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Hitler #1
Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris
From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales & overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his 30-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried & rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of WWI. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitler's rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 20s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right & the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 & then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews & others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race. In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a drummer sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch &, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people. This volume, 1st of two, ends with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg laws that pushed German Jews to the outer fringes of society, & with the march of the German army into the Rhineland, Hitler's initial move toward the abyss of war.
845 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Ian Kershaw
104 books1,086 followersIan Kershaw is a British historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler.
Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the University of Manchester. In 1983-4 he was Visiting Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany. From 1987 to 1989 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been Professor of Modern History at Sheffield. He is a fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn. He retired from academic life in the autumn semester of 2008.
Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool (BA) and Oxford (D. Phil). He was a lecturer first in medieval, then in modern, history at the University of Manchester. In 1983-4 he was Visiting Professor of Modern History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany. From 1987 to 1989 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been Professor of Modern History at Sheffield. He is a fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn. He retired from academic life in the autumn semester of 2008.
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April 13, 2023
The whole story is astonishing. You read 600 dense pages about how an obscure nonentity born in Austria became the absolute dictator of Germany and was worshipped as a demigod and after Ian Kershaw has explained in detail how it all happened you still want to know how did that happen???
Part of the explanation of this bizarre totally incredible story is that, according to the author, and he says this time and time again, the German people wanted it to happen. They were looking for, they were yearning for a Hitler. Maybe not Hitler, maybe not Adolf Hitler, but someone Hitlerish. Another part is that Hitler was lucky – for instance 13 years before he was born his father changed his name to Hitler from Schicklgruber. As the author says, can you imagine “Heil Schicklgruber!”? And another part is that Hitler was brilliant at one thing, he was a born rabblerouser, yelling and ranting about his vulgar extreme prejudices for two hours at a time, in public. And the people loved it.
So, born in 1889, dropped out of school aged 16 and never went back, refused to get a job, said he was going to be a great artist, age 18 went to Vienna to sit exams and go to the top art school, they rejected him out of hand, he dossed around Vienna, tried again, failed again, ran out of money and sometimes slept rough in the streets.
Hitler had now reached rock bottom. Some time in the weeks before Christmas 1909, thin and bedraggled, in filthy, lice-ridden clothes, his feet sore from walking around, Hitler joined the human flotsam and jetsam finding their way to the large, recently established doss-house for the homeless…the 20 year old would-be artistic genius had joined the tramps, winos and down and outs in society’s basement.
A little later he left the dosshouse, having found he could do small paintings of street scenes and buildings and sell them and scrape a bare living. For years he lived in nasty cheap flats, had almost no friends, certainly no girlfriends. This was his miserable lifestyle for seven years until at the age of 25 he was rescued by the First World War.
No one in their right mind would have guessed this poor broke-down failure would cause the Second World War.
(Hitler almost unrecognisable on the right)
In the war he was a dispatch runner (if you saw the movie 1917 you know what they did, it was extremely dangerous, most of them died.) He was decorated twice for bravery and he was very lucky to survive the war. You probably know that towards the end he was gassed and was pretty much blind for two weeks. But what about when the war ended?
Approaching thirty years of age, without education, career or prospects, his only plans were to stay in the army as long as possible.
Someone described him at the time : “he was like a stray dog looking for a master”. That was in 1920. By 1933 he was the supreme leader of the Third Reich and was about to annihilate millions.
****
This is part one of a great biography. Here are a few quotes to give you a flavour :
Critical observers could remain uncomprehending at a melange of half-truths, distortions, over-simplifications, and vague, pseudo-religious redemptionist promises. But the 16,000 people jammed into the Sportpalast had not turned up to hear an intellectual discourse. They had heard what they had come to hear.
14 September 1930 : the Nazis advanced at one stroke from the 12 seats and mere 2.6% of the vote in 1928 to 107 seats and 18.3%, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag.
1932 : …travelling the length and breadth of Germany, and addressing huge crowds in twelve cities during the eleven day campaign. In Breslau he arrived four hours late, in Stuttgart two hours behind schedule. The crowds still waited.
Hitler’s own actions were of only secondary importance in bringing him to power.
…standing with outstretched arm for seven hours while the Hitler Youth paraded past him
[What did the middle-class think of the Nazis?] The communists were revolutionaries, they would take away private property, impose a class dictatorship, and rule in the interests of Moscow. The National Socialists were vulgar and distasteful, but they stood for German interests, they would uphold German values, and they would not take away private property.
Hitler’s party, with a third of the voters behind it, went further and advocated compulsory sterilization of the hereditarily sick.
Some of Papen’s conservative friends also expressed their deep concern at the prospect of a Hitler cabinet. To one who warned him that he was placing himself in Hitler’s hands, Papen replied: “You are mistaken. We’ve hired him.”
There was no inevitability about Hitler’s accession to power.
Democracy was surrendered without a fight.
Within a month [of Hitler becoming chancellor] civil liberties had been extinguished. …Within four months the once powerful trade unions were dissolved. In less than six months, all opposition parties had been suppressed or gone into voluntary liquidation, leaving the Nazis as the only party.
Without any orders from above, and without any coordination, assaults on Jewish businesses and the beating up of Jews by Nazi thugs became commonplace.
The reordering of German cultural life along Nazi lines was far reaching indeed. But the most striking feature was the alacrity and eagerness with which intellectuals, writers, artists, performers and publicists actively collaborated in moves which not only impoverished and straight-jacketed German culture for the next 12 years but banned and outlawed some of its most glittering exponents.
The symbolic moment of capitulation of German intellectuals to the “new spirit” of 1933 came with the burning of 10 May of the books of authors unacceptable to the regime…the burning of books which took place at all German universities that night of shame had not been initiated by Goebbels but prompted by the leadership of the German Students Association….Local authorities and police had voluntarily assisted in clearing out the books to be burned from public libraries.
The levels of hero-worship had never been witnessed before in Germany…Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday on 20 April 1933 saw an extraordinary outpouring of adulation as the entire country glutted itself with festivities in honour of “the Leader of the new Germany”. However well orchestrated the propaganda, it was able to tap popular sentiments and quasi-religious levels of devotion that could not simply be manufactured.
Cardinal Faulhaber, Catholic leader of Bavaria, in a handwritten letter : “What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months… May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people.”
This review kind of defeated me... to do it justice I would have to write a thirty page essay - and no one wants that! But this book is RECOMMENDED
Part of the explanation of this bizarre totally incredible story is that, according to the author, and he says this time and time again, the German people wanted it to happen. They were looking for, they were yearning for a Hitler. Maybe not Hitler, maybe not Adolf Hitler, but someone Hitlerish. Another part is that Hitler was lucky – for instance 13 years before he was born his father changed his name to Hitler from Schicklgruber. As the author says, can you imagine “Heil Schicklgruber!”? And another part is that Hitler was brilliant at one thing, he was a born rabblerouser, yelling and ranting about his vulgar extreme prejudices for two hours at a time, in public. And the people loved it.
So, born in 1889, dropped out of school aged 16 and never went back, refused to get a job, said he was going to be a great artist, age 18 went to Vienna to sit exams and go to the top art school, they rejected him out of hand, he dossed around Vienna, tried again, failed again, ran out of money and sometimes slept rough in the streets.
Hitler had now reached rock bottom. Some time in the weeks before Christmas 1909, thin and bedraggled, in filthy, lice-ridden clothes, his feet sore from walking around, Hitler joined the human flotsam and jetsam finding their way to the large, recently established doss-house for the homeless…the 20 year old would-be artistic genius had joined the tramps, winos and down and outs in society’s basement.
A little later he left the dosshouse, having found he could do small paintings of street scenes and buildings and sell them and scrape a bare living. For years he lived in nasty cheap flats, had almost no friends, certainly no girlfriends. This was his miserable lifestyle for seven years until at the age of 25 he was rescued by the First World War.
No one in their right mind would have guessed this poor broke-down failure would cause the Second World War.
(Hitler almost unrecognisable on the right)
In the war he was a dispatch runner (if you saw the movie 1917 you know what they did, it was extremely dangerous, most of them died.) He was decorated twice for bravery and he was very lucky to survive the war. You probably know that towards the end he was gassed and was pretty much blind for two weeks. But what about when the war ended?
Approaching thirty years of age, without education, career or prospects, his only plans were to stay in the army as long as possible.
Someone described him at the time : “he was like a stray dog looking for a master”. That was in 1920. By 1933 he was the supreme leader of the Third Reich and was about to annihilate millions.
****
This is part one of a great biography. Here are a few quotes to give you a flavour :
Critical observers could remain uncomprehending at a melange of half-truths, distortions, over-simplifications, and vague, pseudo-religious redemptionist promises. But the 16,000 people jammed into the Sportpalast had not turned up to hear an intellectual discourse. They had heard what they had come to hear.
14 September 1930 : the Nazis advanced at one stroke from the 12 seats and mere 2.6% of the vote in 1928 to 107 seats and 18.3%, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag.
1932 : …travelling the length and breadth of Germany, and addressing huge crowds in twelve cities during the eleven day campaign. In Breslau he arrived four hours late, in Stuttgart two hours behind schedule. The crowds still waited.
Hitler’s own actions were of only secondary importance in bringing him to power.
…standing with outstretched arm for seven hours while the Hitler Youth paraded past him
[What did the middle-class think of the Nazis?] The communists were revolutionaries, they would take away private property, impose a class dictatorship, and rule in the interests of Moscow. The National Socialists were vulgar and distasteful, but they stood for German interests, they would uphold German values, and they would not take away private property.
Hitler’s party, with a third of the voters behind it, went further and advocated compulsory sterilization of the hereditarily sick.
Some of Papen’s conservative friends also expressed their deep concern at the prospect of a Hitler cabinet. To one who warned him that he was placing himself in Hitler’s hands, Papen replied: “You are mistaken. We’ve hired him.”
There was no inevitability about Hitler’s accession to power.
Democracy was surrendered without a fight.
Within a month [of Hitler becoming chancellor] civil liberties had been extinguished. …Within four months the once powerful trade unions were dissolved. In less than six months, all opposition parties had been suppressed or gone into voluntary liquidation, leaving the Nazis as the only party.
Without any orders from above, and without any coordination, assaults on Jewish businesses and the beating up of Jews by Nazi thugs became commonplace.
