler's life, Fest deeply explores Hitler's psyche, allowing the reader to see firsthand how he became so twisted. Hitler's rise and fall are cataloged with in-depth detail, and you can almost feel the atmosphere of pre and post-war Germany around you. I wonder if anyone else ever bothered to create Hitler's story with such intricacy and personal detachment.

My one qualm with this work is that, while it was incredibly detailed all the while, it did not focus much on the Holocaust. The genocide was not ignored, and much of the establishment of Hitler's personality and psychological analysis points to how he could have committed such an atrocity, but Hitler's direct relation to the horrible event is referred to minimally and not greatly elaborated upon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me you cannot describe the life and character of Adolf Hitler without including the Holocaust.

But overall, this is a complete, riveting account of the life of Hitler, and a reader walks away with the understanding of who Hitler was and how he came to be that way.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"History knows nothing like him. He was one of those figures who seemed to have been born to accelerate time. If there is one word we associate with Adolf Hitler it is 'excess'". In 1973 Joachim Fest, who was only ten years old when the Third Reich was set ablaze in 1945, took a stab at writing the definitive Hitler biography and succeeded beyond all scope. Part history, part essay and all meditation on Hitler's role in overthrowing the old world of the European powers, dividing Europe (even to this day) and then disappearing like a puff of smoke while his ghost continues to haunt us. Hitler was, to quote Fest "a non-person", a man of no qualities, who both summed up and erased European history during his twelve year Reich: "Dare we ask: Was Hitler great?"

[David Ramirer · Rating 5 out of 5]

notiz vorab: im april 2013, also vor fast genau 10 jahren, hab ich dieses buch schon einmal zu lesen begonnen und kam nicht allzuweit, musste es nach etwas mehr als 200 seiten liegen lassen - vor etwa zwei monaten begann ich es erneut zu lesen und, siehe da, las es ohne größerer pausen mehr oder weniger in einem rutsch. das ist für mich insofern eine bemerkung wert, als ich in den letzten paar jahren kaum ein buch komplett gelesen habe und mich freue, offenbar wieder "im lesen" angekommen zu sein.

-

die historische figur adolf hitlers wurde in einer unzahl an büchern, filmen, comics, historischen abhandlungen, artikeln und wissenschaftlichen arbeiten bearbeitet... und es sieht nicht danach aus, als ob die kette an publikationen so rasch versiegen würde. zu monströs sind die auswirkungen seiner person auf europa und die ganze welt nicht nur im letzten jahrhundert; zu rätselhaft ist es, wie es zu all dem kommen konnte, das an leid und schmerz, tot und verwüstung in seinem namen begangen wurde. auch heute im neuen jahrhundert ist es noch ohne beispiel, was alles in diesen jahren geschehen ist, vielmehr dient das was damals geschah als beispiel und wird - vielfach vielleicht zu rasch, zu schnell - als problemmarke benutzt, wenn tendenzen in diese richtung in der gegenwart wieder auftauchen.

doch es ist wichtig, hinzuschauen, und zwar genau hinzusehen, was während des lebens hitlers nicht nur aufgrund seiner taten geschah, sondern auch was diese taten erst ermöglicht, gestützt, aufgebaut und getragen hat. joachim fest schaut mit seiner hier vorliegenden biographie in einer detailfülle auf dieses phänomen, die schonungslos jede widersprüchlichkeit, jede charakterliche schwäche, die ursachen und wirkungen aber auch die richtung in die die entwicklung ging, seziert und zerlegt.
dabei ist er an manchen stellen detailversessener als an anderen, was wohl einerseits an der jeweiligen menge an greifbaren belegen und zeugnissen liegt, andererseits ist sein buch auch in hohem maße ein nicht nur historisches, sondern ein literarisches produkt, welches eine struktur aus klaren bögen und reflektierenden schneisen besitzt, die das leben hitlers nur als matritze nimmt, um die vorgänge rund um ihn und auch in der restlichen welt mit eindeutigem fokus beleuchtet und dadurch sichtbar macht.

