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Best Hitler Biography?

Post by fletchemall » 08 Dec 2011 04:29

Re: Best Hitler Biography?

Post by J. Duncan » 08 Dec 2011 08:26

Post by fletchemall » 08 Dec 2011 08:54

Post by vszulc » 08 Dec 2011 08:54

Post by fletchemall » 08 Dec 2011 09:01

Post by J. Duncan » 08 Dec 2011 20:45

Post by MLW » 09 Dec 2011 01:40

Post by fletchemall » 09 Dec 2011 02:11

Post by Dan W. » 09 Dec 2011 05:06

Post by fletchemall » 09 Dec 2011 09:40

Dan W. wrote: The two volume biography by Toland is superb. You absolutely cannot go wrong by reading it.

Post by J. Duncan » 09 Dec 2011 15:24

Post by fletchemall » 10 Dec 2011 09:51

Post by J. Duncan » 10 Dec 2011 13:44

Post by coburg22 » 10 Dec 2011 15:30

Post by J. Duncan » 10 Dec 2011 20:43

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Two Hitler biographies draw eerie parallels to contemporary politics

Peter Longerich and Brendan Simms each shed light on the dictator’s role in not only Germany but also on the world stage. 

• By Steve Donoghue

November 12, 2019

It is clear from today’s headlines that biographies of Adolf Hitler are horrifying relevant. The currents of instability and anger that flowed through Germany in the 1930s feel more immediate, as nationalism gains a beachhead in Europe and white supremacy rears its head in the United States. 

When Peter Longerich, one of the world’s foremost historians of Nazi Germany, wrote his enormous biography of Adolf Hitler back in 2015, it might have been possible for some people to imagine that the darkest lessons of Nazism had been learned. 

But a study of the dictator has always been relevant. The whole Hitler-biography industry has tended to take one of two broad approaches to parsing that relevance: Either Hitler was a sui generis figure who warped the course of German history almost entirely through his own personal actions, or he was merely or mostly a handy cog in a state machinery that would have worked along much the same lines with or without him. Hitler’s assault on that state machinery, what Longerich refers to in “Hitler: A Biography” as the “fragmentation of the traditional state apparatus of power,” took the form of an intense melding of psychopath and institutional structures. 

“These structures were indissolubly linked to him personally, and indeed in general his dictatorship represented an extraordinary example of personalized power,” Longerich writes. “The regime’s ‘structures’ are inconceivable without Hitler and Hitler is nothing without his offices.” It’s a note he sounds throughout his book, with Hitler “consistently evading any collective or formalized decision-making process” and instead aiming to “personalize the political process to an extreme degree.”

Longerich’s account follows the dolorously familiar arc of Hitler’s life and the ruinous course of World War II, and the English-language translation, a herculean feat accomplished by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe, never flags, always smartly conveying Longerich’s peculiarly magisterial readability. It would be entirely understandable if even the hardiest readers blanched a bit at spending nearly 1,400 pages with Adolf Hitler, but Longerich, Noakes, and Sharpe have done as much as humanly possible to make the prospect enticing. (Alongside Daniel Steuer’s edition of Wolfram Siemann’s biography of Prince Metternich, this is the most impressive translated biography of the year.)

“Hitler: A Global Biography,” the season’s other major Hitler book, is half the length of Longerich’s, but what it lacks in length it makes up in scrappy contentiousness. On some levels, Simms argues, “Hitler’s biography, and perhaps the history of the Third Reich more generally, need to be fundamentally rethought.”

Simms’ revisionism doesn’t primarily involve either of those two broad approaches to looking at Hitler and the structures of power, but rather attempts to get at the heart of the man’s thinking; not the Hitler Germans voted for, as Simms puts it, but the Hitler they got. According to the author, Hitler’s motivations have been largely misunderstood: He was far more obsessed with rivaling the British and Americans in the world than he was with, for instance, attacking Bolshevism. “He sought not world domination, but world power status, that is parity, or at least a recognized sphere of influence,” Simms writes. “The Führer did not really expect to defeat Anglo-America, only to outlast it: militarily, economically, and mentally.”

In the rarefied world of Nazi scholarship, an author claiming that Hitler didn’t seek world domination qualifies as incendiary, and Simms comes back repeatedly to that aspect of his narrative, his version of a Hitler who was in revolt against what Simms refers to as the “Anglo-American capitalist world order” and cared about that world order more than anything – including his signature obsession. “The root of his Jew-hatred, therefore, was primarily to be found in his hostility to global high finance rather than his hatred of the radical left,” Simms writes. “Those who do not want to speak about Hitler’s anti-capitalism should remain silent on his anti-Semitism.”

More than a few readers of that last line will respond with a quick “Says who?” Simms is clearly expecting to raise some hackles, and this makes his book a different reading experience from Longerich’s. It’s unlikely that many readers will soldier through both books, but unfortunately, the times may warrant it.

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In the Second Volume of ‘Hitler,’ How a Dictator Invited His Own Downfall

By Jennifer Szalai

• Aug. 26, 2020
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The impulsiveness and grandiosity, the bullying and vulgarity, were obvious from the beginning; if anything, they accounted for Adolf Hitler’s anti-establishment appeal. For Germany’s unpopular conservative elites, Hitler’s energy and theatrics made him an enticing partner when they appointed him chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933.

But anyone who thought the Nazis would be content with their share — that Hitler would rise to the occasion or be hemmed in by it, becoming a dignified statesman who sought compromise — was summarily purged from the system that conservatives assumed they controlled. An utter impossibility had become the indomitable reality. The Weimar Republic had become the Third Reich. It would take another world war, a genocide and millions of dead before the dictatorship finally collapsed in 1945, a full 12 years after Hitler was invited into power.

In the second and final volume of his biography of Hitler, Volker Ullrich argues that the very qualities that accounted for the dictator’s astonishing rise were also what brought about his ultimate ruin. “Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945” arrives in English four years after the publication of “Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.” It’s a biographical project that consumed eight years of Ullrich’s life and “took a definite psychological toll,” he writes in his introduction to the second volume. Like the British historian Ian Kershaw, who divided his own two-volume biography of Hitler into “Hubris” and “Nemesis,” Ullrich suggests that the Hitlerian regime was capable of only two registers: euphoria and despair. Hitler was shrewd about seizing power, but he was too restless and reckless to govern. A Third Reich that cultivated peaceful stability was simply unfathomable.

“Downfall” begins just after Hitler’s 50th birthday, with the Führer entertaining thoughts of invading Poland as if it were a present to himself. “I have overcome the chaos in Germany, restored order and hugely increased productivity in all areas of our national economy,” he bragged to the Reichstag, even if the actual situation was considerably less stellar than he proclaimed. Years of enormous military expenditures had pushed Germany to the brink of economic collapse. Hitler had made a mess, and a war would clean it up. The idea, Ullrich writes, was to “transfer the costs of this financial crisis to the peoples that Germany was going to subjugate.”

At first, Hitler’s standard approach — lying, blaming others and launching surprise attacks — made for a successful wartime strategy. Nobody seemed willing to believe that he would be so greedy and foolish as to start an expansionist conflagration until he did. His propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels instructed journalists to avoid the word “war” and make the invasion sound as if Germany were repulsing a Polish attack, while Hitler was telling his minions that “the Poles need to get socked in the face.”

Hitler was who he was — the question became what the people around him were willing to do about it. The military commanders who voiced no objections to the Polish invasion balked when Hitler decided to go to war with the West, reassuring one another that they were determined to “put the brakes” on any disaster that was unfolding. But they were all intention and no action. “The final hope is that perhaps reason might prevail in the end,” one general confided to his wife.

Ullrich goes into detail when recounting the military history, depicting war as the inevitable expression of Germany’s fascist regime. In Jefferson Chase’s translation, the narrative moves swiftly, and it will absorb even those who are familiar with the vast library of Hitler books. To read “Downfall” is to see up close how Hitler lashed out — compulsively, destructively — whenever he felt boxed in. He had the instinct of a crude social-Darwinist who also liked to gamble, experiencing the world only in terms of winning and losing. As he told one of his skittish field marshals, “I have gone for broke all my life.”

And he felt boxed in all the time — in peace but especially in war, sending his troops to invade the Soviet Union in 1941, less than two years after signing a nonaggression pact with Stalin. The reason Hitler gave was couched in euphemisms like “living space,” but Ullrich prefers to define Operation Barbarossa in terms of what it actually started: “A racist war of conquest and annihilation unparalleled in human history.”

Hitler sometimes suggested he would be sated by exclusion and exploitation. “We will construct a gigantic wall separating Asia from Europe,” he promised. He declared that Slavs in occupied territories would be used for slave labor, and that their children would be educated only to the point where they could distinguish between German traffic signs. But his ambitions, as always, became ever more extreme and murderous, even if local authorities in the Third Reich had already been competing among themselves to make themselves “free of Jews.”

Hitler was a scattershot, undisciplined leader, prone to tardiness and meandering monologues, but the one unwavering constant was his virulent, fanatical anti-Semitism. He was continually railing against “Jewish Bolshevism” or “Jewish plutocracy,” depending on whether he wanted to emphasize the enemy to the East or the enemy to the West. As the war dragged on, he started painting himself as the savior of Europe, fulminating nonsensically but lethally against “the Jewish-capitalist-Bolshevik plot.”

As Ullrich points out, Hitler never issued a written order to exterminate the Jews, because he didn’t need to: He preferred to traffic in generalities instead of specifics, verbally making his wishes known so that his careerist minions could figure out the rest. “Part of his style of rule was to blur areas of responsibility and encourage rivalries to remind everyone concerned of his position as the sole ultimate arbiter,” Ullrich writes. Kershaw called this “working towards the Führer.” It was a method that allowed Hitler to feed his vanity while also preserving the option to deflect any blame onto others.

By 1941, Ullrich writes, Germany’s defeat was already assured, but Hitler would have none of it, getting rid of any military experts who challenged him. He doubled down on his own pitilessness, even toward his own people, saying that if they didn’t fight “they deserve to die out.” Following Hitler’s lead, Goebbels treated the Germans like chumps to be duped. “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished,” he noted with satisfaction in his diary during the early stages of Barbarossa. “That is best for us at the moment.”

The truth did emerge in the end, but only after years of mass death and cataclysmic destruction. Hitler had peddled so many lies that the fantasy he created was stretched impossibly thin. For all his pretensions to invincibility, he ended up a broken, sickly man, who confronted the reality bearing down on him by killing himself in his bunker. He had ordered his people to burn his body, so that only a few charred bits of bone and pieces of dental work remained. As Ullrich puts it, “There was hardly anything else left of the man who at the height of his career had fancied himself the ruler of the world.”

Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai .

Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945 By Volker Ullrich Translated by Jefferson Chase Illustrated. 838 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $40.

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StarTribune

Biography review: "hitler: beyond evil and tyranny".

R.H.S. Stolfi, a military historian, takes aim at the work of what he deems the "great" Adolf Hitler biographers -- including Allen Bullock, Joachim Fest and Ian Kershaw, to name the three principal targets. Stolfi conducts his argument like a military campaign, probing his fellow biographers' weaknesses -- especially their penchant for denigrating Hitler's intelligence and personality, both portrayed as second-rate and vapid.

How could such an "unperson," as Kershaw calls Hitler, have become what Stolfi calls him: a world historical individual, a rare human being who, according to Hegel, makes decisions and takes actions following a vision of history that often defies conventional moral categories? Biographers have belittled Hitler, Stolfi contends, because they cannot conceive that a man capable of such evil could also be human in the ordinary sense of the term.

Stolfi is no apologist for Hitler in the sense of minimizing his culpability for the Holocaust and the war, but the biographer wants to understand, even empathize, with the man. He portrays Hitler's great personal courage during World War I as an intrepid combat soldier, and afterward as a man who personally waged war in the streets of Germany against Marxist street gangs. Stolfi quotes Thomas Mann's reluctant admission that Hitler was an artist, and shows, in detail, Hitler's consummate understanding of opera and architecture and how those arts shaped his view of history and modern Germany.

Most important, however, Stolfi analyzes Hitler as a world leader of astonishing capability, a leader unlike any other politician of his time. Hitler was a messiah, wishing to create a new Germany unencumbered by the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty that crippled German politics and the country's economy. Over and over, Hitler made decisions alone, drawing on an inner inspiration -- which Stolfi likens to Muhammad's impetus -- and commanding not only a loyal band of followers but the allegiance of millions.