The reordering of German cultural life along Nazi lines was far reaching indeed. But the most striking feature was the alacrity and eagerness with which intellectuals, writers, artists, performers and publicists actively collaborated in moves which not only impoverished and straight-jacketed German culture for the next 12 years but banned and outlawed some of its most glittering exponents.
The symbolic moment of capitulation of German intellectuals to the “new spirit” of 1933 came with the burning of 10 May of the books of authors unacceptable to the regime…the burning of books which took place at all German universities that night of shame had not been initiated by Goebbels but prompted by the leadership of the German Students Association….Local authorities and police had voluntarily assisted in clearing out the books to be burned from public libraries.
The levels of hero-worship had never been witnessed before in Germany…Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday on 20 April 1933 saw an extraordinary outpouring of adulation as the entire country glutted itself with festivities in honour of “the Leader of the new Germany”. However well orchestrated the propaganda, it was able to tap popular sentiments and quasi-religious levels of devotion that could not simply be manufactured.
Cardinal Faulhaber, Catholic leader of Bavaria, in a handwritten letter : “What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months… May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people.”
This review kind of defeated me... to do it justice I would have to write a thirty page essay - and no one wants that! But this book is RECOMMENDED
April 19, 2023
The book by Ian Kershaw covers in detail Hitler’s childhood, his youth in Linz, Vienna, and Munich, his military service as a dispatch runner during WWI, and all the twists of his unusual political career until 1936.
The narrative ends with Hitler’s order to send troops to the Rhineland (the remilitarization of the Rhineland). On the international scene, this act was viewed as a bold decision by the German Reich’s leader who had forced the world, especially the major western democracies of Britain and France, to accept the fait accompli.
By taking this action, not only did Hitler annihilate the remnants of the Versailles treaty, but he also gained unprecedented popularity at home.
Recent economic difficulties could thereby be forgotten, at least for a time, increasing disaffection with corrupted party functionaries assuaged, the mood of the population reinvigorated.
After German troops had entered the Rhineland zone, the majority of Germans acclaimed the ‘national leader’ whom they saw, or rather whom the omnipresent propaganda portrayed, as the sole architect of this deed, which for many amounted to a long-awaited ‘national rebirth’.
As the author notes, Germany was finally conquered.
Thus, the first round initiated by Hitler’s ambitious plans came to its end. A large-scale tragedy was already beginning to unfold.
However, the said Rhineland episode was only one of the ‘triumphs’ attributed to Hitler that helped forge the Führer myth which had initially been set into motion by his admirers within the National Socialist Party.
Hitler ended up becoming the foremost believer in his own cult and his own infallibility. His egomania, which had characterized the man from his youth, reached an enormous level. As we know, hubris usually leads to the downfall of those it possesses.
One of the main themes the book deals with concerns Hitler’s accession to supreme power.
How come a sophisticated state with an educated population became a tool in the hands of a fanatical man with primitive ideas?
The author underlines that there was no inevitability nor predetermination about Hitler, a mere beerhall demagogue and “head of what was for years no more than a party on the lunatic fringe of politics,” becoming the Führer of the nation.
A complex and unique combination of factors was required to make it possible. Several elements had to converge in order for Hitler to achieve untrammeled power over the nation. Had one of those elements been different, Hitler would likely have remained a ‘nobody’, an upstart political adventurer, who, like others before him, disappeared from the political firmament as quickly as he emerged on it.
On several occasions, Hitler had been close to finishing his political career. Even his ill-fated appointment as Chancellor by President Hindenburg could, it seems, have been avoided without difficulty.
I will try to highlight some of the factors that contributed to bringing Hitler, a Viennese artistic drop-out and unlucky organizer of the putsch in Munich, to the heights of power.
Wounded national pride after the debacle of WWI, a sense of being treated unjustly by the world, a series of economic crises, fear of Bolshevism, and the desire of the German elites (political, military, industrial) to replace ‘weak’, from their point of view, democratic government with a ‘strong’ authoritarian one intermingled and created an atmosphere in which a Hitler became a real possibility.
Perhaps, the last factor concerning the grave miscalculations of the power elites and their contempt for democracy played a crucial role. Those who by their social standing were supposed to be defending the Weimar Republic were consistently working on ruining it.
In a sense, the forces on the conservative Right had paved the way for Hitler. They greatly underrated the man - his ambitions and the danger he represented.
In fact, contrary to what the Nazi ideologues had so readily proclaimed, there was no ‘taking of power’ nor ‘triumph of the will’. The power over the nation was in a certain way given to Hitler, the dynamic leader of the National Socialist Party, by the Right-wing elites.
Some of the conservatives dreamed of the restoration of the monarchy. Others favored an authoritarian government not dependent on elections. Almost all of them wanted Germany to free herself from the shackles of the Versailles treaty, humiliating for the country’s honor and burdensome for its people. Unfortunately, Hitler happened to become the ‘right’ man at the ‘right’ time in the ‘right’ place.
Nevertheless, Hitler could skillfully manipulate the conservative nationalistic elites and prompt them to do what he wanted them to do. Not mentioning this point would be unfair to Hitler’s political instinct.
The army had expected to turn Hitler into their tool, but exactly the opposite occurred.
The danger of Hitler was, it seems, underrated by the Left-wing parties as well, but, unlike the conservatives, they had not been responsible for bringing him to power.
At best, the Right-wing conservatives showed connivance for Hitler’s style of tackling problems. At worst, they directly played into his hands.
Many aspects of Hitler’s ‘program’ that hit home - such as the necessity to return Germany to its previous glory and build a strong government without having to seek the approval of parliament - would have been on the agenda of any German nationalist party had they gained power.
What distinguished Hitler from other politicians of the extreme Right was the image of a man, dynamic and capable of getting stuff done, that he and his supporters managed to convey.
If Hitler and his party fed on socio-economic problems, the first years of the Third Reich, too, saw the signs of social unrest in German society. People felt increasingly tired by the violent behavior of the Nazi activists (street pogroms, random beatings, and killings), but Hitler was spared the consequences of this disaffection. Such brutal actions kept being attributed to others.
A few words about Hitler’s personality.
He detested any formal routine and avoided submitting himself to regular working hours. Ministers would have to wait before obtaining the opportunity to discuss urgent affairs with Hitler. Such aloofness, or “the type of dilettante lifestyle”, as Kershaw calls it, helped stress his special standing. Goebbels and Göring were among the few of Hitler's henchmen who enjoyed easy access to their leader.
Hitler gobbled up newspapers, especially those containing the most vitriolic anti-Semitic attacks, ideas of ‘racial purity’ and social-Darwinism (life is a constant struggle, "either-or" principle, etc.).
When reading books, Hitler would look for the confirmation of his prejudices and preconceptions. Thus, he sought passages that would shore up his anti-Marxism and his hatred of Jews. Both obsessions became somewhat interrelated in his mind and, along with the idea of ‘living-space’ in the East for the German people, formed his ‘world-view’ reeking of the emotions of hatred.
Anything that contradicted Hitler’s preconceived ideas seems to have remained foreign to him.
Hitler could hesitate and elude taking serious decisions (for example, this attitude revealed itself at the time of the “Röhm affair”), but once he decided something, he would act promptly and not tolerate objections.
His almost religious belief in his destiny, only reinforced with the first foreign-policy successes of the Third Reich, ultimately made him even more prone to risky decisions.
Opinionated as he was, Hitler could adapt to the circumstances, at least before becoming a full-fledged dictator. He restrained himself from the attacks on the Jews when addressing the assembly of businessmen in Hamburg. They would not have favored primitive anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Hitler’s sole talent was propaganda, and he seems to have known it. He was able to scent propaganda opportunities and fully exploit them to his own benefit. Everything worked if it could bring him closer to his main goal and obsession - power.
For Hitler, “the battleground was, from the outset, the state itself.”
The ‘racial’ ideas on which he expanded in his speeches and articles (crude concepts that assumed their legal form as the infamous Nuremberg Laws) would likely have been regarded by many as preposterous had the social climate in Germany been different.
To sum up, this partial biography of Adolf Hitler is balanced and well-researched.
However, in my opinion, it would have benefited from some pruning and, perhaps, certain restructuring. The book gets repetitive too often. Frequent rewordings of the same theses make otherwise accessible work inordinately long.
For example, the author duly explains that only the complex interplay between many factors, unique for Germany, made Hitler possible. He repeats the explanation after several pages and continues doing it afterward, hammering into the reader the same thoughts and ideas.
The narrative ends with Hitler’s order to send troops to the Rhineland (the remilitarization of the Rhineland). On the international scene, this act was viewed as a bold decision by the German Reich’s leader who had forced the world, especially the major western democracies of Britain and France, to accept the fait accompli.
By taking this action, not only did Hitler annihilate the remnants of the Versailles treaty, but he also gained unprecedented popularity at home.
Recent economic difficulties could thereby be forgotten, at least for a time, increasing disaffection with corrupted party functionaries assuaged, the mood of the population reinvigorated.
After German troops had entered the Rhineland zone, the majority of Germans acclaimed the ‘national leader’ whom they saw, or rather whom the omnipresent propaganda portrayed, as the sole architect of this deed, which for many amounted to a long-awaited ‘national rebirth’.
As the author notes, Germany was finally conquered.
Thus, the first round initiated by Hitler’s ambitious plans came to its end. A large-scale tragedy was already beginning to unfold.
However, the said Rhineland episode was only one of the ‘triumphs’ attributed to Hitler that helped forge the Führer myth which had initially been set into motion by his admirers within the National Socialist Party.
Hitler ended up becoming the foremost believer in his own cult and his own infallibility. His egomania, which had characterized the man from his youth, reached an enormous level. As we know, hubris usually leads to the downfall of those it possesses.
One of the main themes the book deals with concerns Hitler’s accession to supreme power.
How come a sophisticated state with an educated population became a tool in the hands of a fanatical man with primitive ideas?
The author underlines that there was no inevitability nor predetermination about Hitler, a mere beerhall demagogue and “head of what was for years no more than a party on the lunatic fringe of politics,” becoming the Führer of the nation.
A complex and unique combination of factors was required to make it possible. Several elements had to converge in order for Hitler to achieve untrammeled power over the nation. Had one of those elements been different, Hitler would likely have remained a ‘nobody’, an upstart political adventurer, who, like others before him, disappeared from the political firmament as quickly as he emerged on it.