meiner meinung nach gelingt das vortrefflich. selten hat mich ein historischer stoff so gefesselt, was sicher an joachim fests famoser stilistischer kraft liegt, die auch die banalsten details aus hitlers leben in einen spannenden kontext stellt. fest beleuchtet aber auch die äußeren kräfte, welche hitler erst die bühne gaben, die er brauchte, scheut sich an keiner stelle, unangenehme fragen und erkenntnise aufzustellen und bleibt in der beschreibung immer differenziert und ausgewogen, sodass das bild einer zeit entsteht, in der viele phänomene der vergangenheit zum letzten mal zu sehen waren und mit dem ende des zweiten weltkrieges zerstört wurden, andere dinge aber hier erstmals aufgetreten sind und seither weiterhin - in noch weit existenziell entscheidenderer form, bestehen und die welt verändern. dazu gehört z.b. die propaganda, welche hitler gemeinsam mit der NSDAP auf allen kanälen (inklusive des terrors) anwandte, um immer breitere bevölkerungsschichten auch im ausland von seiner politik zu vereinnahmen. dieses "lügen in alle richtungen" findet man heute im marketing quasi jeder partei; zwar war solch enthemmtes, zielgerichtetes lügen seither durchwegs eine feste größe, wird allerdings in den letzten jahren mit jedem tag deutlich massiver und erinnert inzwischen derart stark an die methoden hitlers, dass es erschreckend ist (ich sage nur: trump).

alles in allem also ein wertvolles buch, das ich empfehlen kann, auch wenn es - was ich durch sekundärinformationen erfahren habe - inzwischen historisch teilweise überholt ist.
es ist in meinen augen ein psychogramm hitlers: es ist kein historischer abriss des frühen 20. jahrhunderts, auch kein buch über den 2. weltkrieg alleine, es ist auch keine detaillierte beschreibung des holocaust (wenngleich ich die kritik nicht gelten lasse, dass die vernichtung der juden in dem buch zu wenig thematisiert wird: sie wird es sehr wohl, und in all ihrer bedeutung, aber wenn man den holocaust im psychogramm hitlers einordnet, wird es - und das ist die größere katastrophe - nur zu einem ersten schritt bei all dem, das er glücklicherweise nicht mehr umsetzen konnte: seine visionen waren derart erschreckend und alles menschliche vernichtend, dass auschwitz nur ein anfang war, und auch seine verantwortung für all den industriellen massenmord wird eindeutig, er aber war ein mörder nicht nur der in seinen augen minderwertigen anderen, sondern der gesamten menschlichkeit an sich), es ist vielmehr ein buch als lupe, und der mensch unter dieser linse ist auslöser für derart vieles gewesen, dass es ein genaues auge braucht, um all das zu zeigen und zu erkennen. meiner meinung nach hatte fest dieses auge und auch die sprache dafür.

[Adam Balshan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars [Biography]
Exact rating: 3.75
#10 of 58 in genre
#2 of 30 on the Third Reich

Writing: 3.25
The prose is above-average [3] to memorable [3.5], and inducing heavy annotation. Fest achieves an uncommon feat for a biographer by sticking mainly with his subject (Hitler), and not getting carried away with surrounding history (extensive war narration).

Use: 4
Fully qualifies as an authoritative source, but it is not smooth enough to warrant frequent re-reading (an element of my 4.5 rating). It is also telling that, despite my deep interest in the subject matter, that I began reading this book in 2017 but didn't finish until 2020. These combined to keep the Use rating down at 4. On the other hand, Fest included rare material on the ideological forces of the 1920s which painted an astonishing picture of the world Hitler grew up in. Anti-Semitism and Social Darwinism were not ideologies Hitler held uniquely; he was not an anomaly, but at least to some degree a product of his age.

Truth: 4
Truth in scope/the micro: 3.5. Truth in the applicability/macro: 5. A composite 4.25 was brought down to 4 by occasional watery analysis, a confusion of economic principles, and entirely omitting Niemöller in the discussion of German resistance.

Take-away
Recommended to anyone interested in Biography, The Third Reich, or turn-of-the-century sociology, politics, or philosophy. It covers some of World War II, but not enough for someone coming to the book only for that reason. I have not yet read Kershaw's large biography of Hitler, so I do not know how it compares.

[Simona Moschini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meriterebbe una nuova traduzione al posto di questa, infelice, zeppa di refusi, errori ortografici, frasi maltradotte e zoppicanti.

