From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the ...
Read More
From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitler's rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 1920s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right and the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 and then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews and others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race. In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a "drummer" sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch and, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people. This volume, the first of two, ends with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg laws that pushed German Jews to the outer fringes of society, and with the march of the German army into the Rhineland, Hitler's initial move toward the abyss of war.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used textbooks may not include companion materials such as access codes, etc. May have some wear or writing/highlighting. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very Good. pp. 912. Trade Paperback with only minor reading wear; covers have a bit of edge-wear; pen-mark on bottom edge, otherwise book is clean, unmarked. In stock. Ships from MN, USA. Heavy book; orders from outside the United States will require additional shipping charges.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very Good. Very Good condition. With remainder mark. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes).
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. The cover of this paperback book has curled corners. This paperback book shows normal wear and tear. The edges of the pages have markings, spots, or stains. Shipped to you from Goodwill of the Valleys, Roanoke VA. Thank you for your support!
In his preface to 'Hitler, 1889-1936': Hubris Kershaw warns us against eschewing analysis (a swipe at John Toland?) but he also warns us against skewed or partial analysis. He recognizes that subjectivity is a slippery slope. Hitler was not, he assures us, only a pliant stooge of German right wing nationalists, nor of the Warrior class, nor of German Industrialists. Nor was he only a manifestation of world Capitalism (a la classic Soviet History), nor only the inevitable result of the Versailles Treaty (though that helped make him). Nor did he triumph by shear force of will. He was not stupid, nor was he a genius. All of these are one-note analyses posited heretofore. Hitler?s Third Reich was the result of a confluence of a number of specific events and historical/cultural trends that could not have happened in a different time and/or place. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris gathers those trends and weaves them together for us. Kershaw gives just enough of what happened and focuses on how and why.
As gratifying as Kershaw?s book is historically, I found it stylistically wanting. Kershaw is a great historian, but not a great writer. I often found myself getting lost in sentences that were interminable strings of clauses separated by commas, with sets of dashes tossed in on rare occasions failing to relieve the tedium. Apparently Kershaw doesn?t know that the parentheses may be found at the upper right of his keyboard, and that it?s OK to employ a semicolon now and then. Oh, and sometimes two or even three sentences can express a thought more clearly than one gigantic one. This is a book sorely in need of an editor with a goodly handful of red pencils.
However, stylistic concerns are not enough to detract from the value of 'Hitler' as history. If you are going to read only one biography of Hitler (and more than one, at least in a short period, would be enormously depressing) then 'Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris' is it. It is probably the definitive Hitler biography to date.
HazeGray
Mar 6, 2008
Incredible Detail
This book is exquisitely researched, and a real pleasure for history aficionados. I have read all the major books about Adolf Hitler, and none painted the picture of his early life that this one did. It is not a page-turner, but it certainly needs to be read by anyone who even strives to be a student of the history of the 20th century.