On several occasions, Hitler had been close to finishing his political career. Even his ill-fated appointment as Chancellor by President Hindenburg could, it seems, have been avoided without difficulty.
I will try to highlight some of the factors that contributed to bringing Hitler, a Viennese artistic drop-out and unlucky organizer of the putsch in Munich, to the heights of power.
Wounded national pride after the debacle of WWI, a sense of being treated unjustly by the world, a series of economic crises, fear of Bolshevism, and the desire of the German elites (political, military, industrial) to replace ‘weak’, from their point of view, democratic government with a ‘strong’ authoritarian one intermingled and created an atmosphere in which a Hitler became a real possibility.
Perhaps, the last factor concerning the grave miscalculations of the power elites and their contempt for democracy played a crucial role. Those who by their social standing were supposed to be defending the Weimar Republic were consistently working on ruining it.
In a sense, the forces on the conservative Right had paved the way for Hitler. They greatly underrated the man - his ambitions and the danger he represented.
In fact, contrary to what the Nazi ideologues had so readily proclaimed, there was no ‘taking of power’ nor ‘triumph of the will’. The power over the nation was in a certain way given to Hitler, the dynamic leader of the National Socialist Party, by the Right-wing elites.
Some of the conservatives dreamed of the restoration of the monarchy. Others favored an authoritarian government not dependent on elections. Almost all of them wanted Germany to free herself from the shackles of the Versailles treaty, humiliating for the country’s honor and burdensome for its people. Unfortunately, Hitler happened to become the ‘right’ man at the ‘right’ time in the ‘right’ place.
Nevertheless, Hitler could skillfully manipulate the conservative nationalistic elites and prompt them to do what he wanted them to do. Not mentioning this point would be unfair to Hitler’s political instinct.
The army had expected to turn Hitler into their tool, but exactly the opposite occurred.
The danger of Hitler was, it seems, underrated by the Left-wing parties as well, but, unlike the conservatives, they had not been responsible for bringing him to power.
At best, the Right-wing conservatives showed connivance for Hitler’s style of tackling problems. At worst, they directly played into his hands.
Many aspects of Hitler’s ‘program’ that hit home - such as the necessity to return Germany to its previous glory and build a strong government without having to seek the approval of parliament - would have been on the agenda of any German nationalist party had they gained power.
What distinguished Hitler from other politicians of the extreme Right was the image of a man, dynamic and capable of getting stuff done, that he and his supporters managed to convey.
If Hitler and his party fed on socio-economic problems, the first years of the Third Reich, too, saw the signs of social unrest in German society. People felt increasingly tired by the violent behavior of the Nazi activists (street pogroms, random beatings, and killings), but Hitler was spared the consequences of this disaffection. Such brutal actions kept being attributed to others.
A few words about Hitler’s personality.
He detested any formal routine and avoided submitting himself to regular working hours. Ministers would have to wait before obtaining the opportunity to discuss urgent affairs with Hitler. Such aloofness, or “the type of dilettante lifestyle”, as Kershaw calls it, helped stress his special standing. Goebbels and Göring were among the few of Hitler's henchmen who enjoyed easy access to their leader.
Hitler gobbled up newspapers, especially those containing the most vitriolic anti-Semitic attacks, ideas of ‘racial purity’ and social-Darwinism (life is a constant struggle, "either-or" principle, etc.).
When reading books, Hitler would look for the confirmation of his prejudices and preconceptions. Thus, he sought passages that would shore up his anti-Marxism and his hatred of Jews. Both obsessions became somewhat interrelated in his mind and, along with the idea of ‘living-space’ in the East for the German people, formed his ‘world-view’ reeking of the emotions of hatred.
Anything that contradicted Hitler’s preconceived ideas seems to have remained foreign to him.
Hitler could hesitate and elude taking serious decisions (for example, this attitude revealed itself at the time of the “Röhm affair”), but once he decided something, he would act promptly and not tolerate objections.
His almost religious belief in his destiny, only reinforced with the first foreign-policy successes of the Third Reich, ultimately made him even more prone to risky decisions.
Opinionated as he was, Hitler could adapt to the circumstances, at least before becoming a full-fledged dictator. He restrained himself from the attacks on the Jews when addressing the assembly of businessmen in Hamburg. They would not have favored primitive anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Hitler’s sole talent was propaganda, and he seems to have known it. He was able to scent propaganda opportunities and fully exploit them to his own benefit. Everything worked if it could bring him closer to his main goal and obsession - power.
For Hitler, “the battleground was, from the outset, the state itself.”
The ‘racial’ ideas on which he expanded in his speeches and articles (crude concepts that assumed their legal form as the infamous Nuremberg Laws) would likely have been regarded by many as preposterous had the social climate in Germany been different.
To sum up, this partial biography of Adolf Hitler is balanced and well-researched.
However, in my opinion, it would have benefited from some pruning and, perhaps, certain restructuring. The book gets repetitive too often. Frequent rewordings of the same theses make otherwise accessible work inordinately long.
For example, the author duly explains that only the complex interplay between many factors, unique for Germany, made Hitler possible. He repeats the explanation after several pages and continues doing it afterward, hammering into the reader the same thoughts and ideas.
April 26, 2016
Claude Lanzmann, who directed the famous Holocaust documentary Shoah, once said that any attempt to explain Hitler is an "obscenity." This, of course, has not stopped a generation of authors from attempting to do just that.
Of course, Lanzmann's statement is fatuous bluster. More to the point, there isn't a historical topic on earth that is out-of-bounds. And for good reason. Neglecting Hitler's story makes him into something more than he was. He wasn't the antichrist; he wasn't some sort of monster. Whatever he facilitated, however evil his deeds, he was a man. The proof: on April 30, 1945, when he pulled the trigger of a Walther PPK, his brains ended up on the wall of his bunker, and he was no more. Just a human reduced to a corpse. It's important to remember his humanity; failing to do so lets humanity off the hook.
Ian Kershaw's Hitler: Hubris is the first of two volumes on Adolf's life. It spans the years 1889 (when Hitler was born in Austria) to 1936 (when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland). It is a straight-forward, no frills biography, packed with well-sourced facts - but dry. So very dry. It's the kind of book you'd call a tome, and not entirely in a good way.
In rating Hitler (the book, obviously; I give Hitler the man zero stars), my thirst for a compelling narrative was only partially assauged by Kershaw's impeccable credentials, thorough research, and close citations.
In telling Hitler's story, Kershaw does not stray from the historical record. There are no fishing expeditions into the realm of psychology.
There is a cottage industry of authors trying to explain why Hitler did what he did. Some writers speculate that Hitler had Jewish blood that shamed him into genocide. Others dwell on his alleged homosexuality; his alleged mono-testicular condition (Google "one testicle" and Hitler comes up right away); his alleged impotence; his alleged fear of women; his alleged scatological problems.
All of this is reductive and a little insulting to the intelligence. Whether Hitler was one-balled or flatulent doesn't explain anything, other than reinforce the fact that he was flesh-and-blood, and no different from anyone, save the fact that he managed to get levered into power and nearly take over the world.
Kershaw almost completely ignores such discussions (if you want a witty accounting, read Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler), except to brush them aside with something akin to exasperated indifference. He allows perhaps three pages for Hitler's romances, including a paragraph dedicated to Geli Rabaul.
Instead of Hitler's personal problems, or even his personality, Kershaw makes this into a political biography. This is both an asset and a detriment. It's an asset in that you don't get led off on digressionary paths that more appropriately belong in the tabloids.
It's a detriment because the book keeps you at a safe, cold distance. Usually, after reading a biography, you feel closer to the subject, even if that subject happened to be a horrible person. Not here. Hitler never came alive in this book. Until the last chapter, you don't really get a sense of how he acted, or what he was like to be around. Compounding the problem, the satelite figures in Hitler's life - Himmler, Goering, Goebells, Strasser, Rohm, von Papen, Schleicher, etc. - are not defined at all. This has the dual effect of sapping the narrative of color, and leaving gaps in the story.
I did appreciate the methodical approach Kershaw laid out. He starts each chapter with a mini-prologue, in which he gives a rundown of everything he's going to talk about in the subsequent pages.
This helps contextualize the often-confusing and byzantine world of German politics during the ill-fated Weimar Republic. I was also fascinated to hear Kershaw's take on Hitler. According to Kershaw, Hitler was no great political thinker, and certainly no great politican. Instead, he had a gift for grand visions (and the ways to sell them), leaving much of the ideology and execution to his subordinates (this makes it even more important to flesh out those subordinates, which Kershaw does not do). Kershaw conceptualizes this as "working toward the Führer." Or to put it in other words, Hitler's subordinates were to spend their days thinking: What Would Hitler Do?
Once Hitler attained power, he became even more distanced from the day-to-day bureaucracy. It was fascinating to learn how angry people got with the mismanagement and bumblings of the Nazi party, even though they continued to love Hitler, who had effectively distanced himself from the consequences that come with actually having to govern, rather than simply be in opposition.
The subject of Hitler is heavy. The writing doesn't necessarily have to be as well. Too many times, I found Kershaw's presentation hopelessly ponderous. However, since I've already made an 800-page investment, I will certainly get the second volume.
To see how it ends.
Of course, Lanzmann's statement is fatuous bluster. More to the point, there isn't a historical topic on earth that is out-of-bounds. And for good reason. Neglecting Hitler's story makes him into something more than he was. He wasn't the antichrist; he wasn't some sort of monster. Whatever he facilitated, however evil his deeds, he was a man. The proof: on April 30, 1945, when he pulled the trigger of a Walther PPK, his brains ended up on the wall of his bunker, and he was no more. Just a human reduced to a corpse. It's important to remember his humanity; failing to do so lets humanity off the hook.
Ian Kershaw's Hitler: Hubris is the first of two volumes on Adolf's life. It spans the years 1889 (when Hitler was born in Austria) to 1936 (when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland). It is a straight-forward, no frills biography, packed with well-sourced facts - but dry. So very dry. It's the kind of book you'd call a tome, and not entirely in a good way.
In rating Hitler (the book, obviously; I give Hitler the man zero stars), my thirst for a compelling narrative was only partially assauged by Kershaw's impeccable credentials, thorough research, and close citations.
In telling Hitler's story, Kershaw does not stray from the historical record. There are no fishing expeditions into the realm of psychology.