Al di là della forma, posso dire con una minima cognizione di causa, dopo tanti saggi sul nazismo letti negli anni, che questa è un'opera dotata di senso compiuto. Non si limita a formulare ipotesi, non si lascia affascinare dal morboso o dal pittoresco, ma come una biografia classica esamina la vita di un uomo formandone un ritratto d'insieme nel quale ogni azione ha una spiegazione logica. Il tutto con uno stile affascinante, avvolgente, denso e, va da sé, difficilissimo (sono circa mille pagine).
Una lettura faticosa, insomma, ma inevitabile se ci si vuole fare un'idea del suo oggetto razionale e scevra di tante patologie che spesso avvolgono lo storico.

[Dylan Tweney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding biography, also gigantic. The amazing thing after reading all 700+ pages is that I still don't understand the man very well, nor I think did anyone. But I understand Germany, and Europe, far better than before.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is the definitive biography of Hitler.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography offers illuminating insight to those interested in the history of Adolf Hitler and the rise of the NSDAP in Germany.

For me these were some of the questions begging for an answer:
- how did the Nazis stole power legitimately?
- how and why did the German population allowed themselves to be so deluded by these madmen?
- why did the German High Command succumb so completely to Hitler’s whims?
- why did Hitler never even considered a truce towards the end of the war, but rather chose the destruction of the German volk, as well as the country?

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria-Hungary. In 1918 Adolf Hitler returned to Munich after the defeat suffered in WW1. This war, the devastating defeat, and especially the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the concomitant hate of the Weimar Republic, was to play a defining role in his political awakening and the future of the later NSDAP. One also has to bear in mind the chaos after the war, exasperated by the millions of soldiers out of work (the treaty limited the German defence force to something like 100,000 men).

He soon found a home in the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP) where his developing oratory skills soon won him attention. The DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). Right from the start Hitler had the insight to form paramilitary organizations like the SA that offered a home to thousands of returning soldiers. Soon the SA developed into a very important cog in the Nazi machine towards the later manoeuvres for power. An important beacon in his career was the failed Beerhalle Putch in Munich in 1923, which led to his incarceration and the creation of his manifest, Mein Kampf. It is interesting to note that almost all of what Hitler later did in the thirties and forties were stated explicitly in this work. Also noted was how poor and undefined the NSDAP were in terms of clear policies, especially foreign policy. What they were clear about was that hate was a driving factor and a common denominator of all the umbrella organizations that comprised the Nazi movement. This hatred focused its beady eye on everything foreign, on communism, and of course on international Jewry. Parallel to this hatred was a mistrust of the middle and upper classes, especially the old Junker class. Hitler had a burning ambition for absolute power and a quest to restore German pride and its former greatness.

Hitler's oratory skills enabled his development into a formidable demagogue. From the start he recognised the simple principals of successful oratory and indoctrination. His cynicism was boundless, here are more or less his methods for effective intimidation and domination:
- keep the message simple
- truth is not a necessity, as long as it is repeated often and loud
- use as far as possible total immersion of loud music/symbolism/huge numbers/basically any uniform/effective lighting
- the public is impressed by the use of force and thuggery, spilling of blood is not a problem
- keep up the semblance of respecting the rule of law, until it is not deemed necessary any more

In Mein Kampf Hitler was clear of his visions of lebensraum towards the east and the extermination of the Jewish population in these territories. This aim made it obvious that Hitler saw the Slavic nations as subservient to the Germans. The later surprise attack of Russia in 1941 should have been anticipated, and the subjection of Western Europe recognised as only a necessary preliminary move prior to his main goal, the push towards the East. He accepted the danger of a two front war as the smaller price to pay in his pursuit of the greater ideal of Lebensraum to the east.

Also illuminating was his fascination with the operas of Wagner and its glorification of Teutonic mythology and heroism. This forms the backdrop of the Nazi use of symbolism, mass marches, light displays etc. that impressed so many foreign observers at the Nuremberg rallies. The clever adaption of these principals by Joseph Goebbels for radio became a powerful tool in the Orwellian indoctrination of the general population. These same Wagnerian themes again became evident in his absolute rejection of a ceasefire towards the brutal end of the war, and his eventual sacrifice of the German volk, capped by his melodramatic suicide pact with (some) of his closer disciples.