Why did Hitler fail? Ultimately, his major weakness was his siege mentality. He halted the German army in August 1941, just when it was poised to take Moscow in a victory that in Stolfi's judgment would have ended World War II before the United States entered it. Hitler next directed his forces toward the Ukraine and other areas with rich natural resources that could sustain Germany. Consequently, the German drive to Moscow, delayed until October 1941, ran into the coldest winter in 200 years and stalled.

Carl Rollyson is the author of several biographies, including forthcoming books on Dana Andrews (fall 2012) and Sylvia Plath (spring 2013).

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Reading the Best Biographies of All Time

Review of “Hitler: A Biography” by Ian Kershaw

01 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by Steve in Leaders / Politicians

≈ 12 Comments

Adolf Hitler , Alan Bullock , biographies , book reviews , Ian Kershaw , Joachim Fest , John Toland , Nazi Germany , Volker Ullrich

“ Hitler: A Biography ” is Ian Kershaw’s 2008 abridgment of his masterful two-volume series on Adolf Hitler.  Kershaw is a British historian focused on 20th-century Germany and is a noted expert on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

The volumes underlying this abridgment (“ Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris ” and “ Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis “) were published in 1998 and 2000, respectively. The series was originally conceived as a study of power – much like Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon B. Johnson – but grew into something even deeper and more substantial than expected. Kershaw was convinced to condense the series in order to make it accessible to a wider group of readers.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) is one of history’s most horrifying and unfathomable demons. Not surprisingly, there are a large number of excellent books focused on his life and legacy including well-known biographies by Alan Bullock , Joachim Fest , John Toland and Volker Ullrich , among others.

Readers seeking an uplifting and entertaining biography would do well to steer clear of Hitler, of course. But anyone willing to embrace a serious and somber subject will find that Kershaw’s abridged biography of Hitler is extraordinarily thoughtful, methodical and penetrating.

Much of the 969-page narrative is devoted to considering Hitler’s personality, psychological make-up and his rhetorical and political talents. As Kershaw adeptly observes, these catalysts – along with a unique combination of timing, chance and circumstance – converged in such a way that Hitler and his perverted world view could take root and flourish.

The book’s focus on Hitler’s persona – which also considers his childhood influences, early professional failures and the broader context of post-WWI Germany – is arguably the most interesting and insightful part of the book. But the remainder of the narrative – which systematically documents the disintegration of the old German Republic and the rise of Hitler’s monstrous variant of fascism – is undeniably meritorious.

In many ways, this is really a political biography of both Hitler and the Nazi Party. As such, it is careful to consider the broad social, cultural, economic and political contexts which contributed to Hitler’s rise. Readers unfamiliar with mid-twentieth century history or World War II’s broad thrusts, however, may find Kershaw’s field-of-view too tightly focused on central Europe to provide much insight into the “big picture.”

The narrative is consistently serious, analytical and reflective. It is also frequently dry and fact-heavy. Kershaw’s riveting dissection of Hitler’s persona eventually transitions to an exhaustive chronicle of events which fans of the era will find intellectually invigorating. But some readers are likely to find large sections of the biography tedious or superfluous.

In addition, it may surprise some readers that such a detailed biography of Germany’s idiopathic villain almost entirely fails to involve figures like Winston Churchill, FDR and Dwight Eisenhower. However, notorious henchmen such as Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess (among many others) are prominently featured, along with other key adversaries and allies such as Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin.

Overall, Ian Kershaw’s “ Hitler: A Biography ” is nearly everything one could expect from a serious survey of Hitler’s life: it is magisterial and sweeping, serious, thorough, analytical and extraordinarily thoughtful. Only readers with an inclination toward more buoyant topics, or a lighthearted and mellifluous narrative, will find much lacking in this biography.

Overall rating: 4¼ stars

12 thoughts on “Review of “Hitler: A Biography” by Ian Kershaw”

September 1, 2022 at 2:37 pm

I’ve only read one complete biography on Hitler, and it was John Toland’s I would recommend it also. This bio doesn’t bog down at all. Not only covers all aspects of Hitler’s life, but does a good job of describing of what made Hitler.

September 1, 2022 at 3:46 pm

Nice review as usual. I’ve read the full two-volumes of Kershaw’s bio but it doesn’t sound like the abridgement lost much of substance. He has a very good handle not only on Hitler but also the broader concept of the Fuhrerprinzip and how Nazism actually functioned as a system of government. Some other writers (Richard Evans I think) have criticized him for being too narrowly focused on Hitler’s perspective, but that’s probably inevitable in a biography.

September 2, 2022 at 4:37 am

I was fascinated to read Kershaw’s explanation for writing the single-volume condensed version of the series and the struggle he faced trying to abbreviate something he felt was already the perfect length 🙂

Although his narrative is certainly quite focused on Hitler’s sphere, I suppose it’s hard to fault. This book isn’t likely to have many readers who cannot fill in the bigger picture – even though adding that even broader context intermittently would have made this a better, more approachable book for a larger potential audience.

September 1, 2022 at 4:01 pm

For Steve, from Volker Ulrich’s introduction to Hitler, which I hope will help him in his subsequent journey:

“Parallel to but largely independent of the entertainment market, academic historians around the world have pressed forward with investigations concerning nearly every aspect of Hitler and National Socialism. No historical topic has been more thoroughly researched in all its nooks and crannies—today the literature on the subject fills whole libraries. And yet academic interest in this “murky figure” never wanes. The riddles surrounding Hitler —the questions of how and why he could come to power and hang on to it for more than a decade—demand ever-new explanations. There has been no shortage of biographical approaches to these questions, but only four have stood the test of time: Konrad Heiden’s two-volume Hitler: A Biography, written in the mid-1930s from Swiss exile; Alan Bullock’s canonical Hitler: A Study in Tyranny from the early 1950s; Joachim Fest’s sweeping portrait Hitler: A Biography, first published in 1973; and Ian Kershaw’s standard-setting Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis from 1998 and 2000.4

September 2, 2022 at 4:38 am

Thanks for this! I always love reading pithy thoughts about competing biographies from people who, although possibly biased, are in a position to have keen insight.

September 1, 2022 at 5:38 pm

Kershaw’s To Hell and Back was a rough read for me (though that may be due to its breadth), so I did not have his Hitler bio on my list. Good to see you liked this overall, though your dry and fact heavy comment reminds me of why I did not like To Hell and Back. I have also been considering whether to read Evans’ Third Reich Trilogy which gets a lot of positive reviews.

September 1, 2022 at 9:30 pm

Evans’ books fully deserve their reputation. Especially the second volume (The Third Reich in Power) which gets into the fine grain detail of what it was like to live in Hitler’s Germany.

September 1, 2022 at 10:22 pm

Thanks. I think I will read them.

September 2, 2022 at 3:52 pm

I have been using your bibliography of American presidents with abandon. I usually order used copies of hard cover ones since they are too unwieldy to read in paper. I am so grateful for the depth of your reviews. I am looking forward to volume 2 on JFK and note that the author is on leave, hopefully to finish it. Logevall is such a good writer that I went ahead and read his volume on the French involvement in Viet Nam as it transferred to be our problem. I will pass on Hitler, but appreciate your clear review.

September 3, 2022 at 4:53 am

It’s funny, but I have found myself strongly tending towards hardbacks as well. Easier to travel with, easier to keep open without laying another book on the edge of the pages I’ve read while I read and type notes, …..

I am looking forward to Logevall’s 2nd volume (and have been for quite some time). I’ve not yet read volume 1 though it’s staring at me from a bookshelf. But having skimmed it, I’m really looking forward to the series once it is complete!

September 3, 2022 at 2:25 pm

I devoured Volume 1 and was particularly captured by his clear prose. Hence my following up with his other books.

December 4, 2022 at 12:40 pm

I have found that some of the biographies are so big that they are difficult to hold and in those cases I look for an e-version from my library.

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What is the best Hitler biography?

• Post author By C .T.
• Post date January 5, 2012
• 5 Comments on What is the best Hitler biography?

by Andrew Hamilton

Regarding Hitler, I agree with Irmin Vinson:

I consider Hitler less a model to be followed than an avalanche of propaganda we must dig ourselves out from under. Never in human history has a single man received such sustained vilification, the basic effect and purpose of which has been to inhibit Whites from thinking racially and from acting in their own racial self-interest, as all other racial/ethnic groups do. Learning the truth about Hitler is a liberating experience. By the truth I mean not an idealized counter-myth to the pervasive myth of Hitler as evil incarnate, but the man himself, faults and virtues, strengths and weaknesses. ( “Some Thoughts on Hitler” )

Since literally thousands of worthless books have been churned out about Der Boss, how does one sift through the massive pile of crap on the hopeful assumption that, “Hey, with all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”?

A “good” biography by my definition is an objective, truthful account, not a comic book fabrication about a lunatic, one-testicled rug chewer, or a thinly-disguised religious fable in which Hitler (= Satan/Nazis/Germans/white people) crucifies 6 million Jews (= God’s chosen people, elbowing the Lord Jesus Christ aside) by fantastic and diabolical means before efficiently employing the grisly remains to manufacture bars of soap and lampshades for the amusement of Hitler and his henchmen, or to lighten the burden of wartime rationing.

Hopefully, the book would be well-written and fun to read, as well.

If there’s a reliable bibliographical essay along these lines, I am unaware of it. Ian Kershaw’s biography

What brought this perennial question— What is the best Hitler biography? —to mind recently was an article about English historian Sir Ian Kershaw in the Guardian (UK) newspaper asserting that the author’s two-volume, 2,000-page (prolixity is the norm in Hitler studies) biography of Hitler published to wide acclaim a decade ago, “is likely to remain the standard life for a generation.”

The biography is: Volume 1, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (London: 1998), and Volume 2, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: 2000). A single-volume abridgement, Hitler: A Biography , appeared in 2008.

This pattern of two-volume books and abridgements, plus multiple translations, editions and printings of the same book at different times, often with different titles, continually bedevils the researcher.

Kershaw, who comes from a white, working-class background, does not inspire confidence. Among other things, he’s a knight (OBE), though he claims to be “embarrassed” by the “neo-feudal title.”

During the so-called Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) in Germany from 1986 to 1989, Kershaw teamed with academic mentor Martin Broszat, an anti-German German, to publicly attack other German historians—Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand—as apologists for the German past. “Comic Book” Titles as a Screen

One heuristic I use is to reject any book with a ridiculous or patently propagandistic title.

Using that guideline, the New York Times did Kershaw no favor when it titled its shallow reviews of his two Hitler volumes “The Devil’s Miracle Man” and “When Depravity Was Contagious,” respectively.

Examples of other self-destructive titles are The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (1977; 1993), Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (1998), Hitler: The Pathology of Evil (1998), Adolf Hitler: A Chilling Tale of Propaganda as Packaged by Joseph Goebbels. (1999), Adolf Hitler: A Study in Hate (2001), and Hitler and the Nazi Leaders: A Unique Insight into Evil (2001). Books I own

I read Konrad Heiden’s critical Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944) in high school. Its first chapter, “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,” was my introduction to Alfred Rosenberg. I remember being enthralled by the book. Heiden was at least half-Jewish (his mother). He eventually fled Germany and settled in the United States, where he died in 1966. In Hitler’s War David Irving warns against reliance upon Heiden’s and several other biographies “hitherto accepted as ‘standard’ sources on Hitler” without further elaboration.

Another book I read while young is journalist William Shirer’s 1,245-page The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1960). It sold more than 2 million copies and won the National Book Award. I read the whole thing, but with nothing like the zest I read Der Fuehrer . Unfortunately, Shirer’s work is empirically and ideologically flawed.

Robert Payne, author of The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), was a freelance writer, not an academic or journalist. He was enormously prolific. I looked him up in Contemporary Authors and learned that he authored over 110 novels, biographies, and histories. If he began at age 20, he wrote (and published) more than two books per year until he died at age 72. Evidently his pace exacted a price on accuracy. Besides purveying conventional ideological and racial animus, the biography contains glaring factual errors, some very big indeed.