There is a cottage industry of authors trying to explain why Hitler did what he did. Some writers speculate that Hitler had Jewish blood that shamed him into genocide. Others dwell on his alleged homosexuality; his alleged mono-testicular condition (Google "one testicle" and Hitler comes up right away); his alleged impotence; his alleged fear of women; his alleged scatological problems.
All of this is reductive and a little insulting to the intelligence. Whether Hitler was one-balled or flatulent doesn't explain anything, other than reinforce the fact that he was flesh-and-blood, and no different from anyone, save the fact that he managed to get levered into power and nearly take over the world.
Kershaw almost completely ignores such discussions (if you want a witty accounting, read Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler), except to brush them aside with something akin to exasperated indifference. He allows perhaps three pages for Hitler's romances, including a paragraph dedicated to Geli Rabaul.
Instead of Hitler's personal problems, or even his personality, Kershaw makes this into a political biography. This is both an asset and a detriment. It's an asset in that you don't get led off on digressionary paths that more appropriately belong in the tabloids.
It's a detriment because the book keeps you at a safe, cold distance. Usually, after reading a biography, you feel closer to the subject, even if that subject happened to be a horrible person. Not here. Hitler never came alive in this book. Until the last chapter, you don't really get a sense of how he acted, or what he was like to be around. Compounding the problem, the satelite figures in Hitler's life - Himmler, Goering, Goebells, Strasser, Rohm, von Papen, Schleicher, etc. - are not defined at all. This has the dual effect of sapping the narrative of color, and leaving gaps in the story.
I did appreciate the methodical approach Kershaw laid out. He starts each chapter with a mini-prologue, in which he gives a rundown of everything he's going to talk about in the subsequent pages.
This helps contextualize the often-confusing and byzantine world of German politics during the ill-fated Weimar Republic. I was also fascinated to hear Kershaw's take on Hitler. According to Kershaw, Hitler was no great political thinker, and certainly no great politican. Instead, he had a gift for grand visions (and the ways to sell them), leaving much of the ideology and execution to his subordinates (this makes it even more important to flesh out those subordinates, which Kershaw does not do). Kershaw conceptualizes this as "working toward the Führer." Or to put it in other words, Hitler's subordinates were to spend their days thinking: What Would Hitler Do?
Once Hitler attained power, he became even more distanced from the day-to-day bureaucracy. It was fascinating to learn how angry people got with the mismanagement and bumblings of the Nazi party, even though they continued to love Hitler, who had effectively distanced himself from the consequences that come with actually having to govern, rather than simply be in opposition.
The subject of Hitler is heavy. The writing doesn't necessarily have to be as well. Too many times, I found Kershaw's presentation hopelessly ponderous. However, since I've already made an 800-page investment, I will certainly get the second volume.
To see how it ends.
February 28, 2020
I have always been fascinated by Hitler. This is a great book about his origins and rise to power.
It is hard to fathom how an indolent drifter from a small town in Austria can attain power in a neighbouring country and lead Europe into a terrible conflict. How can an obvious thug and racist lead a sophisticated modern nation state? How can a party built on resentment, racism and lies command nearly 40% of the electorate in a popular vote?
Kershaw shows how particular factors led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. A country defeated in war yet not occupied by the enemy, battered by dark economic storms, with a shadowy paramilitary force blooded in border conflicts at wars end, and with an elite that despised democracy and feared imminent bolshevik revolution.
Above all in Bavaria these factors were compounded by regional tensions and a resentment of central government in Berlin. Into this maelstrom Hitler contributed a unique ability to rabble rouse and agitate amongst the masses, railing against the "November criminals" who signed the 1918 armistice, endlessly repeating the Dolchstoßlegende claim that an undefeated army was stabbed in the back by civilian politicians.
He was provided with backing and support from elements in the army, police and business.
Fatally Hitlers backers judged that they would be able to manage and channel the energies he unleased. Boy were they wrong. Hitler was lucky in many ways too, time and time again events seemed to give him another option just when his obstinacy and crass ideas boxed him in.
Book 1 ends as Germany re-occupies the Rhineland, perhaps the apogee of Hitlers rise.
From here he doubles down again and again, pushing until he is halted and Germany lies in ruins, much of its territory to be lost forever (but that is in Book 2)
On a different tangent Ian Kershaw is the spitting image of Jack Douglas, of Carry On and Alf Ippititimus fame
It is hard to fathom how an indolent drifter from a small town in Austria can attain power in a neighbouring country and lead Europe into a terrible conflict. How can an obvious thug and racist lead a sophisticated modern nation state? How can a party built on resentment, racism and lies command nearly 40% of the electorate in a popular vote?
Kershaw shows how particular factors led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. A country defeated in war yet not occupied by the enemy, battered by dark economic storms, with a shadowy paramilitary force blooded in border conflicts at wars end, and with an elite that despised democracy and feared imminent bolshevik revolution.
Above all in Bavaria these factors were compounded by regional tensions and a resentment of central government in Berlin. Into this maelstrom Hitler contributed a unique ability to rabble rouse and agitate amongst the masses, railing against the "November criminals" who signed the 1918 armistice, endlessly repeating the Dolchstoßlegende claim that an undefeated army was stabbed in the back by civilian politicians.
He was provided with backing and support from elements in the army, police and business.
Fatally Hitlers backers judged that they would be able to manage and channel the energies he unleased. Boy were they wrong. Hitler was lucky in many ways too, time and time again events seemed to give him another option just when his obstinacy and crass ideas boxed him in.
Book 1 ends as Germany re-occupies the Rhineland, perhaps the apogee of Hitlers rise.
From here he doubles down again and again, pushing until he is halted and Germany lies in ruins, much of its territory to be lost forever (but that is in Book 2)
On a different tangent Ian Kershaw is the spitting image of Jack Douglas, of Carry On and Alf Ippititimus fame
October 7, 2023
تموم کردن این کتاب واقعاً کار حضرت فیله!!! قلم نویسنده اصلا روون نیست و خیلی اوقات یه جملهای رو که شروع میکنه تا دو صفحه بعد ادامه میده! بخش زیادی از کتاب در مورد جوونی هیتلره که کلا اطلاعات زیادی از این دوران در دست نیست و برای همین یک سوم ابتدایی کتاب تبدیل به گمانه زنی میشه که حجم خیلی زیادیه!! پنجاه درصد آخر کتاب بهتر از پنجاه درصد اول کتابه ولی بیشتر از اینکه درباره هیتلر باشه درباره حزب نازیه.
به طور خلاصه این کتاب جزییاتش زیاده. یعنی در واقع جزییات بوده که دست و پا درآورده و اینهمه جزییات و صفحه برای یه شخص خیلی زیاده. سراغ جلد دوم اصلا نمیرم
به طور خلاصه این کتاب جزییاتش زیاده. یعنی در واقع جزییات بوده که دست و پا درآورده و اینهمه جزییات و صفحه برای یه شخص خیلی زیاده. سراغ جلد دوم اصلا نمیرم
April 25, 2016
UPDATE 4/25/16 ...
The balance of the book is as good as the beginning. A superb overview of the Hitler years through 1936. Kershaw is both factual and opinionated, which I find refreshing.
UPDATE 3/22/14 ...
I have now read the chapters concerning the early months of the Hitler regime, during which Hitler destroyed all opposition and established Nazi control over all public and private organizations. It is frightening how easily and how quickly this transformation took place. It is also evident that Hitler had a clear idea of the direction he would take from day one. But it wasn't day one. He had been working on nothing else for over a decade. His Nazi Party organization was in place all over Germany, a private army of 500,000 violent thugs ready to be unleashed.
*** the rapidity of the transformation that swept over Germany was astounding … within a month, civil liberties had been extinguished … within two months, most political opponents were imprisoned or fleeing the country and the Reichstag had surrendered its powers ... within four months, the trade unions were dissolved ... in six months, the NSDAP was the only remaining political party
*** When this transformation was almost complete, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich wrote to Hitler … "What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people" ... There is much more to the story of the collusion between Hitler and the Church in 1933, and Faulhaber might well have been opposed to the policy imposed on the German bishops by the Vatican (Pacelli) but his letter is still astonishing.
*** Hitler presented his main priority to the new cabinet (on Feb 4, just five days after he was appointed Chancellor) … all other expenditures had to be subordinated to the task of rearmament ... Hitler proposed the 'Second Armaments Program' with funding provided outside the state budget and placed in the hands of the army itself … Schacht (President of Reichsbank in March) masterminded the secret and unlimited funding of rearmament … used device of Mefo-Bills - a disguised discounting of government bills by the Reichsbank ... provided the fantastic sum of 35 billion Reichmaks over 8 years ... the consequence of making unlimited funds available for rearmament was the ruination of state finances … the German economy was set on a path which could be remedied only by (1) re-entry into the international economy or (2) a huge war of conquest and domination
***
FIRST COMMENTS ...
I have read 400+ pages, to the point where Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor in January 1933. Kershaw's writing is clear and (in my view) appropriately opinionated.
The chapter describing the political negotiations of January 1933 is utterly brilliant. Papen, Hindenburg, Hugenburg and others are all out-negotiated by Hitler. This is particularly stunning when you realize that Hitler and the Nazis were then at the end of their string, and if he had not achieved power when he did, he likely never would have. Democracy in Germany needed an economic rebound, which was happening, and another 3-6 months to stabilize parliamentary government, which it didn't get.
Kershaw concludes this section of his book by quoting from a letter Ludendorff wrote to Hindenburg … "You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done."
More will follow when I return to Kershaw, but first I have several chapters of my own book to organize and write, the project of the coming summer.
The balance of the book is as good as the beginning. A superb overview of the Hitler years through 1936. Kershaw is both factual and opinionated, which I find refreshing.
UPDATE 3/22/14 ...
I have now read the chapters concerning the early months of the Hitler regime, during which Hitler destroyed all opposition and established Nazi control over all public and private organizations. It is frightening how easily and how quickly this transformation took place. It is also evident that Hitler had a clear idea of the direction he would take from day one. But it wasn't day one. He had been working on nothing else for over a decade. His Nazi Party organization was in place all over Germany, a private army of 500,000 violent thugs ready to be unleashed.