I have to mention my frustration with some elements of the Kindle translation. The irritating misspelling of words, especially that of general Jodl as Jodi really poked me in the eye. Furthermore, the Kindle book’s total lack of photos and maps is a big negative, why can’t these be included?

Nevertheless, this biography by Joachim Fest was fascinating and very illuminating. Anyone interested in history should enjoy it tremendously, as I certainly did.

[Edwin]

Dit lijvige biografie beschrijft het leven van Adolf Hitler. Pas de laatste 150 pagina's gaan over de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
Een must-read voor diegene die geïnteresseerd willen weten hoe Hitler aan de macht kwam en de lessen die we daar uit kunnen leren.
Dit is geen makkelijk te lezen boek.

[André Sá Machado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough from the birth and development of the party and rise to power, but it seems it looses some "steam" until the very end; probably to cut a long story short.

[AGOULS · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG this book is very addictive. i love read this type of book because is very fantastic

[Wilhelm Weber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hervorragende Leistung - literarisch, politisch, psychologisch, aber auch geschichtlich und faktisch. Seine Darstellung leuchtet ein und faßt die ganze Dramatik eindrücklich zusammen. Detailliert und akribisch werden Vorgänge geschildert, aber die Geschichte behält eine geordnete am rasanten Vorwärtsdrängen orientierte Zielstrebigkeit. Kaum 6 Jahrzehnte und davon ist die erste Hälfte fast noch verschlafen und verträumt, ehe sie dann von einer Krise zur nächsten stolpert und fast die ganze Welt mit sich ins Chaos reißt. Mehr als einmal kommt zum Ausdruck, daß dieser Hassadeur und Spieler dämonenhaft seine Verführungsgewalt über unzählige hat ausüben können - eine Wechselwirkung von unseeliger Energie und wahnhafter Besessenheit, die nicht nur seelische, sondern überaus körperlich in die schreckliche Verknotung und Verstrickung von Führer und Verführten in einem großen Völkerdrama übersteigert wird. Beim bösen Ende des preussischen Adels und Führungskaders, die Hitler erst zur Bändigung der sozialistischen Revoluzzer nutzen wollten um ihn schlußendlich krampfhaft versuchten gegen alle Skrupel überkommener Ehrenkodices hinweg und schließlich erfolglos loszuwerden, kommt einem des Zauberlehrlings Klage in den Sinn: "Die Geister, die ich rief, werde ich nicht mehr los!" Die tiefen Resentiments, Hasstiraden, Verfolgungswahnvorstellungen und bestialischen Vergeltungstriebe dieses dunklen Totenvogels haben einen hohen Preis gefordert. Kaum etwas von seinen Zielen hat er erreicht, außer daß er das arm verführte Volk, das ihm so willig auf den Leim gegangen ist, schlimm hat bluten lassen - und unzählige mehr. Wie gut, dass England nicht nach seiner Geige getanzt hat und daß sich Churchill geweigert hat mitzuspielen. Schrecklich, daß Polen dem Irrglauben verfiel, es könne sich gegen die sich aufplusternden revolutionären Schreckensmächte behaupten. Es hat furchtbar dafür bezahlt. Und letztlich hat vorallem das jüdische Volk aus so vielen Herrenländern diese dunklen Schatten des Todes und finstersten Abgründe des Holocausts erleiden müssen - weil ihm die Schuld an fast allem zugedichtet wurde. Das ist die große Schuld - zusammen mit dem Morden und Abschlachten allen sogenannten unwerten Lebens - ungeboren, alt, krank, Sinti & Roma, Polen und Slaven, Kommunisten und Sozialisten, Christen und Jehovas Zeugen... Furchtbarer Machtmißbrauch und alles mit dem trügerischen Schein des Rechts und vermeintlicher Erlaubnis des Rechtes des Stärkeren: Just because we can! Der Herr aber im Himme lacht ihrer. Er wird am Ende die Starken zum Raube haben und diese Feinde zerschlagen und ihrer Behausung wüste zurücklassen - und wo sie dereinst wohnten, kennt sie keiner mehr...