Two spurious memoirs frequently cited by mainstream historians are Hermann Rauschning’s Conversations with Hitler (1940) (US title: The Voice of Destruction and Fritz Thyssen’s I Paid Hitler (1943) (neither of which I own), both published by a Hungarian Jew, Churchill confidant, and world federalist named Emery Reves.

Rauschning’s fabricated Conversations with Hitler has been relied upon by William L. Shirer, Robert Payne, Jewish historians Leon Poliakov, Gerhard Weinberg, and Nora Levin, Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952) (the first comprehensive biography, Bullock’s Hitler dominated scholarship for years; it also possesses the kind of title that’s a red flag to me; I do not own it), and Joachim C. Fest’s Hitler (Germ. 1973, Eng. trans. 1974), among others. For background on this see Mark Weber, “ Rauschning’s Phony Conversations With Hitler : An Update ,” Journal of Historical Review (Winter 1985 – 86), pp. 499 ff.

Nevertheless, as David Irving points out, “Historians are quite incorrigible, and will quote any apparently primary source [memoirs, diaries, autobiographies, etc.] no matter how convincingly its false pedigree is exposed.” When “serious” biographers rely upon works like Rauschning’s, their books should be approached cautiously, if at all.

Fest’s Hitler , the first major biography since Alan Bullock’s in 1952, and the first ever by a German author, became the bestselling book in Germany upon its publication; the next year it was translated into 17 languages. A prominent German journalist, broadcaster, and anti-Nazi, Fest was one of a troika of Establishment editors who re-wrote, or co-wrote, German armaments minister Albert Speer’s famous memoir, Inside the Third Reich (Germ. 1969; Eng. trans. 1970). (Speer was imprisoned at Spandau from 1946 to 1966.) The book, a worldwide bestseller, made a fortune for Speer and earned widespread praise for its disavowal of Hitler. According to David Irving , Speer had a secret agreement with his German publisher, Ullstein Verlag, to pay 25% of all royalties and proceeds to the State of Israel.

About Fest’s Hitler Irving wrote, “Stylistically, Fest’s German was good; but the old legends were trotted out afresh, polished to an impressive gleam of authority.”

As noted above, Fest fought on the conservative side of Germany’s Historian’s Dispute in the 1980s, denying the “singularity” of the Holocaust (which, however, he believed in). His Wikipedia entry provides lengthy quotations that strike a contemporary reader as heretical.

Finally, a friend kindly gave me his copy of Timothy W. Ryback’s Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life (2008), which is both interesting and informative. Recommendations of a dissident: William Pierce’s National Vanguard Books Catalog (December 1988)

I’ve often used this valuable reference over the years. It is essentially an elaborate college syllabus. Subdivisions include “European Prehistory, Archaeology, & Folkways,” “European Legend, Myth, and Religion,” “History of Western Civilization,” “Western Art,” and so on. Its 125 carefully-selected titles provide in-depth knowledge and a comprehensive overview of the white race and Western civilization.

With the exception of Mein Kampf , only three Hitler biographies are included in Pierce’s catalog, none of them standard ones. Two are: Heinz A. Heinz, Germany’s Hitler (London: 1934), and Hans Baur (Hitler’s personal pilot), Hitler at My Side (1986).

The third, Otto Wagener’s Hitler–Memoirs of a Confidant (1985), was written in 1946 when Wagener was a British prisoner. It was not published until many years after his death by the late Yale historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. Pierce described the book as “By far the most informative and positive memoir by a confidant of Hitler since August Kubizek’s The Young Hitler I Knew ” ([German 1953, English 1955], another memoir NV had previously sold).

A notable feature of Wagener’s memoir is that, according to historian Gordon Craig’s New York Times review , it strongly emphasizes Hitler’s pro-British views and depicts the Führer as “an ‘unwitting prisoner’ of Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, powerless to prevent his true intentions from being distorted by evil associates for their own criminal purposes”—claims by an eyewitness that parallel David Irving’s controversial views. Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and Zweites Buch (Second Book)

Though not biographies, strictly speaking, I own 1950s-era drugstore paperback copies of Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944 (1953) and Felix Gilbert, ed. and trans., Hitler Directs His War (1950).

According to David Irving , the transcripts published as Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944 are genuine. (Though Irving doesn’t say it, the book he discusses, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944 , is the same as mine, but with a different title—I warned you it’s complicated!)

I recommend clicking on the preceding link to get a feel for how important it is to understand the provenance and reliability—the evidentiary basis—of even “mainstream” books and texts you might otherwise assume are problem-free. To his credit, Irving is keenly aware of the difficulties posed by mainstream books and official documents housed in archives. They cannot simply be accepted at face value.

I should nevertheless quote the following from Irving’s web page:

The Table Talks ’ content is more important in my view than Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and possibly even more than his Zweites Buch (1928). It is unadulterated Hitler. He expatiates on virtually every subject under the sun, while his generals and private staff sit patiently and listen, or pretend to listen, to the monologues. Along with Sir Nevile Henderson’s gripping 1940 book Failure of a Mission: Berlin, 1937-1939 , this was one of the first books that I read, as a twelve year old: Table Talk makes for excellent bedtime reading, as each “meal” occupies only two or three pages of print. My original copy, purloined from my twin brother Nicholas, was seized along with the rest of my research library in May 2002.

He adds: “Ignore the 1945 ‘transcripts’ published by Hugh Trevor-Roper in the 1950s as Hitler’s Last Testament [ The Testament of Adolf Hitler —Ed.]—they are fake.” That book purports to be Martin Bormann’s notes on Hitler’s final bunker conversations.

Mein Kampf was originally published in German in two volumes, the first in 1925 and the second in 1927. English translations combine both volumes into one.

I read Mein Kampf thoroughly in 1988, as my well-marked copy indicates. (The fact that it was ’88 is coincidental!) However, the book did not have an impact on me intellectually or emotionally. I wasn’t a national socialist then (much less a National Socialist) and am not one now. Nor do I view Hitler as a quasi-sacred figure.

Part of the reason for the book’s lack of effect may be due to the particular translation I purchased. In the original German the book was a runaway bestseller and the source of much of Hitler’s private fortune. Even acknowledging the political factors involved, one cannot dismiss the possibility that it reads better in German than in its English translations. The quality of a translation determines how well a book “travels” from one language to another. Both fidelity to the original (accuracy) and transmission of the spirit or feel are necessary. I have experienced translations that capture the originals marvelously, and others where even classic works appear dead on the page.

I bought my copy of Mein Kampf without prior research and ended up purchasing the 1939 Hurst and Blackett translation by James Murphy .

Murphy, a former Irish Catholic priest, was hired by the German government to make the official English translation, but the project was scuttled after a dispute. Murphy continued the translation nevertheless, and it appeared independently in Britain in 1939.

I later learned that many English-speaking National Socialists prefer Ralph Manheim’s 1943 Houghton Mifflin translation (which I have not read). It is possible that Manheim better catches the spirit of Hitler’s original, because he was also the translator of Konrad Heiden’s Der Fuehrer which so enthralled me as a boy.

In his catalog, William Pierce categorized Mein Kampf as “semi-autobiographical,” calling it “a beacon and a guide to every healthy soul in this dark age, to everyone who seeks understanding and light.” He described the differences between the English translations this way:

Manheim translation : Accurate, but marred by anti-Hitler introductions and derogatory footnotes. Murphy translation : No hostile comments, but the translation is not as faithful to the original text.

After Mein Kampf , Hitler wrote what has become known as the Zweites Buch (Second Book) (1928), an extension and elaboration of his foreign policy aims. It also sets forth his views of the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and the United States. The book was written to clarify his foreign policy objectives for the German public after the 1928 elections. However, his publisher advised him that, from a sales point of view, the time was not propitious for bringing it out. By 1930 Hitler had decided that it revealed too much about his intentions, so it was never published.

In 1935 it was locked away at his order in a safe inside an air raid shelter. There it remained until the fall of Germany in 1945, when it was discovered by the American invaders. Its authenticity was reportedly vouched for by Josef Berg and Telford Taylor.

In 1958 the manuscript of the Zweites Buch , having again fallen into obscurity, was rediscovered in American archives by Jewish historian Gerhard Weinberg. Weinberg, whose family left Germany for the United States in 1938, is the author of numerous anti-German academic books and articles and a vigorous Holocaust promoter. He is Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Weinberg strongly supported the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe after WWII, which resulted in an enormous number of white deaths.

Unable to find a US publisher for the book, Weinberg turned to a fellow Jew in Germany, Hans Rothfels; a German edition of the Second Book was issued in 1961. (A pirated copy translated into English appeared in New York the following year.) An authoritative English edition did not appear until 40 years later: Gerhard L. Weinberg, ed., Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf (New York: Enigma Books, 2003).

Because I had never heard of this book until 2003, I thought the whole story a bit strange. It is unclear how many scholars apart from Weinberg have examined the original manuscript, or what methods of authentication were used. However, David Irving sold the 2003 edition at one of his lectures, and has indicated at least implicitly on several occasions (some quoted here) that he accepts the book as genuine. David Irving

David Irving’s Hitler’s War is interesting on several levels.

An independent, non-academic historian, Irving has been victimized to an unimaginable degree over many decades by the Jewish power structure, including a global panoply of government agencies, apparatchiks, courts, police, and academic and media shills eternally at its beck and call. His suffering is mind-numbing proof of the bizarre, Orwellian world we live in. Blacklisted and bankrupted, his personal prosperity and former high reputation are in ruins.

His book, as usual, is long: 985 pages (2002 ed.), and again there is the thorny problem of multiple volumes and editions of a single biography floating around. Hitler’s War was first published in 1977, and its prequel, The War Path , in 1978. In 1991 a revised 1-volume edition incorporating both books was issued as Hitler’s War . In 2002, a revised “Millennium Edition” was published under the title Hitler’s War and the War Path , incorporating the latest documents from American, British, and former Soviet archives. This is the one I own.

In an introductory Note Irving states that in the Millennium Edition he has not revised his earlier views, but merely refined the narrative and reinforced the documentary basis of his former assertions.

Famed for working almost exclusively from official archival documents, diaries, private letters, and other original source material, his method has the downside of somewhat impeding smooth narrative flow. However, this is compensated for by the rich source material. Almost incredibly, Irving admits :

I have dipped into Mein Kampf but never read it: it was written only partly by Hitler, and that is the problem. More important are Hitlers Zweites Buch , (1928) which he wrote in his own hand; and Hitler’s Table Talk , daily memoranda which first Heinrich Heim (Martin Bormann’s adjutant, whom I interviewed) and then Henry Picker wrote down at his table side, and the similar table talks recorded by Werner Koeppen (which I was the first to exploit, in Hitler’s War ).

In his introduction, notes, and on his website, Irving reveals the care necessary in dealing with even supposedly reliable documentary materials, never mind historians’ work (which he typically ignores). German memoirs, for example, have been extensively tampered with by publishers, Allied authorities, and others. When using them Irving attempts to work from the original typescripts rather than published texts. Even documents contained in government archives have been altered, removed, or otherwise manipulated. His many discussions about such issues are highly instructive.

Irving is not a “Holocaust denier” as Jews claim, though he does not believe in every jot and tittle of their religious narrative as everyone else does.

One of Irving’s most controversial claims is that “antisemitism” in Germany was “a powerful vote catching force,” “an evil steed” that Hitler had no compunction in riding to the chancellorship in 1933. But once in power, “he dismounted and paid only lip service to that part of his Party’s creed.” The “evil gangsters” under him, however—Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels—continued to ride it even when Hitler dictated differently.

Although Irving maintains that a Jewish Holocaust of sorts did occur (unfortunately, he is exceedingly vague, evasive, and even contradictory about its details, and denies any interest in it), he says that Hitler’s evil henchmen dreamed it up and carried it out entirely without Hitler’s knowledge or approval. Thus, while Irving is a Hitlerphile, he is extremely harsh toward “bad guys” like Himmler (in particular), Heydrich, and Goebbels. The reader may perhaps see how Irving’s central thesis is hard to… accept .

Irving has published a critical biography of Goebbels and is currently working on one about Himmler. Himmler’s elderly daughter Gudrun has publicly expressed her fear that Irving will perform a hatchet job on her father in an attempt to salvage his (Irving’s) reputation.