*** the rapidity of the transformation that swept over Germany was astounding … within a month, civil liberties had been extinguished … within two months, most political opponents were imprisoned or fleeing the country and the Reichstag had surrendered its powers ... within four months, the trade unions were dissolved ... in six months, the NSDAP was the only remaining political party
*** When this transformation was almost complete, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich wrote to Hitler … "What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people" ... There is much more to the story of the collusion between Hitler and the Church in 1933, and Faulhaber might well have been opposed to the policy imposed on the German bishops by the Vatican (Pacelli) but his letter is still astonishing.
*** Hitler presented his main priority to the new cabinet (on Feb 4, just five days after he was appointed Chancellor) … all other expenditures had to be subordinated to the task of rearmament ... Hitler proposed the 'Second Armaments Program' with funding provided outside the state budget and placed in the hands of the army itself … Schacht (President of Reichsbank in March) masterminded the secret and unlimited funding of rearmament … used device of Mefo-Bills - a disguised discounting of government bills by the Reichsbank ... provided the fantastic sum of 35 billion Reichmaks over 8 years ... the consequence of making unlimited funds available for rearmament was the ruination of state finances … the German economy was set on a path which could be remedied only by (1) re-entry into the international economy or (2) a huge war of conquest and domination
***
FIRST COMMENTS ...
I have read 400+ pages, to the point where Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor in January 1933. Kershaw's writing is clear and (in my view) appropriately opinionated.
The chapter describing the political negotiations of January 1933 is utterly brilliant. Papen, Hindenburg, Hugenburg and others are all out-negotiated by Hitler. This is particularly stunning when you realize that Hitler and the Nazis were then at the end of their string, and if he had not achieved power when he did, he likely never would have. Democracy in Germany needed an economic rebound, which was happening, and another 3-6 months to stabilize parliamentary government, which it didn't get.
Kershaw concludes this section of his book by quoting from a letter Ludendorff wrote to Hindenburg … "You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done."
More will follow when I return to Kershaw, but first I have several chapters of my own book to organize and write, the project of the coming summer.
August 17, 2020
The twelve years of Adolf Hitler’s rule changed Germany, Europe, and the rest of the world forever. The 20th century was, in a sense, dominated by him and has gained much of its character by war and genocide – his hallmarks. Therefore, it is quite important to reassess, carefully and on the basis of the latest scholarship, the forces which made Adolf Hitler possible and shaped the atrocity for which his name remains the symbol and the warning.
I don’t have enough words to praise Ian Kershaw’s book. I didn’t read it; I devoured it. What he has managed to create isn’t simply an accumulation of dry facts under the term “biography”; it is a vivid, three-dimensional portrait of the two faces of Hitler: Hitler the Person and later, Hitler the Führer.
The book starts with a detailed description of Adolf’s childhood in the Austrian town of Linz, where he was pressured by his strict father, Alois, who disapproved of his son’s unrealistic dreams of becoming a world-known painter, and pampered by his mother, Klara, to whom he was immensely devoted. Then, the author recounts Hitler’s life in Vienna after his mother’s death, his failure to get into the Academy of Arts, his “friendship” with the long-suffering Kubizek, a poor but talented young man, later a student of the conservatory in Vienna, and his first encounter with the many ethnic conflicts tearing Vienna at the time.
What amazes me in Kershaw’s narrative is the meticulousness with which he has described every single detail, every thought that mattered in the development of young Adolf’s character. Sometimes I felt as if I was reading a classic novel.
Kershaw continues with Hitler’s life in Munich, a city he was very fond of, his time as a brave messenger boy during WWI, and the shock he experienced after the humiliation his beloved Germany suffered because of the Versailles Treaty. Kershaw introduces a very detailed description of the subsequent 1924 Munich Putsch and Hitler’s fame as a beer-hall demagogue. After he served his sentence in prison and wrote Mein Kampf, in Kershaw’s narrative, Adolf returns to the political stage. The events between 1925 and 1936 are maybe the most intriguing part of the biography. Here, Ian Kershaw introduces all the eminent Nazi from the future Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, to the chief of the Luftwaffe, Göring, to Ribbentrop, the former champagne seller.
Curious details from Hitler’s private life, such as his detestation of physical exercise and his almost unexisting relations with women (Aside from his mother, the only woman Hitler had ever emotionally depended on was the daughter of his stepsister, Geli Raubal, who was later found dead in his apartment.), are revealed in the book, contributing to the wholesome sketch of Adolf Hitler as a person.
Ian Kershaw’s work is remarkable both in style and content. If I only could, I would give it not 5 but 105 stars.
I don’t have enough words to praise Ian Kershaw’s book. I didn’t read it; I devoured it. What he has managed to create isn’t simply an accumulation of dry facts under the term “biography”; it is a vivid, three-dimensional portrait of the two faces of Hitler: Hitler the Person and later, Hitler the Führer.
The book starts with a detailed description of Adolf’s childhood in the Austrian town of Linz, where he was pressured by his strict father, Alois, who disapproved of his son’s unrealistic dreams of becoming a world-known painter, and pampered by his mother, Klara, to whom he was immensely devoted. Then, the author recounts Hitler’s life in Vienna after his mother’s death, his failure to get into the Academy of Arts, his “friendship” with the long-suffering Kubizek, a poor but talented young man, later a student of the conservatory in Vienna, and his first encounter with the many ethnic conflicts tearing Vienna at the time.
What amazes me in Kershaw’s narrative is the meticulousness with which he has described every single detail, every thought that mattered in the development of young Adolf’s character. Sometimes I felt as if I was reading a classic novel.
Kershaw continues with Hitler’s life in Munich, a city he was very fond of, his time as a brave messenger boy during WWI, and the shock he experienced after the humiliation his beloved Germany suffered because of the Versailles Treaty. Kershaw introduces a very detailed description of the subsequent 1924 Munich Putsch and Hitler’s fame as a beer-hall demagogue. After he served his sentence in prison and wrote Mein Kampf, in Kershaw’s narrative, Adolf returns to the political stage. The events between 1925 and 1936 are maybe the most intriguing part of the biography. Here, Ian Kershaw introduces all the eminent Nazi from the future Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, to the chief of the Luftwaffe, Göring, to Ribbentrop, the former champagne seller.
Curious details from Hitler’s private life, such as his detestation of physical exercise and his almost unexisting relations with women (Aside from his mother, the only woman Hitler had ever emotionally depended on was the daughter of his stepsister, Geli Raubal, who was later found dead in his apartment.), are revealed in the book, contributing to the wholesome sketch of Adolf Hitler as a person.
Ian Kershaw’s work is remarkable both in style and content. If I only could, I would give it not 5 but 105 stars.
April 3, 2018
A towering literary and scholarly achievement by Ian Kershaw showing extraordinary insight into Hitler’s rise to power, internal struggles within the regime, policy-making and governance, and every minutiae of the regime. I would recommend several other books by prominent historians or primary source documents about the Nazi Regime first as a primer, such as the Kershaw’s The Hitler Myth, and Gellately’s Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in the Third Reich to get a bit of the sense of the times. I’ve been re-reading some of these books to be able to refute Dinesh D’Souza’s ridiculous recent publication, ‘The Big Lie.’ Ugh. I wish some actual scholars would do the world a service and pick apart that pile of garbage.
February 20, 2020
A good in depth look of how Hitler went from a nobody to national hero/fiend. He survives the 1st World War and is handed a ridiculously lenient prison sentence for an attempted coup! If a year in a comfortable prison is the only punishment for overthrowing a government then maybe it's worth a shot!
As expected the book is meticulous in detail and is superbly researched.
As expected the book is meticulous in detail and is superbly researched.
September 28, 2025
I've read this three times, I'm not even sure why I have to keep reading this particular book. It seems like I kind of stepped out of a time machine into the realm of German society during the time of Weimar's demise and Hitler's rise to dictatorship, and that's what I like most about this volume. It really puts me in that time and place. Honestly though, I think that the more I study and learn about Kershaw's "structural" approach, the more I disagree with it. I think that "intentional" is a better word for Hitler and his rise to power. That being said, Kershaw is still my favorite biographer. I just agree more with Volker Ulrich, or maybe John Toland whose biographies of Hitler I'd recommend before tackling this. I think they do a better job with Hitler's personality. That being said, I think this is the best Hitler biography. Sets the bar pretty high in my opinion, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone unless they had a lot of time on their hands, and really wanted to study this stuff on a deeper level.
April 3, 2021
Four decades ago I read John Toland's rip-roaring biography, Adolf Hitler, and believed -- at the time -- that there couldn't possibly be a better bio on the man/monster. After reading Ian Kershaw's Hitler...Hubris I was still inclined to believe that, but had to be sure. So, I perused my old copy of Toland's tome, just to make sure I wasn't relying on mere rose-colored memories. Just as I'd remembered, Toland delivered. The thing reads like a thriller from fiction masters like John le Carre or Frederick Forsyth.
Kershaw does not read like that, not by half, and yet, by the end, I really didn't care. Kershaw is not a great writer, but he is a great historian, and, as he says, he's less interested in understanding Hitler as a flesh-and-blood man than he is in understanding the political currents that Hitler was able to exploit to manipulate his way to ultimate power. In this -- a decidedly "political biography" -- Kershaw seems to me to be second to none.
Yes, it's dense, it's arid and it toddles forward in clause-ridden sentences that approach the wordiness of Henry James. This is not, perhaps, a "first" bio of Hitler that you should approach, but it was, for me, the bio of Hitler that I wanted right now. I wanted to understand the bigger picture, and that's what I got.
Kershaw, more or less, discounts Hitler's humanity, in a sense, depicting him as a man strictly hellbent on the accumulation of power. This was who he was, Kershaw concludes. Whether him being beaten by his father as a child, being doted on by his adored mother, or his confused sexuality, or whatever, may or may not have formed Hitler's personality. Kershaw says there is simply no way for us to know that. How could a dynamic man, an autodidact who settled on horrific ideas and pursued them with an unflinching passion, get where he got? That's what Kershaw tells us. And I was down with it.
I had written down tons of notes on this, but, as I'm now reading the second volume, Hitler...Nemesis I just want to get back to it.
How does a society go fascist and collectively justify insane and inhumane ideology? In answering this, Kershaw delivers - "bigly" -- to quote another fascist.
EG-KR@KY 2021
Kershaw does not read like that, not by half, and yet, by the end, I really didn't care. Kershaw is not a great writer, but he is a great historian, and, as he says, he's less interested in understanding Hitler as a flesh-and-blood man than he is in understanding the political currents that Hitler was able to exploit to manipulate his way to ultimate power. In this -- a decidedly "political biography" -- Kershaw seems to me to be second to none.