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great and insightful biography. We take history for granted, after all it did happen, but this story as fiction would be unbelievable. I had a peculiar surreal dream-like feeling during the part of the biography covering the late 20s - you know, it's time to wake up now! I haven't read a lot of Hitler biographies, but this one certainly seems to give a coherent and consistent psychological picture. It makes you wish you could have been present (and had a revolver), and it makes me think again about the US drone strikes. I was occasionally irritated by comments about Hitler's support in England or about how Hitler and the party weren't all that antisemitic in the early 30s (even though the author states that the SA would pass around collection cans labeled "For the destruction of the Jews"), but looking at the whole work, perhaps I am just overly sensitive.
The Kindle version has many typographical mistakes that look like OCR-type errors. Most disturbing, Alfred Jodl is always called Jodi.

[Martinocorre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Questa edizione in particolare è uno strazio, punteggiatura sparata a casaccio, errori ortografici come se piovesse, l'opera è sicuramente esaustiva ma questa edizione ha mancato completamente di un lavoro di controllo finale prima di andare alle stampe.

Ci ho messo sedici anni per leggere questo libro, è stata la mia più grande fatica di lettore, oltre ai problemi di cui sopra anche il soggetto è maledettamente impegnativo. Anticristo.

[Ricardo]

Después de buscarlo casi tan exhaustivamente como los rusos buscaron su cuerpo, esta biografía de Hitler la vine encontrado en una vieja librería de Madrid. Al fin lo tengo y lo conservo como una joya de la historia que me espera por leer. De todos modos, ya conozco el final.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very very good read. tons of personal info and interesting facts. Spoiler alert: He's still a monster of unmatched magnatude!!!!!!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers in alot of detail the early life of Hitler, an area I wasn't as familiar with.

[Leonardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Per me monumentale, credo che non si possa scrivere una biografia meglio di questa.

[Gabe Thornes · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to critique such a sweeping account of a villainous historical figure. Fest evidently benefited from a wealth of source material and first-hand knowledge of twentieth-century Germany. It would take a scholar of much more learning than me to question any of the assertions, opinions and interpretations proffered in this biography. That being the case, I instead have compiled the most interesting and revealing snippets of information encountered, to shed light on the lesser-considered aspects of the dark, sanguinary period of history which circumscribed Hitler's life.

One misconception which pervades the mindset of many is that Germany was unique in its distaste for the Jewish people. This is often coupled with the assumption that Hitler somehow injected this prejudice into the vulnerable minds of prewar Germans. In fact, from the turn of the century, magazines such as Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels's 'Ostara' were espousing hate-filled ideas of eugenics and dreams of an Aryan master race, even using the Swastika as a symbol of racial purity, decades before Hitler had even considered a turn toward politics. The young Austrian lapped up such rhetoric, describing the Jewry as "unequivocally a [alien] race and not a religious community". This, along with the trials and tribulations of the First World War, led Hitler to develop his philosophy of a 'granite foundation', characterised by all of the trappings which one would associate with a fascist state: struggle, national pride, absolutism and a willingness to take extreme, violent political action. Whilst anti-semitism undergirded a large part of his political philosophy, Fest draws the reader's attention to the fact that Hitler did harbour a perverted reverence for the racial purity of the Jewish people, with his ideal of the Nietzschean Superman combining "Spartan hardness and simplicity, Roman ethos, British gentlemanly ways, and the racial morality of Jewry."

Before taking power on 30th January 1933, the N.S.D.A.P. was by no means stable, and even following Hitler's rise to the very peak of the hierarchy, tensions threatened to tear the party apart. The S.A., led by Kreibel and Röhm, was becoming too militaristic, with the recruits forgetting the ideological purpose of the party and instead resembling a mere reserve soldiery. This prompted Hitler to create the infamous Shock Troop (S.S.) over which he could have full control. As well as structural issues, the ideology itself was ossifying. The original vivacity which inspired the formation and development of the party began to diminish and correspondingly the political aims became more diffuse. One circulating jibe referred to the Nazi party as the 'World as Will without Idea', a humorous allusion to Schopenhauer’s masterpiece which was still percolating through the public conscience. This lack of a rallying motive was very apparent to Hitler, as is evidenced when we read of his insistence that anti-semitism was fundamental to winning the hearts and minds of the populous: "If the Jew did not exist, we would have to invent him. A visible enemy, not just an invisible one is what is needed." Many who voted for the Nazis (and who would later be vilified along with all other Nazi supporters) were simple rural farmers and blue-collar labourers. They had no notions of racial prejudice or communist sympathies- they were swept along with the wave of populism, living through a global economic crash, stripped to the bones by the Treaty of Versailles, and had known little other than suffering and hardship for many years. In much the same way that the Europe of today is splintering into nationalistic, far-right factions, the Germany of the early 30s found good honest people giving their support to whomever presented them with even a semblance of hope for economic and political change. The National Socialists filled that void. It is worth remembering that the Nazi party never attained a majority before taking power (the 1933 election saw them receive 43.9% of the vote share) which demonstrates the level of electioneering and manipulation exerted by the higher Nazi officials following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor by the ageing Hindenburg. He would later admit to having given the impression of a peaceable, pacifistic leader when he most needed the backing of the moderate voters. Hitler's route can be viewed as a cascade of fortuitous circumstances, culminating in the seizure of power. As the author notes, all that stood between the republic and Hitler were Hindenburg, Schleicher and von Papen. Europe never stood a chance. Hitler himself, almost embarrassed by the capitulation of the left and centre of German politics, commented: "One would never have thought so miserable a collapse possible." By 1938, the Nazis received 99% of the vote.