In fairness to Irving, Jewish historian Felix Gilbert, editor of Hitler Directs His War (above), wrote that “during the war, Hitler cut himself off from all his former associates and interests and closed himself in at his headquarters with his military advisers. The center of Hitler’s activities became then the daily conferences on the military situation.” This suggests possible great autonomy on the part of Himmler and others, at least after the inception of the war. Irving, however, tends to emphasize disloyalty, deceit, and manipulation by Himmler and others rather than Hitler’s isolation or distraction. Still, as previously noted, Otto Wagener’s Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant also presents a picture of Hitler’s relationship to his top lieutenants even in the early days of the regime that is similar to Irving’s.

The most important thing to note is that Hitler’s War is not a biography per se , but a military history of WWII from Hitler’s perspective. My primary interest, however, apart from biography, is the racial, political, philosophical, and social aspects of Hitler’s Germany rather than the conduct of the war. John Toland’s Hitler

La Crosse, Wisconsin-born John W. Toland is another independent scholar who wrote a major biography of Hitler: Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography . Something of an intellectual renegade in his later years, he managed to stay beneath the radar screen of controversy. His books remain popular and highly regarded. His best-known book, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (1970), won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Based upon extensive original interviews with high Japanese officials who survived the war, it was the first book in English to tell the history of the war in the Pacific from the Japanese rather than the American point of view. (Toland married a Japanese woman.)

Toland’s mildly controversial Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (1982) offered a quasi-revisionist view of the Roosevelt Administration’s scapegoating of the Pearl Harbor commanders and subsequent cover-up. The Pearl Harbor book led to Toland’s association with the Holocaust revisionist Institute for Historical Review (IHR), at whose meeting he spoke .

After Jewish terrorists firebombed the Institute on the Fourth of July, 1984, destroying its warehouse and inventory of books (American authorities “never found”—or punished—the perpetrators), Toland wrote to the IHR:

When I learned of the torching of the office-warehouse of the Institute for Historical Review I was shocked. And when I heard no condemnation of this act of terrorism on television and read no protests in the editorial pages of our leading newspapers or from the halls of academia, I was dismayed and incensed. Where are those defenders of democracy who over the years have so vigorously protested the burning of books by Hitler? Are they only summer soldiers of democracy, selective in their outrage? I call on all true believers in democracy to join me in public denunciation of the recent burning of books in Torrance, California.

Toland’s Adolf Hitler was based upon a great deal of original research, including previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and interviews with Hitler’s colleagues and associates. I have had difficulty identifying a good copy of the biography for sale on Amazon due to the headache of multiple editions and reprints I mentioned earlier.

As near as I can determine, the initial publication was Adolf Hitler , 2 vols. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976). However, sellers often list it for sale on Amazon while really having only one volume (which one is usually undeterminable) in stock. On the other hand, one seller informed me that he checked his 1976 edition in the warehouse, and it appeared to be a complete book in one volume. My impression is that the reprint (I assume it is unrevised), Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Doubleday, 1992), is the same book in a single volume.

Toland’s biography was well-received by both reviewers and the public. In his autobiography Toland wrote that he earned little money from his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Rising Sun , but was set for life thanks to the earnings from Adolf Hitler .

Patrick Buchanan penned a column about the book in 1977, after which he was widely condemned for “praising Hitler.” Daniel Weiss of the Virginia Quarterly Review wrote that “In some respects the Hitler who emerges is almost too human, too normal.”

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review and a longtime WWII revisionist who reads German, writes:

I’m sometimes asked which biography of Hitler I think is best, or which I recommend. In my view, the best single biography of Hitler, and the one I most often recommend, is the one by John Toland, Adolf Hitler . It’s especially good in helping the reader to understand Hitler’s personality and outlook. Kershaw’s biography is detailed, but it’s also very slanted and leaves out a lot.

It would be a mistake to assume that Weber’s recommendation is the result of Toland’s brief connection with the IHR. Adolf Hitler was written several years before that relationship developed. Moreover, in 1977, when David Irving offered a thousand pound reward to anyone who could produce a single wartime document showing that Hitler knew anything about the Holocaust, Toland published an emotional appeal in Der Spiegel urging his fellow historians to refute Irving.

It is unlikely that Toland’s book is “pro-Hitler.” Certainly, reviewers have not attacked it as such. Conclusion

I guess I’ll go with Toland’s biography, evidently the most objective, despite owning several others instead. Although I’ve only scratched the surface, it is apparent that enormous effort is required to merely survey the field before diving in to actually get a handle on The Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived.

And what is the likely outcome of such an effort? Well, David Irving, who has spent the better part of a lifetime studying the Führer, concluded:

What is the result of twenty years’ toiling in the archives? Hitler will remain an enigma, however hard we burrow. Even his intimates realised that they hardly knew him. General Alfred Jodl, his closest strategic adviser, wrote in his Nuremberg cell on March 10, 1946: “I ask myself, did you ever really know this man at whose side you led such a thorny and ascetic existence? To this very day I do not know what he thought or knew or really wanted.”

_____________________

Fifteen comments about this article can be read at Counter-Currents Publishing .

• Tags Adolf Hitler , Biography , History

5 replies on “What is the best Hitler biography?”

Excellent and thorough work Chechar! Thank you very much for this comprehensive listing.

Andrew Hamilton is the author, not me. But presently I am writing a piece for Counter Currents that tentatively I could title, “Unfalsifiability in psychiatry and licit drugging of white children”. If Greg publishes it I could say that that represents a “thorough work” from my part. Cheers.

Sorry, I realised after that it was from another author posted at Counter Currents.

I look forward to your essay and hope it gets published at Counter Currents. Do you have other essays published at CC?

And, happy new year to you Chechar and all who read your blog. All the best in 2012 mate. Keep up the great work.

I echo everything Pat says. Can’t wait to see more of your work around the web 🙂

I submitted my piece to CC last Saturday, but although I got a receipt I still don’t know if it will be published there.

Comments are closed.

‘The Meaning of Hitler’ Review: A Look At Why the Icon of 20th-Century Hate Lives on in the 21st

A documentary meditates on Hitler's evil in ways that add to your knowledge.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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When a documentary is called “ The Meaning of Hitler ,” there are two things you know off the bat. One is that the film probably won’t live up to that title — and doesn’t have to, because how could it? The other thing you know is that it’s trying for something audacious, placing itself on the high bar of who-was-Adolf-Hitler? meditation. And that’s a good thing, since for all the mystery that still surrounds Hitler we do know a great deal about him, and we want a movie like this one to jolt us with the shock of the new. The author Martin Amis, who’s one of the most compelling people interviewed here, says that if you can expand our knowledge of Hitler by just a millimeter, you’ve done something. We go into “The Meaning of Hitler” craving that millimeter of insight, of intrigue and revelation. And the film provides it. It ruminates on Hitler and the Third Reich in ways that churn up your platitudes.

Here, for instance, is an offbeat historical detail that I found weirdly resonant. Hitler, as we know, was one of the most hypnotic orators of the 20th century; his speeches were frothing arias of seduction and rage. But none of that would have happened in quite the way it did had it not been for the invention of a revolutionary microphone that became the prototype for the microphones that would propel the music industry. The old mics used carbon chips, which meant that you had to be no more than an inch away from them or your voice would drop out. In the ’20s, public speakers stood stock-still, glued to their mics. The new microphone allowed Hitler to use his arms and body, to stand back and lean in, to give a thrusting gesticulating physical-vocal performance . Without it, he would still have been Hitler, but it was a case of technology not just lifting evil but giving form to it.

Popular on Variety

Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, the husband-and-wife writer-director team (“Gunner Palace”) who made “The Meaning of Hitler,” have conceived the film as a free-form, go-with-the-flow meditation on the Nazi era, made in the exploratory road-movie spirit of Werner Herzog’s recent documentaries. Like Herzog, Epperlein and Tucker listen to their impulses, trotting off to key locations — Hitler’s birthplace, the art college that rejected him, the bunker where he killed himself — and talking to the freest thinkers they can find.

One observer claims that if you switch on German television, there’s a 95 percent chance that you’ll stumble onto a Hitler documentary. It might be about Hitler’s friends, Hitler’s household, Hitler in private, 10 things you didn’t know about Hitler, his dogs, his women, his cars, his food, his secret weapons, his drug habit. Is this evidence of an attempt to understand him, or is it the lingering of his cult? Maybe both. One of the film’s themes is that Hitler, more than ever, remains a presence in Germany and in the world, which suggests something basic and disturbing: that the impact of Hitler and Nazism, the iconography of it, the power and the mythology — that all of that may now be having a greater impact on the generations coming up than the actual horrors that Hitler perpetrated.

It all ties into the rise, and increasing omnipotence, of fantasy culture. The horror of the Third Reich was reality at its most hideous. But Hitler, in his insidious way, represented a transporting fantasy, to the point that some may now view him as a superhero of hate. As Martin Amis puts it, “Part of the spell of great evildoers is that they have this capacity to astonish. You can’t believe anyone’s going to behave as demonically as that. And that in itself confers a kind of aura.”

The movie keeps circling back to the 1978 book “The Meaning of Hitler,” written by the German author Sebastian Haffner (a pseudonym for the journalist Raimund Pretzel, born in 1907 and a witness to the rise of the Nazis), who pointed out that Hitler lacked the things that normally add weight and meaning to life. He had no occupation. He had no friends, which is striking for a politician. He was, famously, a failed artist, and we’re given an analysis of one of the “four watercolor” paintings that got him rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. It’s painted with a graphic precision and feeling for light and shadow that indicate that Hitler, had he been born a few decades later, had the skills to become a commercial artist, if not quite a fine artist.

But Hitler proved to be the first twisted artist of mass media. In “Triumph of the Will,” of course, he employed Leni Riefenstahl to turn the Nazis into a sci-fi dream of lockstep delirium. “The Nazis,” one scholar tells us, “had a feeling that they were acting in some huge historical play — for the future, for history.” The film suggests that Hitler’s secret promise to the German people was that in the future, they could do the killing that was in their hearts. By 1978, when Haffner published his book, we would probably say that they were wrong. The Nazis, after all, had been defeated. The Third Reich, which was supposed to last 1,000 years, was crushed before it began.

Yet now, in our relatively young century, the Nazis have begun to loom larger — as myth and metaphor, as sick-dream fascist reverie. They were destroyed, but they cast a dark shadow. The most chilling section of the movie is one in which the filmmakers, posing as a sympathetic audience, gain access to David Irving, the British historian and Holocaust denier who has already had his 15 minutes of infamy. So why give him more air time? Because the filmmakers, tagging along with Irving during one of his profiteering tours of the death camp at Treblinka (where 900,000 were killed), do something more than expose one scoundrel’s anti-Semitism. They demonstrate how Holocaust denial, once on the fringes, is now spreading like a virus, becoming a featured piece of historical fake news.

As the historian Deborah Lipstadt (who sued Irving for libel) puts it in the film, “Anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory.” Indeed, as codified in the early 20th century by the fraudulent document “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” it’s more or less the original conspiracy theory. We hear Irving and a couple of his tour patrons chortle at the slogan that famously adorned the gate of Auschwitz (“Work Sets You Free”), which Irving claims was a joke on the Jewish prisoners. “The Jews don’t like any kind of manual work,” he says. “They just like writing receipts.” Irving then adds, “All these victims, it never occurs to them to ask themselves, ‘Why us?'” That’s a revealing comment. It indicates that if you look under the rock of Holocaust denial, what you’ll find is the slimy reality of Holocaust endorsement.

What feels very now, as documented in “The Meaning of Hitler,” are the testimonials of media-blinkered hipsters — in the U.S. and in Europe — who believe that Jews are the root of all evil. In the film, the sly wizened ninetysomething professor Yehuda Bauer says, “One of the great problems that people today have who are educated in liberal or semi-liberal societies is they don’t understand how people can believe that stuff.” We then see a clip of the YouTube superstar PewDiePie, on one of his videos, making light of a sign that says “Death to all Jews.”

To say that Nazism could make a comeback, or is in fact making one, may not sound like much of an insight. But Prof. Bauer’s point is simple and profound, and it’s where “The Meaning of Hitler” finds its boldest impact. “Hitler,” he says, “was a perfectly normal person. His psychological problems were no different from those of many millions of others.” Is that the hidden key to it all? It sounds too easy, and is probably a knowing exaggeration, but the film goes on to make the point that the barbarism of the Nazis was many things but that ultimately it was human. It’s something we’re capable of — what people did, and could do again. That’s the meaning of Hitler.