Yes, it's dense, it's arid and it toddles forward in clause-ridden sentences that approach the wordiness of Henry James. This is not, perhaps, a "first" bio of Hitler that you should approach, but it was, for me, the bio of Hitler that I wanted right now. I wanted to understand the bigger picture, and that's what I got.
Kershaw, more or less, discounts Hitler's humanity, in a sense, depicting him as a man strictly hellbent on the accumulation of power. This was who he was, Kershaw concludes. Whether him being beaten by his father as a child, being doted on by his adored mother, or his confused sexuality, or whatever, may or may not have formed Hitler's personality. Kershaw says there is simply no way for us to know that. How could a dynamic man, an autodidact who settled on horrific ideas and pursued them with an unflinching passion, get where he got? That's what Kershaw tells us. And I was down with it.
I had written down tons of notes on this, but, as I'm now reading the second volume, Hitler...Nemesis I just want to get back to it.
How does a society go fascist and collectively justify insane and inhumane ideology? In answering this, Kershaw delivers - "bigly" -- to quote another fascist.
EG-KR@KY 2021
October 8, 2009
Kershaw's book is the best I have encountered at helping the reader to understand how someone like Hitler was able to become the supreme ruler of Germany. The book starts out as an excellent biography of Hitler's early years, but in the mid-1920s it changes into more of a sociological history of Germany between the wars: why the Weimar Republic failed, what average Germans cared about, and what it was about Hitler's message that resonated with the people and why. Hitler himself is such a cipher - a one-dimensional character with little depth or recognizable personality - that the book necessarily becomes more of a biography of those around Hitler who enabled his rise to power.
The first volume of a two-book set, "Hubris" leaves off in 1936 at the zenith of Hitler's power, before he began charting the course that would inevitably lead to war and his own downfall as well as that of Germany. I can't wait to start reading the second volume.
The first volume of a two-book set, "Hubris" leaves off in 1936 at the zenith of Hitler's power, before he began charting the course that would inevitably lead to war and his own downfall as well as that of Germany. I can't wait to start reading the second volume.
December 23, 2017
As many know, Adolf Hitler was a failed artist. What this book brings out, however, is that he retained the habits of a fin-de-siecle bohemian for his entire life. When this son of an martinent middle-class Austrian customs official first moved to Vienna, he refused to work for his keep. He relied on loans from an aunt, later a small orphans pension, and periodic sponging off friends. He spent much his meager funds attending the opera (usually Wagner), and most of his time declaiming monologues on art and music to his roommate, and only close friend, August Kubizek. As even his early acquaintances recognized, however, his megalomania knew no bounds. He could construct elaborate fantasies about winning the lottery, and then become genuinely shocked when he didn't. He was so embarrassed by his failure to win entrance to the Vienna Academy of Art, twice, that he pretended to attend for weeks. Of course, World War I opened up a heroic outlet for him, and the political chaos of the aftermath gave him an audience for his romantic notions of unified German nationhood, and, of course, a rabid hatred of Jews.
Ian Kershaw is a social historian, so he does a good job of showing the social environment and support that allowed Hitler to thrive in the 1920s and 1930s. Hitler's first work with the Nazi party in Munich was funded by the army, which employed the then-corporal on speaking tours to warn troops off Marxism. The army and the police later countenanced his rabid attacks on the system, which were typically focused on anti-socialist diatribes, because they too hated the Social Democratic Party then ruling Germany. The system's biggest mistake was allowing Hitler free just 9 months into his sentence for attempting to overthrow the government in 1923, and then removing the speaking ban on him just a few years later. Time and again political leaders thought they could use Hitler to attack socialism and communism, and then rein him in. But the militant Nazi movement outmaneuvered them all by 1933, subsuming the forces that once gingerly allowed it to thrive.
Hitler himself sometimes fades into the background in this political part of the book, because he did not think all that much about the work of politics. Kershaw shows he cared not a whit about administration, thought little about policy, and rarely formulated coherent plans. He woke up late, listened to music, watched endless movies, took long walks, and hung out with friends for hours in the Cafe Heck even as he became an international figure. After he took power, cabinet officials had to guess at his wishes because he dodged their meetings and stayed in bed until past noon. Instead, the Nazi Regime strove to "work towards the Fuhrer," by gleaning his desires from his public speeches. These speeches were the only things Hitler himself worked on, and cared about. They were usually just rambling, emotional pleas for national renewal (including attacks on outsiders, especially Marxists and Jews) and for faith in his divine leadership, rather than policy pronouncements. The "cumulative radicalisation" that the Nazi party underwent when in power came from underlings striving to beat one another in their demonstration of aggressive policies discerned dimly from Hitler's rants. Obviously, over the long run, it was a recipe for disaster.
At times the book flags, but overall it offers a frightening image of a man who thought of little but his own destiny, and, through a combination of a singular speaking style and a welcoming social environment, was able to convince a nation that their destiny and his were one. Later, they would both collapse together.
Ian Kershaw is a social historian, so he does a good job of showing the social environment and support that allowed Hitler to thrive in the 1920s and 1930s. Hitler's first work with the Nazi party in Munich was funded by the army, which employed the then-corporal on speaking tours to warn troops off Marxism. The army and the police later countenanced his rabid attacks on the system, which were typically focused on anti-socialist diatribes, because they too hated the Social Democratic Party then ruling Germany. The system's biggest mistake was allowing Hitler free just 9 months into his sentence for attempting to overthrow the government in 1923, and then removing the speaking ban on him just a few years later. Time and again political leaders thought they could use Hitler to attack socialism and communism, and then rein him in. But the militant Nazi movement outmaneuvered them all by 1933, subsuming the forces that once gingerly allowed it to thrive.
Hitler himself sometimes fades into the background in this political part of the book, because he did not think all that much about the work of politics. Kershaw shows he cared not a whit about administration, thought little about policy, and rarely formulated coherent plans. He woke up late, listened to music, watched endless movies, took long walks, and hung out with friends for hours in the Cafe Heck even as he became an international figure. After he took power, cabinet officials had to guess at his wishes because he dodged their meetings and stayed in bed until past noon. Instead, the Nazi Regime strove to "work towards the Fuhrer," by gleaning his desires from his public speeches. These speeches were the only things Hitler himself worked on, and cared about. They were usually just rambling, emotional pleas for national renewal (including attacks on outsiders, especially Marxists and Jews) and for faith in his divine leadership, rather than policy pronouncements. The "cumulative radicalisation" that the Nazi party underwent when in power came from underlings striving to beat one another in their demonstration of aggressive policies discerned dimly from Hitler's rants. Obviously, over the long run, it was a recipe for disaster.
At times the book flags, but overall it offers a frightening image of a man who thought of little but his own destiny, and, through a combination of a singular speaking style and a welcoming social environment, was able to convince a nation that their destiny and his were one. Later, they would both collapse together.
August 23, 2013
This book gives a good account of Hitler's highly improbable rise to power, but does not resolve the question of why Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. It says that Hindenburg initially refused, until ex-chancellor Franz von Papen convinced him that Hitler would be harmless as chancellor. He could be safely contained, said von Papen, "boxed in" by conservatives in the cabinet and by Hindenburg himself. It was thought that political responsibilities would tame the Nazis. That is Kershaw's version.
Why Hindenburg changed his mind is one of the great controversies of history. Joachim Fest said the reasons were "too complicated to list." But George Seldes said that in 1932 a tremendous scandal exploded in Germany, involving Hindenburg. His East Prussian property at Neudeck was involved in tax frauds. Hitler promised to suppress the entire scandal if he was made chancellor. "Hindenburg covered over his scandal of corruption with his appointment of Hitler as chancellor." Was this why Hitler was unleashed on the world?
.
September 21, 2023
Es hat so seine Gründe, warum sich Ian Kershaw lange geweigert hat, eine echte Hitler-Biographie zu schreiben, ehe er dem Ruf des Geldes erlag, die Stärken seiner vorher erschienenen Arbeiten kommen erst im letzten Kapitel des ersten Teils zum Tragen. Bei der Vorstellung des Herrschaftsmodells Hitlers mit zahlreichen Parallelstrukturen, die den Führer zur entscheidenden Instanz machten.
Die analytischen ersten Abschnitte jedes Kapitels gehören auch zu den Aktivposten dieser Darstellung, die unter einem anderen Anspruch leidet. Denn IK schreibt unter den Vorzeichen 100.000%ig auszuschließen, dass auch nur auf einer einzigen Zeile der Hauch eines Ansatzes zur Identifikation entstehen könnte. Mit entsprechenden Auswirkungen auf Lesefluss/Vergnügen und Übersichtlichkeit.
Subtext dieser Darstellung, in der Kershaw auch eigene Jugendsünden (Der Hitler-Mythos) abbüßt, ist die Widerlegung der von populären Vorgängern Bullock, vor allem aber von Fest und Toland aufgebauten These, dass Hitler bei einem Tod vor 1938 als Glücksfall für Deutschland in die Geschichte eingegangen wäre.
Die eigentlichen Abrissarbeiten an diesem Mythos hatte zwar schon Sebastian Haffner in den erfrischen kurzen »Anmerkungen zu (Fests) Hitler« vorgenommen, Götz Aly et alii hatten den Weg dieses Aufschwungs auf Pump in eine Serie von Raubkriegen weiter aufgezeigt, aber IK hat das einen geradezu enzyklopädischen Anspruch beim Aufzeigen von Dellen beim Aufschwung, die den staatlichen Eingriffen in die Wirtschaft geschuldet sind*.
Leider fehlt seiner Darstellung die Übersichtlichkeit der gescholtenen Vorgänger, so gut wie nichts lässt sich schnell noch mal nachschlagen in diesem endlosen Strom von Details.
In den Zeiten vor dem Internet war der schnellen Zugriff der Aktivposten von Fest oder Toland, die beide in einer höheren stilistischen Liga spielen und immer noch nachhaltiger im Gedächtnis bleiben als ein Wikipedia-Artikel.
Daher ist es leicht nachvollziehbar warum Kershaws Anlauf nie wirklich populär wurde, zumal in Deutschland ein Guido Knopp mit dem ÖRR-Apparat im Hintergrund und allerlei Zeitzeugen an der Hand, leicht verdauliche Massenware zum Thema produzierte.