Alongside that fateful day in January 1933, we can point to another key event which shaped the very same party that would subsequently initiate the Second World War, the greatest humanitarian crisis in modern history. This event was the 'night of the long knives', in which Hitler destroyed all intraparty opposition to his rule in one fell, merciless swoop. On 30th June 1934, several leading Nazi officials were executed on largely fabricated charges of treachery and dissent. Amongst those whom Hitler eliminated was the emblematic but volatile Ernst Röhm. This decision weighed heavily on the Fuhrur's mind, as he had always held Röhm in high regard, being as he was a great advocate for Nazism and its fascistic ideals. It was a significant point in his career, making clear to any remaining doubters that he would stand for no obstruction in realising his goals.

The author divides the Fuhrur's political career into three main stages; (1) ten years of preparation, demagoguery and 'tactical experimentation', (2) ten following years of global recognition, nationwide adulation and blind sycophancy, and then, of course, (3) his final six years of "grotesque errors, mistake piled upon mistake, crimes, convulsions, destructive mania and death." Reading about the pre and early-war period cannot help but induce feelings of anguish, anger and regret. For instance, when commenting upon the invasion of the Rhineland, Hitler remarked: "If the French had marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance." Additionally, the various plots and assassination attempts which fell at the last hurdle make for yet another series of spectacular strokes of good luck for the Austrian. Hacha's essentially forced, last-minute surrender of Czechoslovakia was said to induce Hitler to exclaim "This is the greatest day of my life. I shall be known as the greatest German in history." Such jubilation was no doubt short-lived, as he clearly had no intention, at that stage, of waging a six-year-long war with Britain. In July 1939, just before the war started, he told Admiral Dönitz that a war with England would result in 'finis Germaniae'. This was a rare moment of ironic prescience on his part.

The war started auspiciously for Germany, with the early Western offensive seeing the capture of Poland, France and much of northern Europe; all whilst losing only a fifth of the troops killed on the side of the Allies. However, following the disastrous Russian offensive and the involvement of the United States, the tides quickly turned. Fest cites this as a key reason for the eventual collapse of the Axis powers; the Allies were divided by social and political values (no starker contrast exists than that between Soviet-style communism and democratic American capitalism) but united by a singular goal: victory over the enemy and the toppling of fascism. The Axis, conversely, may have been united by far-right nationalistic and imperialistic ideology, but their aims were too nebulous and their centres of power too dispersed. Mussolini knew before the conflict began that the Italian army was entirely unprepared for full-scale combat, and Japan was too hell-bent on expanding its empire into China and southward into the Philippines and Indonesia to offer Germany any real support. By the spring of 1945, the Russians were marching on Berlin. Upon learning that the Steiner attack never took place, Hitler lost what little psychological control that remained to him and treated his officers to the tirade of abuse so wonderfully portrayed in the film 'Downfall'. This was likely a final nail in the coffin for all those who heard the outburst. Everyone, it seemed, now knew that the war, along with the mental fortitude of the Fuhrur, was lost.