Reviewed online, Nov. 11, 2020. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 91 MIN.

• Production: (Documentary) An UWAGA Film, Play/Action Pictures, Means of Production production. Producers: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker, Dana O’Keefe, Mike Lerner. Executive producers: Jeffrey Lurie, Marie Therese Guigis, Anthony K. Dobkin.
• Crew: Directors, writers: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker. Camera: Michael Tucker. Editors: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker. Music: Alexander Kliment.
• With: Martin Amis, Yehuda Bauer, Peter Theiss-Abendroth, Saul Friedlander, Deborah Lipstadt, Richard J. Evans, Gavriel Rosenfeld, Francine Prose, Enno Lenze, Mark Benecke, Florian Kotanko, Klaus Theweleit.

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History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on hitler, recommended by michael burleigh.

WINNER 2001 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction

The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh

Hitler has a reputation as the incarnation of evil. But, as British historian Michael Burleigh points out in selecting the best books on the German dictator, Hitler was a bizarre and strangely empty character who never did a proper day's work in his life, as well as a raving fantasist on to whom Germans were able to project their longings.

The Fuehrer by Konrad Heiden

Hitler’s Vienna by Brigitte Hamann

Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People by J P Stern

The Hitler Myth by Ian Kershaw

Hitler by Joachim Fest

1 The Fuehrer by Konrad Heiden

2 hitler’s vienna by brigitte hamann, 3 hitler: the fuhrer and the people by j p stern, 4 the hitler myth by ian kershaw, 5 hitler by joachim fest.

L et’s start with the first of the Hitler books you’ve chosen, The Fuehrer . The author, Konrad Heiden, was a journalist? 

So when you say he got on his case, you mean he got on it in a negative way – he wasn’t a supporter? 

He certainly wasn’t a supporter. Rather than an academic writing about it, he did what any good journalist would do and started to look into Hitler’s finances and his relationships with women and all that sort of stuff. He delved. He got down to the grubby detail.

And what was the grubby detail? 

Well, things like the fact that Hitler was living with his niece and she shot herself in the 20s under odd circumstances. Presumably his intentions or his controlling nature became too onerous. It took some guts to write about that, given that these Nazis were armed and violent people. Money was coming in from all sorts of covert directions with secret donations from businessmen. It’s a better book than all the ponderous tomes on Hitler, because Heiden was actually there – it’s of the time. I think that can be more interesting than people who write about things afterwards.

Did Heiden know Hitler? 

Tell me about the next of your Hitler books, Hitler’s Vienna by Brigitte Hamann. 

Brigitte Hamann was a contemporary Austrian academic who went to great lengths to study his life. It’s quite tricky because Hitler provided his own account in Mein Kampf , which includes an account of his childhood and his time in both Vienna and Munich before and after WWI , so you appear to know. She used an incredible amount of legwork to separate the reality from the mythology. He constructed his whole life, his odyssey, as a form of political mythology.

“He was somebody who never did a day’s work in his life and loafed around, going on a downward trajectory and lived in doss houses before WWI.”

What does the book say Hitler lied about? 

Well, for example, he says he conceived his hatred of Jews when he arrived in Vienna from his home town. The reality was that he was selling his painted picture postcards to Jewish commercial art dealers, who were selling them for him. In the book he says that the people he particularly detests are the eastern Jews from Poland, Orthodox Jews, many of whom were living in Vienna. But there he is having actually quite normal relations with Jewish picture dealers.

You’re surely not trying to suggest that actually Hitler didn’t hate Jews? 

No, no! I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s a bit more complicated. He stereotypes them by saying they’re wandering about the streets in their beards reeking of garlic, but actually most Jews in Vienna were highly assimilated and he was dealing with them.

What else does Hamann dig out about Hitler in the book? 

Just his bizarre lifestyle, really. He was somebody who never did a day’s work in his life and loafed around, going on a downward trajectory and lived in doss houses before WWI. He didn’t go to Germany until shortly before the war. Ironically, he was Austrian and didn’t become a German citizen until 1932… Did you know that?

I knew he was Austrian . 

But he didn’t get citizenship until 1932, which means that, given his political agitations in the 1920s, he could quite legitimately have been deported if anybody had been minded to deport him. He was trying to avoid serving in the Austro-Hungarian armed forces. He got his papers and fled to Germany.

But why was he in doss houses? He was from a respectable family, wasn’t he? 

Well, it’s more complicated than that. It was quite an extended family with a lot of changes of names and peculiarities. He just didn’t have any money, he didn’t work – and there was no social security net, so he went down.

How did he creep up again? 

By going to Germany. He claimed that Austria-Hungary was a kind of multi-cultural mishmash that he wouldn’t have wanted to fight for anyway. Whereas, of course, Germany was a different proposition because he was an ultra-German nationalist, so he served as a runner in the WWI on the Western Front.

And lied about that too? 

Well, he did get decorated for bravery. One author said the real men in the trenches at the front would have been vaguely contemptuous of him, running backwards and forwards between the command posts where he got given the written orders to take up to the front for the officers to execute. I find that a bit of a spurious distinction though. I mean, there would have been bullets flying around and shells, whether you were a runner or not. I think on one occasion one of the command bunkers he was running for was obliterated by a shell, killing everybody in it.

Are we going to be able to be sympathetic towards him then? Maybe he had post-traumatic shock which manifested itself in…dictatorial madness? 

Well, a lot of people had post-traumatic shock and went on to leave unexceptional lives in the post-war period. He was gassed and blinded, which he again dramatises, waking up blinded and gassed and facing Germany’s unconditional surrender. It’s very bizarre – you can see what they were on about in the sense that German armies were way into Eastern Europe on one front and right out in France and Belgium on the other and they hadn’t actually been militarily defeated. They would have been crushed to pieces if it had gone on any longer, but if you were a German soldier you’d have found it all quite mysterious. Of course, Hitler then blamed it on internal subversion.

The book’s title makes it sound like a guidebook to Hitler’s Vienna. Is there an element of that? 

Tell me about J P Stern, the author of the third of your Hitler books, Hitler: the Fuehrer and the People . 

He was a literary scholar who applied much more attention to matters of language , looking at the rhetorical concepts that someone like Hitler was using. So everything gets reduced to these militaristic concepts of struggle and battle. Really, it’s about the way in which someone like that successfully turns his own quite odd life story into the story of a country. All political extremists do this. You convert your individual grudge or grievance into a bigger narrative. That would be true of Islamist radicals in this country right now, as well as Nazis. Someone like Hitler successfully made his own life story emblematic.

It’s incredibly interesting from a psychoanalytic perspective. Everybody tries to make the outside world match their inner world and if your inner world is very disturbed… Hitler was actually creating an outside world to match his inner one. 

Yes, exactly. He was making himself into an animated version of the unknown soldier on the war memorial. He was the ordinary person who came back to articulate the alleged views of the people killed in their millions in the First World War.

He’s also enacting a massive omnipotent fantasy. 

Yes, on the largest scale. J P Stern is very well placed to talk about his, as he knows about language, probably from reading Karl Kraus , the great inter-war satirist who also wrote very astute things on all this. Hitler’s speeches have very particular patterns in them. It’s essentially the redemptive story – there we are down in this abyss and I’m going to lead you out of it.

Watching them as someone who doesn’t speak German, he doesn’t look like a great orator. He looks like a complete psychopath, shouting and waving his arms. 

No, no! I don’t think that at all! I’ve listened to lots of his speeches, including things like opening a motorway or something, and you’d be surprised at the level of economic analysis, and then, of course, there are these moments when he just goes off on a completely wild tangent, whenever he touches upon the subject of Jews. Like all anti-Semites.

“ The Hitler Myth is about how grannies would knit socks for him, about the whole interaction with the German people”

Supposing you and I were having lunch and one of us looked down at the salt cellar and said: ‘It’s a well-known fact that the Jews monopolised the Medieval salt trade in the South of France.’ That’s what he would be like and that would lead on to some other aspect of their perfidy.

What did Jews mean to him, do you think? 

That’s an incredibly complicated subject. In a way there’s a type of contempt and hatred with a sneaking admiration for their biological pertinacity. That they survive everything. It’s a love-hate relationship, though with a great deal less love, obviously. What I mean is that he would have thought they maintain their racial integrity, which he admires.

So, there’s a sense of belonging that he doesn’t have. 

Yes. And it’s a very complicated relationship. If you go to Israel the Polish Jews always talk about the snobbery of German Jews, who are the most cultured and sophisticated. The most German, basically. Ironically, they were assimilated and non-religious so that their point of identification was with German culture.

So you do think he was a great and charismatic orator? 

Of course. He must have been. It’s also the way in which he offers a transgressive temptation. In other words he is inviting you to think dark thoughts. He’s articulating dark thoughts people had in their heads anyway and giving them voice.

Like a racist joke? It’s OK if it’s a joke? 

A bit like that, yes. He’s tempting people to think things and go along with things he’s articulating. The whole thing was set up and he would deliberately hold the speeches in twilight or in darkness, all of which he says he got from being inside Catholic churches which use twilight and candlelight to manipulative effect. He deliberately set out to do that because people become emotionally susceptible in that kind of environment. If you factor in the darkness, the flaming torches, the drum rolls and trumpet blasts it would have been almost tribal in its power. It was quite deliberate. Also because he didn’t get up for most of the day. He didn’t surface until late in the day. He reversed time. He was a night operator. They all were. Stalin was another one.

The fact that Hitler had never had a job would, you’d have thought, make it terribly difficult for him to run a country, an army, a war. 

Tell me about the next of your Hitler books, Ian Kershaw’s, The Hitler Myth . 

I know he’s written a huge two-volume biography . If that’s what grabs you… but it doesn’t grab me. His earlier book,  The Hitler Myth , is much more effective because it looks at how he interacted with the German people and how his image was manipulated after he got into power to turn the negatives into pluses. For example, the fact that he was sexually dysfunctional and had non-relationships with women was turned into the idea of the Führer denying his natural manly instincts to work all the time for Germany. This is an old trick. If you think back to Ingres’s portraits of Napoleon at his desk at three o’clock in the morning with the candles all burnt out. It’s a pretty constant form of image making.

Why do we think that he was sexually unsuccessful? 

God knows. I’ve never thought about that one. People just think he was. No,  The Hitler Myth  is about how grannies would knit socks for him, about the whole interaction with the German people. Rather like any famous person, when they walk into a room you somehow think their eyes have connected with you. If you touch the hand you don’t wash it; you tell your mates you really touched him.

Well, Bill Clinton is good at it, but some famous people make you feel rejected, not loved. 

That’s true, but the book is about how he becomes the fulfilment of people’s wishes.

So, maybe he was quite characterless. He made a whole country his projection but he also received a whole country’s projections at the same time? 

Yes, I’m sure he did.

That must mean he was quite a blank slate? 

That’s the thing. Having read lots about Hitler and all his own ruminations, his informal ramblings, his Führer monologues (because somebody was jotting down everything he said late at night, on such subjects as what soup the Spartans drank – seriously) he does come across as something of an enigma. There was nothing there. Everybody was desperately trying to keep their eyes open and he was going on about how marvellous it was that it only took a few hundred Brits to keep down millions of Indians – that’s what we need to do.

So there was something key missing? 

Yes. Maybe it’s like any sort of problem – you’re missing the most simple thing. But the more you look at it, it’s like there’s nothing there. It’s hard to explain. There’s a lot of feeling but it all seems quite bogus and empty.

That’s terrifying. It’s so much more frightening that there’s not much there than that he’s the incarnation of evil. 

Of course, the strict theological definition of evil is the absence of good, so it does actually suggest a vacuum, oddly enough. So it’s right.

If you can take any projection from little grannies to sexual excitement in young women, it means you can absorb anything. 

Tell us about the last of your Hitler books, Joachim Fest’s biography, Hitler . 

