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He served in the German Army as a runner in World War I earning an Iron Cross First Class. In this 1000 page volume Sir Kershaw gives us the total horror of Nazi Germany in clear prose easy to understand. Hitler becamed an embittered man following the war blaming the "November criminals" for a stab in the back by signing terms of surrender with the Western allies. The book is well illustrated with period photographs and maps. It traces the meteorical rise and fall of Hitler and his despicable regime which ruled Germany with an iron fist of hatred from 1933-1945. Sir Ian Kersahw is the best biographer of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in the English speaking world. This new book is a condensation of his magistertial two volume set on the life of Hitler: Hubris: 1889-1936 and Nemesis: 1936-1945. The lad lost his parents at at early age; he hate his father and adored his mother.
Hitler migrated to Munich to escape Austrian conscription. The book does not include footnotes or an extended bibliography since these can be found in the earlier two volume biography. Hitler finally ascended to power in 1933 becoming Chancellor and ruling the nation into a disastrous war. Anyone wishing to learn about Hitler and the Nazi rise to power and their rulership of captive Europe should consider this book a sine qua non of scholarship on the grim subject. He committed suicide on April 30, 1945 alongside Eva Braun Hitler who had married him a few scant hours before their joint deaths. Hitler failed to win admittance to the Vienna Academy where he sought to study architecture. World War II led to 50 million death including the six million murdered by Hitler in the death camps. This one volume condensation is a great book.
He became associated with right wing nut groups and became a virulent opponent of Jews and Communists. He painted postcards for sale to tourists. Hitler was born to a custom inspector in Austria. He lived in a men's hostel for indigent men being noted for his indolence.
Some personal details may seem trivial compared to the big events of the war, but part of the enjoyment of a biography is in reading the personal details.Particularly in Hitler's case, as he was so evil, one would like some in depth knowledge of what his personal behavior was like. This book is a very good history of Germany while Hitler was in power. If you are interested in WWII, it is an excellent read, but if you are looking for deep insight into Hitler it is somewhat lacking. Moreover, as the book moves through the war years there is excellent detail and description of the Eastern Front, but the description of the West and North Africa gets much less attention. The book does not really seem like a biography. Particularly during World War 2 there is little analysis or description of what Hitler was doing as an individual.
(Which I intend to do after returning this edition).Again, this isn't a jab at Amazon: they've faithfully reproduced the jacket copy. But if you want to read Kershaw's full text, rather than just the highlights, you'll be better off ordering the two volumes separately. But that copy really needs to use the word "abridged" somewhere to make it clear what's on offer here, and it doesn't. Kershaw's writing is masterly, and the individual works making up the biography, _Hubris_ and _Nemesis_, each deserve five stars. My three-star rating is aimed specifically at this one-volume edition: neither the jacket copy nor Amazon's description makes it clear that this is an abridgement, omitting ~650 pages from the original volumes and dropping all the endnotes.If you want a lighter, cut-down version of Kershaw's biography, this edition is certainly serviceable.
You have to, in a way, make parts of it far away and seemingly unreal in order to digest them, and as you read you continue until you can no longer do so and it finally hits you; until you finally have to look at the horrifying man and his iron-fisted reign.Reviewed by Jordan Dacayanan Successfully analyzing the events that led to the actions of the infamous Adolf Hitler in a way that is both historically correct and that does literary justice to just how monstrous, inhuman, and Machiavellian he was is quite the task to take upon oneself, and that's exactly what Ian Kershaw did. "Hitler" gives insight, and surprisingly some of it is brand new insight from previously unheard voices, into the man and the conditions that he took advantage of to gain the tyrannical power that he is so known for.Kershaw includes all of the chilling details, and does so in such a way that you have to distance yourself from them.
I recommend this book. Ian Kershaw has touched the contours of Naziism with careful fingers. This excellent biography fills in gaps of history information earlier read. Painstakingly researched and detailed, voluminous enough to include full, necessary accounts of Hitler and his cohorts, this book leaves me with the realization that all I have read about the Holocaust (much) has been needful of this chronicling.
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