A question which splits opinion to this day is the degree to which Hitler can be considered atheistic. He certainly did not come across so in his early years as party leader, with Rudolf Hess saying in a letter to the head of state that Hitler was "...religious, a good Catholic". Indeed, Hitler's imprisonment in 1924 (the term of which was greatly reduced from five years to nine months) had a profound effect on his psychology, theology and even physiognomy ("...the strong bony structure from brow to chin emerged more distinctly, what formerly might have given the effect of sentimentality had yielded to an unmistakable note of hardness"). The language in ’Mein Kampf’, whilst not always explicitly religious, makes numerous references to the plight of Christ and employs quite biblical language in places. Whether this was genuine invocation of Christian doctrine or mere political posturing is hard to tell, though the manuscript was heavily edited by his PR team before publication. His speeches to the German people did not shy away from religious imagery either:

"...Lord, You see, we have changed; the German nation is no longer the nation of dishonour, of shame, of self-laceration, of timidity and little faith; no, Lord, the German nation has once more grown strong in spirit, strong in will, strong in persistence, strong in enduring all sacrifices. Lord, we will not swerve from You; now bless our struggle".

Goebbels also sent a letter to the imprisoned Hitler, quoting Goethe; "to you, a god has given the tongue with which to express our sufferings." We will never truly know Hitler's actual religious convictions or lack thereof- but one can point to the Christian setting within which his party flourished, the endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church, and several other damning indictments which punch holes in the claim that Nazism was a distinctly atheistic phenomenon. Like most political movements, there were probably both believing and non-believing subscribers who justified their support from different religious positions.

The author's closing reflections also raise some interesting points with regard to how Hitler may have evaluated his career. The decrepit, emaciated, shell of a man who gorged on cake and survived on a cornucopia of drugs must have realised the hopelessness and absurdity of his individual condition, to say nothing of the world burning above his Berlin bunker- the flames of which were ignited by his own words and actions. Nazism emerged from the left. As the name suggests, national socialism is a political ideology which affords precedence to the common man. It seeks to wrest power from the hands of the bourgeoisie and place it firmly into those of the working class, provided the members of the said class are of pure ethnic stock. This xenophobic tendency is the main reason for Fascism's contemporary association with the far right. Given that Hitler was also implacably opposed to anything resembling Bolshevism, and his admiration of premodern art, history and architecture, he has rightly come to be identified as a conservative figure. However, in the manner in which he assumed control of the state, overturned its political apparatus and fundamentally altered the public Zeitgeist, he quite inadvertently became the most radical leader the German-speaking world has ever seen. As Fest puts it: "Abhorring revolution, he became in reality the German form of revolution." Not only did he fail in his war aims, cause the deaths of untold millions, oversee the most horrific genocide in known history and cripple many European economies for years to come, his efforts also culminated in the galvanising and flourishing of the communist Soviet Union. His great desire to rid the world of Bolshevism had catastrophically backfired. One can only imagine the thoughts going through the head of this enigmatic brute in the moments leading up to his suicide. I hope he at least felt an inkling of shame, remorse, and perhaps even guilt.

This biography is recommended to anyone who not only wishes to learn about the life of this infamous monster but also to try and understand how such monsters are made. If that was the author's intention, he succeeded with flying colours. Five stars.

[Darren Goossens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review from https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/the-hollow-man-filled-with-hate/.


Hitler by Joachim C. Fest, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1974. 844 pages. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston.
Title page of Hitler by J.C.Fest. Cancelled from the Monash University library.

 

This is a biography, though after about 1933 it really becomes a history of the third Reich, albeit one that pays even more attention that usual to the Führer's quirks and foibles -- for Hitler is always, always, viewed from some distance. The tenor is more like a biography of some figure shrouded in the depths of history, a Hannibal, perhaps, or a Otto III. After a discussion of Hitler's origins, his formative influences and his time in Vienna, there are very few glimpses of his private life. He fell in love with a half-niece of his, Geli Raubal but she killed herself in the early thirties, possibly to get away from him, and this appears to be an event that affected him deeply and permanently. But beyond that there is very little here that is truly personal. He liked to (or felt compelled to) pontificate for hours in the evenings to an audience that felt compelled to listen politely. And he liked his Wagner. But he never shapes up as a whole man. Can this be done? Do his deeds make it impossible to (want to) consider him as a rounded human being, or was there no such thing present in the first place? In that sense he remains a hole at the centre of the book.