He died a couple of years ago. He was the editor of  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . He was a very grand German journalist who also wrote marvellous history books . It’s beautifully written and very astute about him. Obviously he finds him to be an appalling individual. He spends a lot of time talking about whether or not he’s a ‘great’ historical figure , who made a huge impact on his time. I’m ambivalent about that since all he left were ruins and dead people. But it’s a brilliant biography of him as a politician and warlord. It’s a life of the man rather than an attempt to do the times and somehow to put the man in it. Germans do fewer biographies , in fact. Here and in the US there is so much about fascism because it indirectly bolsters the left as the force of anti-fascism. Nazis provide the left with their anti-fascist credentials.

January 28, 2011

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©Henry Richards

Michael Burleigh

Michael Burleigh is a Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas , the world’s premier university-based think tank. He has written fifteen books, including most recently Day of the Assassins: A History of Political Murder (Picador 2021) and Populism: Before and After the Pandemic (Hurst 2021). His Third Reich: A New History (2000) won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction.

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Anthony Read's top 10 books about Hitler and the Third Reich

Anthony Read's latest book is The Devil's Disciples: The Lives and Times of Hitler's Inner Circle.

1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer

For me, this is the grandaddy of them all, the standard work by which all others on the subject are still measured. A brilliant and respected journalist, Shirer was actually there for much of the time and it shows. Erudite, comprehensive and detailed, always lively and readable, it is the model of what a popular narrative history should be. My own copy has been read and referred to so often it is falling apart.

2. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock

Another essential benchmark in the study of Hitler and the Third Reich. First published a mere seven years after Hitler's death, it remains as definitive now as it was then, as Bullock himself proved 40 years later when he incorporated much of it into his equally magisterial Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives.

3. Hitler (2 vols) by Ian Kershaw

With the benefit of a further half-century of international scholarship and research since Bullock and the other early biographers, Kershaw - despite describing himself as an 'anti-biographer' - has produced what may well be the ultimate version of Hitler's life and of the unique circumstances that made him possible. A masterful achievement.

4. The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg

In contrast to the works of professional historians, personal diaries and memoirs putting a human face on the story of the Third Reich are essential to an understanding of life under Nazi rule. Among those on my shelves by anti-Nazis are Berlin Underground by Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, The Berlin Diaries of Marie 'Missie' Vassiltchikov, Schlage die Trommel... by my old friend Maria Gräfin von Maltzan, Ich Will Leben by Klaus Scheurenberg, and many others. But my favourite is this account by Christabel Bielenberg, who sadly died on November 2, 2003, aged 94. As she wrote in her introduction: 'I am English; I was German, and above all, I was there.'

5. Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer

This is the other side of the coin, the most readable and least repulsive of the Nazi memoirs. It provides a fascinating glimpse of working with Hitler - but should perhaps be read in conjunction with Gitta Sereny's aptly titled Albert Speer: his Battle with Truth.

6. Letters to Freya by Helmuth James von Moltke

This is one of the most moving testaments of the resistance to Hitler, a series of letters to his wife by a noble man on trial for his life after the July 20 plot. They reveal the intellectual and emotional honesty of Moltke, the archetypal 'good German', and his incredible bravery as he approached his execution on January 24, 1945, more concerned with saving his fellow victims than himself.

7. The Face of the Third Reich by Joachim C Fest

Unlike my new book, which I conceived as a multiple biography wrapped in a continuous narrative, Fest's masterpiece is a series of separate essays on leading personalities. Each is a psychological study of an individual, linked to an examination of the relevant aspect of National Socialism and the Nazi regime, all presented with intellectual rigour and considerable insight. A seminal work.

8. The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert

The literature on the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the so-called Final Solution is almost as vast as that on Nazism and the Third Reich. Trying to encompass the Holocaust in a single book would therefore seem to be a hopeless task, but Gilbert comes as close as is humanly possible with this deeply compassionate book, never letting us forget that though a million deaths may be a statistic, each one is a tragedy.

9. Hitler's War Aims by Norman Rich

In this impressively comprehensive two-volume study, Rich manages to cover just about every aspect of Hitler's ambitions and achievements outside Germany, dealing with the ideology, the methods and the results of the great drive for Lebensraum beyond the old Reich.

10. The German Dictatorship by Karl Dietrich Bracher

On its first publication in 1969, Bracher's book was described as 'the first, correct, full and comprehensive account of the origins, the structure and the machinery of the Nazi dictatorship'. Since then, it has been often emulated but never bettered. For anyone seeking to understand the roots and causes of the Nazi phenomenon, it is essential, and sobering, reading.

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10 Best Adolf Hitler Movies of All Time

Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Third Reich and the Nazi Party, was single-handedly responsible for World War II and its atrocities. A mostly hated character in history because of his systematic genocide against Jews, Hitler remains a figure of interest even today in cultural and philosophical studies. The life of Hitler, his meteoric rise, and equally visible fall have been documented in many films.  Here’s the list of some of the top Adolf Hitler movies ever made. You can watch some of these best Nazi Hitler movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.

10. Look Who’s Back (2015)

The film originally titled Er Ist Weider da, is a 2015 dramatic comedy film. Directed by David Wnendt, the film follows Hitler’s resurrection in 2014 and a comic sequence that follows. The film parodies the Nazi perspective in the modern world but shows a somber aspect of the existence of hyper-nationalist sentiments, which would continue its support for Hitler. The interactions between Hitler and the common public serve as the primary fodder for humor, and the director intersperses scenes where Oliver Masucci dressed as Hitler and in character actually interacts with the public. The film overall creates a humorous effect and is a good take on how Hitler would be received in today’s world.

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9. Valkyrie (2008)

Directed by Bryan Singer, this film stars Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Claus came closest to assassinating Hitler and arranging a coup to overthrow the Nazi party. The film received lukewarm appreciation and acceptance. However, the film focuses on the number of assassination attempts on Hitler’s life and how he managed to overcome them. A fast-paced and tense film, it holds the tension even though the audience is painfully aware of the result beforehand – that in itself speaks to Singer’s directorial talent. The actors deliver powerful performances and make the film a thoroughly enjoyable one.

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8. Man Hunt (1941)

Directed by Fritz Lang, this film starts and ends with direct references to Hitler. The plot of the film, however, focuses mostly on a British big-game hunter as he attempts to evade the authorities on a suspected charge of him wanting to kill Hitler. The movie starts with a chilling scene where the hunter has Hitler in his scope and pulls the trigger and waves. He then enters a live round into the chamber and decides to take another shot but is interrupted. The film’s ending shows the hunter having joined the RAF undertaking a similar mission to presumably finish the job. The film portrays the intense desire and toying of minds with Hitler’s death- an aspect that was common during the WWII era in European cinema. Fritz Lang directs the movie wonderfully, and the events are set against the backdrop of the escalating situation in Europe and the rise of Nazi power.

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7. The Bunker (1981)

This film, directed by George Schaefer, is borrowed from James P. O’ Donnell’s book The Bunker. The film makes use of shifting points of view and uses the creative license to bring forth views of characters who weren’t interviewed, including Hitler’s cook and Dr. Werner Haase. Furthermore, the film controversially undercuts the relationship between Hitler and Speer, slightly likening it with the Jesus Judas betrayal. Despite the controversies, the film itself is a thorough invigorating watch and provides a different perspective to the oft reproduced last days of Hitler.

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6. Triumph of the Will (1935)

This film, also known as Triumph des Willens, is perhaps the greatest propaganda film made. The movie is also Leni Riefenstahl’s best work. The cinematic techniques used in The Victory of Faith and this film are remarkably similar. Recording the 1934 Nazi Congress in Nuremberg, the film juxtaposes scenes of the military marches with speeches from high officials of the Nazi party. Leni makes use of various cinematic techniques like long focus lenses and aerial photography, techniques which would go on to become foundational for the making of documentaries and also played an important role in shaping cinematic shot techniques as a whole. Her revolutionary approach to music and cinematography is evident in this movie as Leni effortlessly portrays the Nazi propaganda of Germany emerging as a powerful nation under Hitler.

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5. The Victory of Faith (1933)

Better known as Der Sieg des Glaubens, this film is the first propaganda film to be directed by Leni Riefenstahl. The propaganda films serve as an interesting contrast to the films made about Hitler since most films that came after his demise demonized the man and showed him in the terrifying capacity of power. The propaganda films, on the contrary, which show Hitler’s rise to power peppered with fond adoration and awe of the man himself. Leni’s film, which follows the chronological order of sequences of the 1933 Nuremberg rally of the Nazi Party, is purely a propaganda movie, which was funded by the Nazis. However, the value of this film is evident in the fact that it shows Hitler to be on close terms with Ernst Rohm, a man who would later be assassinated on Hitler’s orders. The only copy of the film turned up in 1990 in the UK after Hitler had ordered the destruction of all copies. Leni’s propaganda film cannot be doubted on the grounds of authenticity and provides a refreshing take on a man who enjoyed tremendous support from different quarters of his country.

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4. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino, this movie delivered on its promise – it was unlike any war movie we’d ever seen. While the plot itself does not deal directly with Hitler – it focuses on the fight against Nazi occupation in Paris. The film, however, borrows on the trope of fascination with Hitler’s death and a culture of anti-propaganda films where Hitler would be killed off in the most imaginative ways possible. Tarantino indulges in this where the climax of the film occurs in the burning movie theater where Hitler is gunned down and burned. A modern-day film by all means, it harkens back to the time of Hitler’s power and gives a brilliant portrayal of the man’s sense of grandness and the rage and fear with which the public looked to him.

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3. The Last Ten Days (1955)

Directed by George Wilhelm Pabst, this Austrian German film follows a simple enough plot. It recounts the last ten days of Hitler’s life- from his birthday to his suicide. The plot, which is similar to a lot of movies made about Hitler, is in itself not unique. However, what sets this film apart is the role played by Albin Skoda. Skoda plays Hitler, making this 1955 film the first movie in post-WWII Germany to feature the character of Adolf Hitler. Der Letze Akt, as the film is also known, presents a terrifyingly realistic portrait of Hitler’s last few days and, in the process, becomes the first film in a long chain of films that would express fascination with the dictator’s life.

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2. The Great Dictator (1940)

Movies about Hitler aren’t usually supposed to be funny, but trust Charlie Chaplin to take up the task. In a scathing satire which is perhaps Chaplin’s best work, he criticizes fascism, characters of both Hitler and Mussolini, and the persecution of Jews. This is Chaplin’s first major sound film contrary to his previous silent movies. Chaplin’s portrayal of the Jewish barber persecuted by Adenoid Hynkel (Adolf Hitler) is powerful and reverberates in his last speech when the barber, who is ironically Hynkel’s lookalike, gets up on the podium to make a speech. The speech is satirized by Chaplin, and contrary to Hitler’s divisive and polarizing speeches, Chaplin calls for democracy, unity and brotherhood. The Great Dictator serves as a valuable example of satire and remains one of the most daring takes on Hitler.

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1. Downfall (2004)

The film titled Der Untergang was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and happened to be nominated for the Academy Award for the best foreign picture. The film itself focuses on the last ten days of Hitler’s life and the fall of the Third Reich. Bruno Ganz delivers a powerful performance as Adolf Hitler in his last days, adamant in the face of potential defeat. The narrative pace effectively captures the delusions of grandeur that Hitler holds on till the very end and undercuts it at the same time with the tension of the advancement of the Red Army. Desertion, rage, defeat all culminate in Hitler’s bunker towards a powerful cinematic conclusion.

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What is the best hitler biography.

Adolf Hitler by Heinrich Hoffmann

4,128 words

“I’m not a National Socialist, but . . .” I have read a few books on Hitler.

Regarding Hitler, I agree with Irmin Vinson:

I consider Hitler less a model to be followed than an avalanche of propaganda we must dig ourselves out from under. Never in human history has a single man received such sustained vilification, the basic effect and purpose of which has been to inhibit Whites from thinking racially and from acting in their own racial self-interest, as all other racial/ethnic groups do. Learning the truth about Hitler is a liberating experience. By the truth I mean not an idealized counter-myth to the pervasive myth of Hitler as evil incarnate, but the man himself, faults and virtues, strengths and weaknesses. ( “Some Thoughts on Hitler” )

Since literally thousands of worthless books have been churned out about Der Boss, how does one sift through the massive pile of crap on the hopeful assumption that, “Hey, with all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”?

