num_pages: 623
description: Rumor has it that our young are now so far removed historically from the Hitler experience so many of us felt so immediately that they sometimes confuse him as a contemporary of, say, Napoleon. Moreover, they haven't learned nor absorbed the full horror of the reign of carnage he visited upon the western world. Payne wants us all to remember &amp; to study the story of how this "totally alienated" man full of "nihilistic fury" who more resembled Dostoyevsky's mousehole man than any real person came to power, came to be called der Fuehrer &amp; finally Oberster Gerichtsherr in a nation which claimed Enlightenment, came to give an unwary world Blitzkrieg &amp; Auschwitz, came to cause such unparalleled suffering wherever he cast his rage. "We need to come to terms with Hitler by knowing more about him, because his spirit is far from dead...The small Hitlers are around us every day, tormenting us with their promises, rejoicing in our weaknesses." We must mainline the lesson of history. We must watch for the small signals of the psychopath who would lead us. We must ensure that authority is answerable to the people. So he tells anew the Hitlerian drama--the Sturm und Drang of evil genius. No revised portrait of the Nazi phenomenon is proffered--Hitler's rise was "a result of ludicrous &amp; terrible accidents"; he oscillated between lucidity &amp; madness; he was obsessed with making Berlin the most beautiful city in Europe; he died in the Fuehrer-bunker with Eva at his side ("Like Siegfried he would lie on a bed of fire, &amp; Brunnhilde would lie beside him"), the Gotterdammerung. Payne is a popular biographer (Lenin, Stalin, Gandhi, Mao), not a historian, &amp; his book is on the near side of the earlier studies by Bullock (Hitler, A Study In Tyranny, '53) &amp; Langer (The Mind of Adolf Hitler, a secret wartime psychohistorical analysis from '43), with none of the sweep of events of Shirer's Rise &amp; Fall of the 3rd Reich. The book will do well, however. It will be heavily promoted by the publisher &amp; is the main April BOMC selection. It does achieve Payne's aim--a stark reminder that arrogation of absolute power by any political leader invites calamity.--Kirkus (edited) IntroductionThe Young HitlerThe Years of the LocustWar &amp; RevolutionThe RevolutionaryThe Claws of the CatThe Enjoyment of PowerThe Easy ConquestsThe ConquerorThe War of AnnihilationThe World Fights BackCatastropheA Letter from the Western Front 2/1915An Autobiographical Letter to an Unknown Doctor 11/29/1921Eva Braun's Diary 2-5/1935Hitler's Political Testament 4/29/1945ChronologyNotes Selected BibliographyAcknowledgmentsIndex
language: English
title: The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler
titlecomplete: The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler
genres: Biography, War, Politics, Nonfiction, Germany, History, World War II
ratings_count: 257
publisher: Random House