So the usual examination of private life as found in almost every modern biography is absent. Hitler ate simple meals, loved his dogs and was a mess of neuroses, anxieties, mad theories and cunning, but his dreams, errors and 'achievements' were all written out in his actions, as if he had no private life, no thoughts beside the grandiose. He had his dreams -- like emptying the Crimea and importing the whole population of the South Tyrol to live there, like establishing Berlin as a world capital -- but they were all akin to the things he did do. There are few private dreams (though he did imagine retiring to curate and art gallery), no personal scandals, no jilted lovers and divorced wives. Not even a drinking problem (though there is an apparent dependence on mood altering drugs as the war went on, but even those are more to keep him functioning in a mechanical, lifeless kind of way). Even Eva Braun barely gains a mention, and given her tightly circumscribed role in Hitler's life, this is as it should be.

The book opens with a prologue, (provocatively?) titled 'Hitler and Historical Greatness'. It makes the point that, had he died in 1938, he would have been seen as the rebuilder of Germany, a man who, yes, had some unseemly quirks, but who put a great nation back on its feet, gave it confidence and set it on the path to recovery after the grim years of the Weimar republic and the depression. (I am not so sure -- Hitler's Germany was paying its bills by printing money and would have come undone financially had it not gone to war, I suspect.)

We see the miasma of anti-Semitism and German nationalism that existed in pre-WWI Vienna, we see the reaction to the 'betrayal' of 1918, the anger created by the Versailles treaty and war reparations -- Hitler comes out (inevitably, perhaps) as a mix of his inherent nature (his ability to judge and manipulate people, his uncanny abilities as an orator, his unshakeable belief that he and he alone knew what to do and how) and the environment that shaped him, that let his warped genius thrive. The way he turned so many reversals into triumphs in the early years, the faith he had in his own vision and his own leadership, these things are remarkable and show him as just as driven, compulsive, and inflexible in the 1920s as he was in the 1940s. Crucially, Fest clearly demonstrates that Hitler did not 'go crazy' as the war went against him. Indeed, the war stripped away a veneer of reasonableness which he had put on in the 1920s as part of his strategy to gain power, and showed him more clearly as what he always had been. His consistency is remarkable. The war of 1939, the turning against Russia in search of lebensraum, the Holocaust, his ongoing desire to reach an understanding with the British Empire (basically, “you let me do as I like in Europe, and I won't challenge you at sea, do we have a deal?”); it is all in Mein Kampf or one of his early speeches. One of the many remarkable sides to the story is just how frank Hitler was in his statements of intent, and yet how, when he switched tactics and extolled peace and made political deals in the 1930s, statesmen were prepared to -- were desperate to -- believe him.

We see how the many opportunities to halt his momentum were wasted, right up to the phoney war of 1940, when 100 French divisions could -- as they had promised Poland they would -- have rolled into western Germany in the face of at most 25 German divisions. But his grasp of the lack of will in his opponents was uncanny. Indeed, amidst the cavalcade of weak leadership, the arrival of Churchill -- glimpsed tangentially here -- only grows in importance. Germany was never strong enough in men and material to wage a massive war of attrition, and when the rapid victories ceased, doom was a matter of time. (That, says Fest, is the true reason behind blitzkrieg.) When an implacable foe arose, Hitler was oddly powerless. He could not understand a man who would not negotiate opportunistically.

War, it is clear, was inevitable -- it was his aim all along. The politicking of the 1930s was explicitly a preliminary for war. He did not strengthen Germany to improve the lives of Germans but to create an arsenal. He could not have drawn back, pleased with building his greater Germany after the Anschluss and his success in Czechoslovakia any more than he could have ceased his anti-Semitism or fear/hatred of Bolshevism.

Similarly, even more grimly, the minorities he oppressed were always doomed. The Holocaust was no striking out of a doomed regime but integral to the machinery of state. Nazi Germany was ruled by a political system built on obedience, violence, and exclusion. The Holocaust was a completely natural extension of Hitler's racial theories and of his anti-Semitism, both of which pre-dated even World War I.

Hitler, the prologue suggests, made a lot of history, yet there was no greatness in him. He was a small man, full of fear, vindictiveness and wrong-headed idiocy, yet convinced of his own destiny such that he managed to drag a whole nation, one in desperate need of self-belief and revenge, along with him to its doom.

As we already knew, nobody wins.

 

More broadly.