A huge book which takes time to read - and this is only the first half .
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Ian Kershaw, the historian behind the BBC’s excellent series, ‘The Nazis: A Warning From History’, is also the author of what I feel is the definitive biography of Adolf Hitler. It is fascinating not just in terms of the details it unearths, but also from the point of view that Kershaw has taken a style of writing typically alien to him and made it his own.
Modern ‘revisionist’ historical perspectives view history through a wider angle than historians of old have taken. Where previous historians tended to focus on individual people at the centre of importance (e.g. Hitler, Stalin or Napoleon) more modern writings examine the influences around them that shaped history. As the latter is the style adopted by Kershaw, it is surprising that he has chosen to write a biography of Hitler.
As Kershaw mentions in the introduction, there is estimated to be over 120,000 works on Hitler, so why is another needed? The existence of Kershaw’s text is more than justified – he doesn’t just employ the modern style of historical interpretation, he modifies it to approach the questions that study of the Nazi dictatorship poses. This approach works extremely well in terms of explaining Hitler’s rise to power, first how he arrived in the NSDAP (Nazi party), before taking advantage of the crippled Weimar government and making himself Fuhrer.
A key focus of Kershaw’s throughout the text is debunking and rectifying the ludicrous inaccuracies of Hitler’s book ‘Meinkampf’. Equally, Kershaw rejects many other popular tales about Hitler, such as the idea that his Grandmother was Jewish or that Hitler's anti-Semetism stemmed from him contracting an STD from a Jewish prostitute. In terms of clarifying the modern picture of Hitler’s life, Kershaw’s text is a mighty step forward.
Being a historical text, the line between truth and fiction is a difficult one to draw, and one the author approaches with appropriate caution. Kershaw weighs up many complex issues along these lines, some raised by ‘Meinkampf’, and dozens of other questionable accounts from Hitler’s friends, acolytes and supporters. In this respect he performs his task brilliant, filtering out dubious testimony to create a solid, believable impression of the truth.
Finishing in 1936, this biography is the first of what will be a two-part volume. The sequel, '1937-45: Nemesis', has recently been published. It is essential reading for history academics and those wishing to understand what made the rise of a dictatorship such as Hitlers’ possible in relatively modern times. It is a very thorough, yet extremely readable and important text.
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