Mit Ulrich und Longerich sind inzwischen zwei umfangreiche frische Bios auf dem Markt,
die wieder mehr in jene Extreme zurück fallen, die Kershaw überwunden glaubte: starker Diktator (wie Bullock, Fest, Toland) oder schwacher Diktator (wie bei Ks Hitler-Mythos), der als Fassade herhalten muss und nur die allgemeine Richtung vorgibt. So die Rezensionen, ich werde wohl weder noch lesen, nächstes Jahr ist der zweite Band von Kershaw dran, - wie schon gesagt, wir sind jetzt da, wo sich sein Ansatz lohnen könnte, allen stilistischen Defiziten zum Trotz.
*Dass noch einmal ein Haufen von Dilettanten in Deutschland an die Macht kommt und mit seinen Zwangsvorstellungen die Wirtschaft ruiniert, war seinerzeit nicht abzusehen.
Die analytischen ersten Abschnitte jedes Kapitels gehören auch zu den Aktivposten dieser Darstellung, die unter einem anderen Anspruch leidet. Denn IK schreibt unter den Vorzeichen 100.000%ig auszuschließen, dass auch nur auf einer einzigen Zeile der Hauch eines Ansatzes zur Identifikation entstehen könnte. Mit entsprechenden Auswirkungen auf Lesefluss/Vergnügen und Übersichtlichkeit.
Subtext dieser Darstellung, in der Kershaw auch eigene Jugendsünden (Der Hitler-Mythos) abbüßt, ist die Widerlegung der von populären Vorgängern Bullock, vor allem aber von Fest und Toland aufgebauten These, dass Hitler bei einem Tod vor 1938 als Glücksfall für Deutschland in die Geschichte eingegangen wäre.
Die eigentlichen Abrissarbeiten an diesem Mythos hatte zwar schon Sebastian Haffner in den erfrischen kurzen »Anmerkungen zu (Fests) Hitler« vorgenommen, Götz Aly et alii hatten den Weg dieses Aufschwungs auf Pump in eine Serie von Raubkriegen weiter aufgezeigt, aber IK hat das einen geradezu enzyklopädischen Anspruch beim Aufzeigen von Dellen beim Aufschwung, die den staatlichen Eingriffen in die Wirtschaft geschuldet sind*.
Leider fehlt seiner Darstellung die Übersichtlichkeit der gescholtenen Vorgänger, so gut wie nichts lässt sich schnell noch mal nachschlagen in diesem endlosen Strom von Details.
In den Zeiten vor dem Internet war der schnellen Zugriff der Aktivposten von Fest oder Toland, die beide in einer höheren stilistischen Liga spielen und immer noch nachhaltiger im Gedächtnis bleiben als ein Wikipedia-Artikel.
Daher ist es leicht nachvollziehbar warum Kershaws Anlauf nie wirklich populär wurde, zumal in Deutschland ein Guido Knopp mit dem ÖRR-Apparat im Hintergrund und allerlei Zeitzeugen an der Hand, leicht verdauliche Massenware zum Thema produzierte.
Mit Ulrich und Longerich sind inzwischen zwei umfangreiche frische Bios auf dem Markt,
die wieder mehr in jene Extreme zurück fallen, die Kershaw überwunden glaubte: starker Diktator (wie Bullock, Fest, Toland) oder schwacher Diktator (wie bei Ks Hitler-Mythos), der als Fassade herhalten muss und nur die allgemeine Richtung vorgibt. So die Rezensionen, ich werde wohl weder noch lesen, nächstes Jahr ist der zweite Band von Kershaw dran, - wie schon gesagt, wir sind jetzt da, wo sich sein Ansatz lohnen könnte, allen stilistischen Defiziten zum Trotz.
*Dass noch einmal ein Haufen von Dilettanten in Deutschland an die Macht kommt und mit seinen Zwangsvorstellungen die Wirtschaft ruiniert, war seinerzeit nicht abzusehen.
September 2, 2011
I'm struggling to recall reading a better biography than Ian Kershaw's first volume on Hitler. This book skillfully places Hitler into the context of his time and place, stripping away the myths promulgated by his subject, his subject's admirers and contemporary enemies, and by those who've stumbled in their attempts to understand how an unemployable, draft dodging crank succeeded in convincing a nation in crisis to place itself under his care. Never before has Hitler's rise seemed so chancy, so dependent on the failures of other, more conventionally competent politicians. Even his dictatorship, in its early days, was driven less by his much celebrated "will" than by pressures from below, crisis, and adroitness in taking advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. Kershaw's Hitler brings an era blurred by propaganda and myth into sharp focus. Thirteen years after his book's publication, he still deserves congratulations.
April 28, 2020
Уговорка за интересуващите се - (вероятно) от издателството малко некоректно са прикачили българското издание към това издание в goodreads. "Изток-запад" са решили да издадат сбитата версия на биографията на Хитлер, дело на Йън Кършоу, за което аз поне доста съжалявам. Като обем пълното издание на английски (в два тома) е около 2100 страници, докато съкратеното е около 1000, което на български също е разделено на две. Разбира се, причините за подобен подход са доста и може би е нормално, че са тръгнали по този път.
Съжалявам, защото книгата е блестяща и определено би си струвало да се прочете пълното издание. След като премина и през том 2, може да напиша повече и за самата книга. Четирите звезди не са пет единствено заради горните уточнения за нашето издание, иначе Кършоу пише като за отличник.
Съжалявам, защото книгата е блестяща и определено би си струвало да се прочете пълното издание. След като премина и през том 2, може да напиша повече и за самата книга. Четирите звезди не са пет единствено заради горните уточнения за нашето издание, иначе Кършоу пише като за отличник.
February 20, 2014
Heavy going in places and short on his personal life, but a very detailed account of each part of Hitler's development. Fascinating are the opportunities to stop his rise and the perfect storm of the economy, Versailles and a contemporary German appetite for authority that delivers him to power. It's terrible, and compelling.
April 30, 2017
Horrendous. Nothing but a rehash of political correctness and vitriol. Couldn't come anywhere near finishing this alleged biography by a writer with no respect for his subject. Do not waste your time with this unless you merely want to reinforce your own ignorance. Read Toland's excellent biography instead.
March 15, 2024
Ian Kershaw is a historian and not a biographer and hence his focus is on the rise of the Nazis to power. I was fine with that as I was interested to see how he rose to power and the steps leading up to World War Two.
Some however may be disappointed by the lack of any insights into his personality and any other little details of what personal life he ever had.
Some however may be disappointed by the lack of any insights into his personality and any other little details of what personal life he ever had.
October 20, 2016
You have to realize what you are getting into when you pick up this book. It's the first volume of a two-volume biography of Hitler, so you already know it's going to be unpleasant. In addition, however, it's extremely detailed, and you get a lot of names and places that you are unfamiliar with thrown at you. I think what would have been useful was a glossary of names and German words used in the book. At one point, the author starts using the word "Lander" (with an umlaut). I had no idea what that meant so I looked it up. And I got confused by a lot of German words that began with "Reich-".
Other than that, this was a very eye-opening book for me. The author was great at explaining how many of the details of Hitler's life are in question because of the unreliability of the sources. You can't trust Hitler's stories in "Mein Kampf", nor the stories of his followers and detractors. He also explained how much of Hitler's success resulted from his great speaking skills and luck. There were so many events which, if they had gone another way, might have prevented him from becoming the Fuhrer and changing the world and destroying lives.
This book is recommended if you are up for an extremely detailed book on Hitler.
Other than that, this was a very eye-opening book for me. The author was great at explaining how many of the details of Hitler's life are in question because of the unreliability of the sources. You can't trust Hitler's stories in "Mein Kampf", nor the stories of his followers and detractors. He also explained how much of Hitler's success resulted from his great speaking skills and luck. There were so many events which, if they had gone another way, might have prevented him from becoming the Fuhrer and changing the world and destroying lives.
This book is recommended if you are up for an extremely detailed book on Hitler.
March 9, 2021
Handsome sketch of the start of Hitler's carreer and ascent to power. Especially the concept of "Hitler entgegen wirken" explains how he could reach his goals. But Kershaw failed to show how German society came to accept the awful brutality and violence Hitler and his movement introduced.
November 27, 2025
Wow, so many things to say about this one.
It has to be one of the best written and most well researched books Ive ever read. I haven’t read quite as many as some, but this is up there with Robert Caros “the years of Lyndon Johnson” series in terms of research and that’s saying a hell of a lot.
However, as I’ve read elsewhere, it’s better titled “Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party” For it’s just as much the history of the German workers party/NSDAP/Nazi party as it is of the man himself.
So many things happened and also didn’t happen that brought about his rise. Had a few of them not taken place or had circumstances been slightly different, Hitler would’ve been a mere footnote in history. An early release from prison, a bullet that missed by inches, rejection from the Vienna Art Academy, and the occurrence of the great depression just to name a few.
I came away slightly disappointed that the reader doesn’t glean much about Hitler the man. Only interspersed throughout this massive text were glimpses of him among friends and very few intimates meaning women, personal habits etc.
Be aware, this is written in a more dry style. It may not be for some, and I took my time reading 30 or 40 pages to let it digest. Also, as an English speaking American some German words were not translated and I gave up trying to follow the storylines of so many of Hitler’s early inner circle choosing to focus on the man himself.
Kershaw‘s work is considered the top of the heap in terms of Hitler biographies. I’ll attempt to tackle the second volume before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.
Solid 5/5.
It has to be one of the best written and most well researched books Ive ever read. I haven’t read quite as many as some, but this is up there with Robert Caros “the years of Lyndon Johnson” series in terms of research and that’s saying a hell of a lot.
However, as I’ve read elsewhere, it’s better titled “Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party” For it’s just as much the history of the German workers party/NSDAP/Nazi party as it is of the man himself.
So many things happened and also didn’t happen that brought about his rise. Had a few of them not taken place or had circumstances been slightly different, Hitler would’ve been a mere footnote in history. An early release from prison, a bullet that missed by inches, rejection from the Vienna Art Academy, and the occurrence of the great depression just to name a few.
I came away slightly disappointed that the reader doesn’t glean much about Hitler the man. Only interspersed throughout this massive text were glimpses of him among friends and very few intimates meaning women, personal habits etc.