A “good” biography by my definition is an objective, truthful account, not a comic book fabrication about a lunatic, one-testicled rug chewer, or a thinly-disguised religious fable in which Hitler (= Satan/Nazis/Germans/white people) crucifies 6 million Jews (= God’s chosen people, elbowing the Lord Jesus Christ aside) by fantastic and diabolical means before efficiently employing the grisly remains to manufacture bars of soap and lampshades for the amusement of Hitler and his henchmen, or to lighten the burden of wartime rationing.

Hopefully, the book would be well-written and fun to read, as well.

If there’s a reliable bibliographical essay along these lines, I am unaware of it.

Ian Kershaw’s Biography

This pattern of two-volume books and abridgements, plus multiple translations, editions and printings of the same book at different times, often with different titles, continually bedevils the researcher.

Kershaw, who comes from a white, working-class background, does not inspire confidence. Among other things, he’s a knight (OBE), though he claims to be “embarrassed” by the “neo-feudal title.”

During the so-called Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) in Germany  from 1986 to 1989, Kershaw teamed with academic mentor Martin Broszat, an anti-German German, to publicly attack other German historians—Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand—as apologists for the German past.

“Comic Book” Titles as a Screen

One heuristic I use is to reject any book with a ridiculous or patently propagandistic title.

Using that guideline, the New York Times did Kershaw no favor when it titled its shallow reviews of his two Hitler volumes “The Devil’s Miracle Man” and “When Depravity Was Contagious,” respectively.

Books I Own

For background on this see Mark Weber, “ Rauschning’s Phony Conversations With Hitler : An Update ,” Journal of Historical Review (Winter 1985 – 86), pp. 499 ff.

Nevertheless, as David Irving points out, “Historians are quite incorrigible, and will quote any apparently primary source [memoirs, diaries, autobiographies, etc.] no matter how convincingly its false pedigree is exposed.”

When “serious” biographers rely upon works like Rauschning’s, their books should be approached cautiously, if at all.

About Fest’s Hitler Irving wrote, “Stylistically, Fest’s German was good; but the old legends were trotted out afresh, polished to an impressive gleam of authority.”

As noted above, Fest fought on the conservative side of Germany’s Historian’s Dispute in the 1980s, denying the “singularity” of the Holocaust (which, however, he believed in). His Wikipedia entry provides lengthy quotations that strike a contemporary reader as heretical.

Recommendations of a Dissident: William Pierce’s National Vanguard Books Catalog (December 1988)

I’ve often used this valuable reference over the years. It is essentially an elaborate college syllabus. Subdivisions include “European Prehistory, Archaeology, & Folkways,” “European Legend, Myth, and Religion,” “History of Western Civilization,” “Western Art,” and so on. Its 125 carefully-selected titles provide in-depth knowledge and a comprehensive overview of the white race and Western civilization.

A notable feature of Wagener’s memoir is that, according to historian Gordon Craig’s New York Times review , it strongly emphasizes Hitler’s pro-British views and depicts the Führer as “an ‘unwitting prisoner’ of Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, powerless to prevent his true intentions from being distorted by evil associates for their own criminal purposes”—claims by an eyewitness that parallel David Irving’s controversial views.

Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and Zweites Buch (Second Book)

I recommend clicking on the preceding link to get a feel for how important it is to understand the provenance and reliability—the evidentiary basis—of even “mainstream” books and texts you might otherwise assume are problem-free. To his credit, Irving is keenly aware of the difficulties posed by mainstream books and official documents housed in archives. They cannot simply be accepted at face value.

I should nevertheless quote the following from Irving’s web page:

The Table Talks’ content is more important in my view than Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and possibly even more than his Zweites Buch (1928). It is unadulterated Hitler. He expatiates on virtually every subject under the sun, while his generals and private staff sit patiently and listen, or pretend to listen, to the monologues.

Part of the reason for the book’s lack of effect may be due to the particular translation I purchased. In the original German the book was a runaway bestseller and the source of much of Hitler’s private fortune. Even acknowledging the political factors involved, one cannot dismiss the possibility that it reads better in German than in its English translations.

The quality of a translation determines how well a book “travels” from one language to another. Both fidelity to the original (accuracy) and transmission of the spirit or feel are necessary. I have experienced translations that capture the originals marvelously, and others where even classic works appear dead on the page.

Murphy, a former Irish Catholic priest, was hired by the German government to make the official English translation, but the project was scuttled after a dispute. Murphy continued the translation nevertheless, and it appeared independently in Britain in 1939.

I later learned that many English-speaking National Socialists prefer Ralph Manheim’s 1943 Houghton Mifflin translation (which I have not read). It is possible that Manheim better catches the spirit of Hitler’s original, because he was also the translator of Konrad Heiden’s Der Fuehrer which so enthralled me as a boy.

In his catalog, William Pierce categorized Mein Kampf as “semi-autobiographical,” calling it “a beacon and a guide to every healthy soul in this dark age, to everyone who seeks understanding and light.”

He described the differences between the English translations this way:

After Mein Kampf , Hitler wrote what has become known as the Zweites Buch (Second Book) (1928), an extension and elaboration of his foreign policy aims. It also sets forth his views of the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and the United States.

The book was written to clarify his foreign policy objectives for the German public after the 1928 elections. However, his publisher advised him that, from a sales point of view, the time was not propitious for bringing it out. By 1930 Hitler had decided that it revealed too much about his intentions, so it was never published.

In 1935 it was locked away at his order in a safe inside an air raid shelter. There it remained until the fall of Germany in 1945, when it was discovered by the American invaders. Its authenticity was reportedly vouched for by Josef Berg and Telford Taylor.

In 1958 the manuscript of the Zweites Buch , having again fallen into obscurity, was rediscovered in American archives by Jewish historian Gerhard Weinberg. Weinberg, whose family left Germany for the United States in 1938, is the author of numerous anti-German academic books and articles and a vigorous Holocaust promoter. He is Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Weinberg strongly supported the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe after WWII, which resulted in an enormous number of white deaths.

Unable to find a US publisher for the book, Weinberg turned to a fellow Jew in Germany, Hans Rothfels; a German edition of the Second Book was issued in 1961. (A pirated copy translated into English appeared in New York the following year.)

Because I had never heard of this book until 2003, I thought the whole story a bit strange. It is unclear how many scholars apart from Weinberg have examined the original manuscript, or what methods of authentication were used. However, David Irving sold the 2003 edition at one of his lectures, and has indicated at least implicitly on several occasions (some quoted here) that he accepts the book as genuine.

David Irving

David Irving’s Hitler’s War is interesting on several levels.

An independent, non-academic historian, Irving has been victimized to an unimaginable degree over many decades by the Jewish power structure, including a global panoply of government agencies, apparatchiks, courts, police, and academic and media shills eternally at its beck and call. His suffering is mind-numbing proof of the bizarre, Orwellian world we live in. Blacklisted and bankrupted, his personal prosperity and former high reputation are in ruins.

His book, as usual, is long: 985 pages (2002 ed.), and again there is the thorny problem of multiple volumes and editions of a single biography floating around.

Hitler’s War was first published in 1977, and its prequel, The War Path , in 1978. In 1991 a revised 1-volume edition incorporating both books was issued as Hitler’s War .

In an introductory Note Irving states that in the Millennium Edition he has not revised his earlier views, but merely refined the narrative and reinforced the documentary basis of his former assertions.

Famed for working almost exclusively from official archival documents, diaries, private letters, and other original source material, his method has the downside of somewhat impeding smooth narrative flow. However, this is compensated for by the rich source material.

Almost incredibly, Irving admits :

I have dipped into Mein Kampf but never read it: it was written only partly by Hitler, and that is the problem. More important are Hitlers Zweites Buch , (1928) which he wrote in his own hand; and Hitler’s Table Talk , daily memoranda which first Heinrich Heim (Martin Bormann’s adjutant, whom I interviewed) and then Henry Picker wrote down at his table side, and the similar table talks recorded by Werner Koeppen (which I was the first to exploit, in Hitler’s War ).

In his introduction, notes, and on his website, Irving reveals the care necessary in dealing with even supposedly reliable documentary materials, never mind historians’ work (which he typically ignores). German memoirs, for example, have been extensively tampered with by publishers, Allied authorities, and others. When using them Irving attempts to work from the original typescripts rather than published texts. Even documents contained in government archives have been altered, removed, or otherwise manipulated. His many discussions about such issues are highly instructive.

Irving is not a “Holocaust denier” as Jews claim, though he does not believe in every jot and tittle of their religious narrative as everyone else does.

One of Irving’s most controversial claims is that “antisemitism” in Germany was “a powerful vote catching force,” “an evil steed” that Hitler had no compunction in riding to the chancellorship in 1933. But once in power, “he dismounted and paid only lip service to that part of his Party’s creed.” The “evil gangsters” under him, however—Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels—continued to ride it even when Hitler dictated differently.

Although Irving maintains that a Jewish Holocaust of sorts did occur (unfortunately, he is exceedingly vague, evasive, and even contradictory about its details, and denies any interest in it), he says that Hitler’s evil henchmen dreamed it up and carried it out entirely without Hitler’s knowledge or approval.

Thus, while Irving is a Hitlerphile, he is extremely harsh toward “bad guys” like Himmler (in particular), Heydrich, and Goebbels.

The reader may perhaps see how Irving’s central thesis is hard to . . . accept .

Irving has published a critical biography of Goebbels and is currently working on one about Himmler. Himmler’s elderly daughter Gudrun has publicly expressed her fear that Irving will perform a hatchet job on her father in an attempt to salvage his (Irving’s) reputation.

In fairness to Irving, Jewish historian Felix Gilbert, editor of Hitler Directs His War (above), wrote that “during the war, Hitler cut himself off from all his former associates and interests and closed himself in at his headquarters with his military advisers. The center of Hitler’s activities became then the daily conferences on the military situation.”

This suggests possible great autonomy on the part of Himmler and others, at least after the inception of the war. Irving, however, tends to emphasize disloyalty, deceit, and manipulation by Himmler and others rather than Hitler’s isolation or distraction.

Still, as previously noted, Otto Wagener’s Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant also presents a picture of Hitler’s relationship to his top lieutenants even in the early days of the regime that is similar to Irving’s.

The most important thing to note is that Hitler’s War is not a biography per se , but a military history of WWII from Hitler’s perspective. My primary interest, however, apart from biography, is the racial, political, philosophical, and social aspects of Hitler’s Germany rather than the conduct of the war.

John Toland’s Hitler

The Pearl Harbor book led to Toland’s association with the Holocaust revisionist Institute for Historical Review (IHR), at whose meeting he spoke .

After Jewish terrorists firebombed the Institute on the Fourth of July, 1984, destroying its warehouse and inventory of books (American authorities “never found”—or punished—the perpetrators), Toland wrote to the IHR:

When I learned of the torching of the office-warehouse of the Institute for Historical Review I was shocked. And when I heard no condemnation of this act of terrorism on television and read no protests in the editorial pages of our leading newspapers or from the halls of academia, I was dismayed and incensed. Where are those defenders of democracy who over the years have so vigorously protested the burning of books by Hitler? Are they only summer soldiers of democracy, selective in their outrage? I call on all true believers in democracy to join me in public denunciation of the recent burning of books in Torrance, California.

Toland’s Adolf Hitler was based upon a great deal of original research, including previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and interviews with Hitler’s colleagues and associates.

I have had difficulty identifying a good copy of the biography for sale on Amazon due to the headache of multiple editions and reprints I mentioned earlier.

As near as I can determine, the initial publication was Adolf Hitler , 2 vols. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976). However, sellers often list it for sale on Amazon while really having only one volume (which one is usually undeterminable) in stock. On the other hand, one seller informed me that he checked his 1976 edition in the warehouse, and it appeared to be a complete book in one volume. My impression is that the reprint (I assume it is unrevised), Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Doubleday, 1992), is the same book in a single volume.

Toland’s biography was well-received by both reviewers and the public. In his autobiography Toland wrote that he earned little money from his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Rising Sun , but was set for life thanks to the earnings from Adolf Hitler .

Patrick Buchanan penned a column about the book in 1977, after which he was widely condemned for “praising Hitler.”

Daniel Weiss of the Virginia Quarterly Review wrote that “In some respects the Hitler who emerges is almost too human, too normal.”

Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review and a longtime WWII revisionist who reads German, writes:

I’m sometimes asked which biography of Hitler I think is best, or which I recommend. In my view, the best single biography of Hitler, and the one I most often recommend, is the one by John Toland, Adolf Hitler . It’s especially good in helping the reader to understand Hitler’s personality and outlook. Kershaw’s biography is detailed, but it’s also very slanted and leaves out a lot.

It would be a mistake to assume that Weber’s recommendation is the result of Toland’s brief connection with the IHR. Adolf Hitler was written several years before that relationship developed. Moreover, in 1977, when David Irving offered a thousand pound reward to anyone who could produce a single wartime document showing that Hitler knew anything about the Holocaust, Toland published an emotional appeal in Der Spiegel urging his fellow historians to refute Irving.

It is unlikely that Toland’s book is “pro-Hitler.” Certainly, reviewers have not attacked it as such.

I guess I’ll go with Toland’s biography, evidently the most objective, despite owning several others instead.

Although I’ve only scratched the surface, it is apparent that enormous effort is required to merely survey the field before diving in to actually get a handle on The Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived.

And what is the likely outcome of such an effort?

Well, David Irving, who has spent the better part of a lifetime studying the Führer, concluded:

What is the result of twenty years’ toiling in the archives? Hitler will remain an enigma, however hard we burrow. Even his intimates realised that they hardly knew him. General Alfred Jodl, his closest strategic adviser, wrote in his Nuremberg cell on March 10, 1946: “I ask myself, did you ever really know this man at whose side you led such a thorny and ascetic existence? To this very day I do not know what he thought or knew or really wanted.”

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Nowej prawicy przeciw starej prawicy, rozdział 1: nowa prawica przeciw starej prawicy, nowej prawicy przeciw starej prawicy: przedmowa, stalin’s affirmative action policy, doxed: the political lynching of a southern cop, james m. mcpherson’s battle cry of freedom, part 2, james m. mcpherson’s battle cry of freedom, part 1, national socialism as a magical movement: stephen e. flowers’ the occult in national socialism, » a family with the wrong members in control: orwell’s england, 17 comments.

Thanks for mentioning Ron Rosenbaum’s Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (1998) as a “self-destructive book”. My next blog entry will be about my (now available) book. In one of its sections I refute Rosenbaum.

Have you had any time to analyze the Ford translation of Mein Kampf?

For me, it’s definitely a toss-up between Irving and Toland, both pleasures to read.

An interesting summary, but I didn’t see Colin Cross’s biography of Hitler mentioned either.

Andrew Hamilton,

Do you know of Rainer Zitelmann’s Hitler: The Policies of Seduction (Allison & Busby, 2000)? I haven’t read it myself, but it looks like an important work. Mark Weber has described it as “a study of impressive scholarship” demonstrating that “Hitler’s outlook was rational, self-consistent and ‘modern.'”

Leftists like to pretend that National Socialism was reactionary and that its socialism was fraudulent. They do so, of course, because the opposite is true.

Thank you for the article. Much needed and much appreciated. I myself found Mein Kampf quite an earthquake, but possibly because I read it soon after I ‘woke up’ (due to reading Jurgen Graf’s ‘ Giant With Clay Feet ‘).

Junghans: I’m not familiar with that biography, but if you’ve read it and have an opinion about it, it would be interesting to hear.

WR: I’m sorry to say that I’m not familiar with Zitelmann’s book, either.

Jim: I thought you were referring to Henry Ford (there is no such translation), but see that you mean a recent translation by someone named Michael Ford. The Amazon Product Description (in this case written by the seller) makes BIG claims for the POD book. One sentence, however, leaps out: “He outlines his plans for not only world conquest, but the conquest of the universe.”

That alone tends to discredit Ford.

Another approach is to click on the bar chart to read the 1- and 2- star negative reviews. That often tells you what you want to know quicker than reading the positive reviews. The full reviews that are visible ordinarily fill the first page, and are positive most of the time.

In this case, read the 1-star review by Garth Pauley, plus Prof. Randall Bytwerk’s comments attached to it. http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MVXVMOU7V25C/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0977476073&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful

Bytwerk, who is anti-German (or anti-NS, anyway), teaches at Calvin College and runs the German Propaganda Archive web page. He has translated NS material from German into English and posted it on the Web.

Based upon Pauley’s and Bytwerk’s comments, there seems little doubt that Ford’s translation should be avoided. I am also struck by what appears to be a concerted campaign on behalf of Ford’s book by several reviewers.

I was highly amused to see that Prof. Bytwerk has read the National Vanguard Books catalog, and cites its take on the comparative merits of the Manheim and Murphy translations that I quoted in my article!

Andrew, no, unfortunately I haven’t read Cross’s 1973 biography of Hitler yet, so I can’t say. I bought it a while back, as it is reputed to be a fairly objective book on him. Another book on Hitler that is recommended in WN circles, that I’ve yet to read either, is Frederic Spotts’ book: HITLER AND THE POWER OF AESTHETICS.

I read the description and the comments for Michael Ford’s translation of Mein Kampf at Amazon. The description of the book reeks of chutzpah, as do the comments either praising or defending the book, which I suspect were mostly or entirely written by Ford under several aliases. Some forms of promotion proclaim that the product is shoddy.

There is a fascinating book called “Der andere Hitler” (The Other Hitler) by Hermann Giesler, who was an important architect during the Third Reich. I guess there are no translations. It is a personal memoir that aims to correct the “demonic” image of Hitler. This book convinced me that he was far more complex, both as a person and a politician, as is commonly thought. It also strongly blames the sabotage of resistance groups among the Wehrmacht for the lost war.

About Zitelmann’s book: this was kind of a provocation when it was published, as it aimed to demonstrate the “leftist”, “revolutionary” side of Hitler. It challenged the idea that Hitler can be mainly seen as a politician of the Right. Zitelmann was a prominent figure of the New Right in Germany (though more on the liberal wing) in the early to mid- Ninenties, but abandoned publishing ever since. His book is highly recommended as well.

Sorry, I see that Bytwerk also wrote his own review (it was 2-star). He says the Manheim translation is the best one. http://www.amazon.com/review/R28SSVBGYX9A55/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0977476073&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful

There are 34 comments attached to his review, again indicating the concerted effort of a group of people to push the book. Many of Bytwerk’s comments have automatically been hidden because the group “didn’t find them helpful,” so you have to manually expand them in order to read them.

A funny dispute is where Ford (writing as the “publisher,” Elite Minds, Inc.), insists that his translation of the NS newspaper title Völkischer Beobachter has properly been rendered as Race Watcher !

Hitler’s Second Book and the Table Talk are both good sources on Hitler’s “beliefs”, “goals” etc. Hitler was very much a radical.

I’m still hesitant about the authenticity and/or proper translation and presentation of the Zweites Buch (Second Book), despite Irving’s acceptance of it.

Weinberg is intensely racist, and the story of the book seems . . . strange. Reportedly he’s the only one with rights to it.

It’s the one major item I require more background about. It may be that proper proof exists; I’d just need to see it and be persuaded by it.

“I’m still hesitant about the authenticity and/or proper translation and presentation of the Zweites Buch (Second Book), despite Irving’s acceptance of it.”

No, be assured the “Second Book” is authentic and accepted among both mainstream and revisionist scholars.

John Lukacs’ The Hitler of History might be worth reading as a comparative study of biographies on Hitler. I ought to get around to reading Lukacs’ Democracy and Populism : it might be interesting concerning the relationship between populism and fascism.

I am interested in the dog shown in the photograph of Hitler. It is obviously not Blondi, the German Shepherd normally associated with him. Is it an earlier dog he owned? He seems rather young in the photograph, which presumably dates from the period before 1933.

You say, “Mein Kampf was originally published in German in two volumes, the first in 1925 and the second in 1927. English translations combine both volumes into one.”

True, volume I was published on July 18, 1925 but volume II was published not in 1927 but on December 11, 1926. It was a combined and slightly edited edition that was published in 1927. Despite the History Channel and all other number of websites saying volume II came out in 1927, it is actually confirmed as December 11 1926 by Volker Ullrich and Ian Kershaw for two mainstream examples. Even German Wikipedia say December 11 1926 and English Wikipedia says 1926.

So, this is the early publishing history:

Vol. I – July 18 1925 Vol. II. – December 11, 1926 Combined and edited Vol. I & II – 1927

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• Entertainment
• The True Story Behind the Surprise Netflix Hit <em>Baby Reindeer</em>

The True Story Behind the Surprise Netflix Hit Baby Reindeer

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Netflix series Baby Reindeer .

In his one-man play-turned-hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer , Scottish comedian Richard Gadd recounts the harrowing true story of how his experience with being stalked forced him to confront a buried trauma.

Playing a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn, Gadd unpacks the years-long stalking and harassment campaign he endured at the hands of a middle-aged woman he refers to by the pseudonym Martha (played with a chilling intensity by Jessica Gunning) while struggling to make it as a stand-up and writer in London. As is depicted in the show, the stalking began in the wake of Gadd being groomed, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and raped by an older male TV industry mentor (named Darrien in the show and played by Tom Goodman-Hill)—an ordeal that left him reeling emotionally, questioning his sexuality, and wrestling with extreme self-loathing. Still, Gadd doesn't shy away from his own complicity in what transpired with Martha, frequently painting himself in a negative light as the story unfolds over the course of seven episodes.

“It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn’t feel true,” he told The Guardian in 2019 following the sold-out inaugural run of the Baby Reindeer play. "I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse. I wasn’t a perfect person [back then], so there’s no point saying I was."

When Gadd debuted his one-man show at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it had been two years since he had seen or heard from Martha. Three years earlier, while the stalking was still in full swing, he had won the festival's top prize for his comedy show Monkey See, Monkey Do , which explored his experience as a survivor of sexual violence. The Baby Reindeer Netflix series, which is currently at number two on the streamer's most-watched charts following its release last week, is an amalgam of the two stage shows.

"It felt like a risky thing—to do a 'warts and all' version of the story where I held my hands up to the mistakes I had made with Martha," Gadd wrote in a piece that accompanied the show's debut . "The foolish flirting. The cowardly excuses as to why we could not be together. Not to mention the themes of internalized prejudice and sexual shame that underpinned it all. The graphic details of the drugging and grooming and sexual violence I had experienced only a few years before...But equally I could not shy away from the truth of what had happened to me. This was a messy, complicated situation. But one that needed to be told, regardless."

Here's what to know about the true story behind Baby Reindeer .

What happened with Martha?

Similar to how the show begins, Gadd has said that the stalking started after he gave Martha a free cup of tea when she came into the London pub where he was working in 2015. “At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he told The Times . "Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails."

Over the next four and a half years, Gadd recounts that Martha sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours' worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of strange gifts. Every email that appears in the Netflix series is a message that Gaad received in real life. She also harassed a number of people who were close to Gaad, including his parents and a trans woman (named Teri in the show and played by Nava Mau) whom he had begun dating shortly before the stalking began.

When Gadd tried to go to the police, he discovered that the laws surrounding harassment and abuse are, in his own words, "so stupid." Despite the fact that the show presents Martha as having been previously convicted on similar charges, Gadd was told he needed concrete evidence of direct threats for authorities to take any action.

"They look for black and white, good and evil, and that’s not how it works," he told The Independent . "You can really affect someone’s life within the parameters of legality, and that is sort of mad."

How do things stand today?

In the show, Martha ultimately receives a nine-month prison sentence and five-year restraining order for stalking Donny. In real life, Gaad has never disclosed the details of how the situation was resolved beyond the fact that he had "mixed feelings" about it.

"I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all this," he told The Independent . "Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she’s unwell, and the system’s failed her."

As for how Gaad's sexual assault has continued to impact his life, the finale culminates in a closing sequence in which Donny shows up at Darrien's home to confront him only to accept an offer to work on his new show instead. A distressed Donny then finds himself at a bar where he is offered a drink on the house in a moment that flips his first interaction with Martha on its head.

"I think that was almost the most truthful scene of the entire show. What abuse does is it creates psychological damage as well as physical damage," Gadd told GQ . "There’s a pattern where a lot of people who have been abused feel like they need their abusers. I don’t think it was a cynical ending, it was showing an element of abuse that hadn’t been seen on television before, which is, unfortunately, the deeply entrenched, negative, psychological effects of attachment you can sometimes have with your abuser."

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Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]