Be aware, this is written in a more dry style. It may not be for some, and I took my time reading 30 or 40 pages to let it digest. Also, as an English speaking American some German words were not translated and I gave up trying to follow the storylines of so many of Hitler’s early inner circle choosing to focus on the man himself.
Kershaw‘s work is considered the top of the heap in terms of Hitler biographies. I’ll attempt to tackle the second volume before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.
Solid 5/5.
March 8, 2024
Hitler sucked.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 19, 2019
My comments appear as regards the second volume of this edition.
April 1, 2014
There is no doubt that this is the definitive biography of one of the most detested human beings history has yet produced. I found myself hoping to capture a glimpse of humanity in Hitler. Something to illustrate that there was humanity buried under the dark depths. I didn't find it. Any author knows that engaging a reader involves creating likable (if not loveable) characters, and there is nothing to like here. This is hardly Kershaw's fault, per se, however, it consequently leaves the narrative feeling sterile and uninspired. I found large segments of the book to be dull and droning. There are redeeming qualities, hence the 3 star rating. Thanks to such detailed coverage, I now understand exactly the catastrophic stream of coincidences that led to the rise of the Third Reich, and I have a better understanding of how little Hitler himself had to do with that rise, and conversely, how much the leadership of the day, and the German people, had to do with it. It's both frightening and heartbreaking to know how the events unfolded, and to have so little to point to as "oh, well *that* will never happen again" The sad truth is that it will and it does.
February 9, 2017
So, yes, I did pick up this book after the election. Hitler/Trump parallels have abounded for awhile now (thanks to their shared love of minority-targeting rhetoric, talent for propaganda, lack of political experience, and oh yeah, Nazi followers). At the very least, one has to admit that our new president has authoritarian leanings, so I thought it'd be worthwhile to read up on the most dangerous authoritarian leader of the 20th century.
It was worth it. I found more eerie little Trump/Hitler parallels than I ever expected (some even in real-time, like reading about how inattentive Hitler was to legislation mere days after Trump admitted he hadn't read the order he signed giving Steve Bannon a seat on the National Security Council), but it also gave me a much more comprehensive understanding of the Nazis, which is great because so many people try to use that history for their own ends. Kershaw also does a fantastic job of keeping track of how much Hitler was personally responsible for, and what was due to his followers/rivals and the political atmosphere of the time. I'm excited to read part two.
It was worth it. I found more eerie little Trump/Hitler parallels than I ever expected (some even in real-time, like reading about how inattentive Hitler was to legislation mere days after Trump admitted he hadn't read the order he signed giving Steve Bannon a seat on the National Security Council), but it also gave me a much more comprehensive understanding of the Nazis, which is great because so many people try to use that history for their own ends. Kershaw also does a fantastic job of keeping track of how much Hitler was personally responsible for, and what was due to his followers/rivals and the political atmosphere of the time. I'm excited to read part two.
May 10, 2009
Kershaw is at first sight an odd choice to write a biography because as a structuralist he is more inclined to look towards power structures, organizations etc to explain historical events rather than the "great man" approach to history.
However, what at fist sight would appear to be a disadvantage turns out to be of major benefit. We get both a detailed account of Hitler's life, but also a very sure footed and insightful explanation of German political history from the end of the First World War through to 1936.
As for Hitler himself, apart from liking animals and being attentive and considerate to his junior staff he had no redeeming features as a person. I already knew this, but Kershaw's book makes plain what an egotistical, psychotic bore he was. Any charisma he displayed was only evident as a master propagandist.
This book is an excellent history of the rise of the Nazis. For anyone wanting an authoritative and well written account I would strongly recommend this book.
However, what at fist sight would appear to be a disadvantage turns out to be of major benefit. We get both a detailed account of Hitler's life, but also a very sure footed and insightful explanation of German political history from the end of the First World War through to 1936.
As for Hitler himself, apart from liking animals and being attentive and considerate to his junior staff he had no redeeming features as a person. I already knew this, but Kershaw's book makes plain what an egotistical, psychotic bore he was. Any charisma he displayed was only evident as a master propagandist.
This book is an excellent history of the rise of the Nazis. For anyone wanting an authoritative and well written account I would strongly recommend this book.
December 4, 2015
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it was really poorly written. The author's syntax was incredibly awkward and often confusing. He was very prone to writing long, run-on sentences that often were an entire page long. So, why did I slog through 1200 pages of this book; The author produced an incredibly detailed portrayal of Hitler and the country and people he destroyed. I have read a lot about WWII and about Hitler but never before got such an intimate and detailed portrait of this man & the inner workings of Nazism. Overall, the book was difficult but fascinating. In the end, I am glad that I stuck with it.
January 5, 2022
Book: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris
Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (12 April 2000)
Language: English
Paperback: 912 pages
Item Weight: 1 kg 140 g
Dimensions: 15.49 x 4.06 x 23.37 cm
Price: 2145/-
“He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle”. - Troilus and Cressida, [II, iii, 165]
What is Hubris?
Hubris denotes superciliousness, conceit, arrogance. It denotes extreme smugness. It is something a character feels on the inside, but it more often than not translates to the character's actions.
A contemporary, real-life paradigm of hubris might be a politician who thinks he's excessively adored to mislay an election and chooses to miss out campaigning. Or a top athlete who refuses to practice before a championship…
Take the ‘Fall of Icarus’ for example. Icarus’s father made him a couple of wax wings and cautioned him not to fly too high with them. Becoming bombastic, Icarus flew as high as he wanted. The sun melted his wings, and he fell to his demise.
Or say Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Oedipus defies the gods’ prophecy that he will slay his father and murder his mother. Attempting to direct and shirk his own fate, he kills an old man who turns out to be his father. Later he marries the queen of Thebes, who turns out to be his mother.
His attempt to flout the gods was considered hubris.
Hubris – it denotes egotism. It denotes extreme conceit
Hitler’s dictatorship amounted to the crumple of modern civilization – a form of nuclear blow-out within modern society.
It showed what we are capable of.
Important questions still remain open: --
#What in that catastrophic process was peculiar to Germany?
#What was peculiar to the epoch?
#What was part of a more general European malaise?
#Was what happened a product and a feature of contemporary civilization itself?
#Is its potential still perhaps lying latent?
The twelve years of Hitler’s rule enduringly changed Germany, Europe, and the world.
He is one of the minority individuals of whom it can be said with unconditional conviction: without him, the course of history would have been dissimilar.
Hitler’s instant inheritance, the Cold War – a Germany cracked by a Wall, a Europe tore apart by an Iron Curtain, a world split between antagonistic superpowers armed with weapons able to blow up the planet – ended only two decades ago.
The deeper bequest – the ethical strain he bequeathed to posterity – has still not passed.
Has the 20th been Hitler’s century?
Unquestionably, no other individual has stamped a more reflective indentation on it than Adolf Hitler.
Other dictators – most remarkably Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao – have engaged in wars of conquest, held subjugated peoples in thrall, presided over the perpetration of incalculable inhumanity and left their ineradicable mark on the character of the 20th century.
But the rule of none of them has seared people’s awareness beyond their own countries, the world over, like the rule of Adolf Hitler has done.
In an ‘age of extremes’, there have also been political leaders who have symbolized the positive values of the century, have epitomized belief in humanity, hope for the future.
Roosevelt, Churchill, Kennedy, and in more recent times Mandela would be high up a list of such figures. But Hitler’s mark on the century has been deeper than that of each of them.
This is the story this book speaks of.
What greater exemplar of Hubris could there be?
Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (12 April 2000)
Language: English
Paperback: 912 pages
Item Weight: 1 kg 140 g
Dimensions: 15.49 x 4.06 x 23.37 cm
Price: 2145/-
“He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle”. - Troilus and Cressida, [II, iii, 165]
What is Hubris?
Hubris denotes superciliousness, conceit, arrogance. It denotes extreme smugness. It is something a character feels on the inside, but it more often than not translates to the character's actions.
A contemporary, real-life paradigm of hubris might be a politician who thinks he's excessively adored to mislay an election and chooses to miss out campaigning. Or a top athlete who refuses to practice before a championship…
Take the ‘Fall of Icarus’ for example. Icarus’s father made him a couple of wax wings and cautioned him not to fly too high with them. Becoming bombastic, Icarus flew as high as he wanted. The sun melted his wings, and he fell to his demise.
Or say Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Oedipus defies the gods’ prophecy that he will slay his father and murder his mother. Attempting to direct and shirk his own fate, he kills an old man who turns out to be his father. Later he marries the queen of Thebes, who turns out to be his mother.
His attempt to flout the gods was considered hubris.
Hubris – it denotes egotism. It denotes extreme conceit
Hitler’s dictatorship amounted to the crumple of modern civilization – a form of nuclear blow-out within modern society.
It showed what we are capable of.
Important questions still remain open: --
#What in that catastrophic process was peculiar to Germany?
#What was peculiar to the epoch?
#What was part of a more general European malaise?
#Was what happened a product and a feature of contemporary civilization itself?
#Is its potential still perhaps lying latent?
The twelve years of Hitler’s rule enduringly changed Germany, Europe, and the world.
He is one of the minority individuals of whom it can be said with unconditional conviction: without him, the course of history would have been dissimilar.
Hitler’s instant inheritance, the Cold War – a Germany cracked by a Wall, a Europe tore apart by an Iron Curtain, a world split between antagonistic superpowers armed with weapons able to blow up the planet – ended only two decades ago.
The deeper bequest – the ethical strain he bequeathed to posterity – has still not passed.
Has the 20th been Hitler’s century?
Unquestionably, no other individual has stamped a more reflective indentation on it than Adolf Hitler.
Other dictators – most remarkably Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao – have engaged in wars of conquest, held subjugated peoples in thrall, presided over the perpetration of incalculable inhumanity and left their ineradicable mark on the character of the 20th century.
But the rule of none of them has seared people’s awareness beyond their own countries, the world over, like the rule of Adolf Hitler has done.
In an ‘age of extremes’, there have also been political leaders who have symbolized the positive values of the century, have epitomized belief in humanity, hope for the future.
Roosevelt, Churchill, Kennedy, and in more recent times Mandela would be high up a list of such figures. But Hitler’s mark on the century has been deeper than that of each of them.
This is the story this book speaks of.
What greater exemplar of Hubris could there be?
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