C. G. Telcontar's Reviews > Adolf Hitler

There are any number of serious, well researched Hitler bios in print, and there are several that are middling or downright awful. This is the third full length bio of Hitler that I've tackled, and I find it the most appealing, the others being Bullock's Study In Tyranny and Kershaw's two volume Hitler. Bullock's is a bit dated now, I think, and he did not have the depth of current research now available on the Third Reich, while Kershaw's, while excellent in many respects, is for me too narrowly focused, especially once the war starts. Both Bullock and Kershaw give too much play to the election cycle in 1932-1933 that eventually put Hitler in the driver's seat, and Bullock is too cursory with Hitler's childhood and WW1 experiences.

Many might say Toland went too far to make Hitler a person, rather than retaining him as monster and 20th century ultimate villain, but I find that view distasteful. Put the emotions aside and treat him as an historical figure and a human, and you can study his life in a little more neutral frame of mind. You won't be able to completely shed your distaste for the man, the myth or the legend, but you can appreciate his timeframe and what led to his decisions with a little better clarity.

Toland does an excellent job with Eva Braun, bringing her forward from the shadows and fleshing out the dismissive view nearly every historian has taken of her since Speer casted her as the dumb blond of history. He takes her diary entries and interviews with her sister and makes her human, as well. He uses the surviving members of the inner circle and their recollections as a starting point for his research, rather than as gospel truth itself, such as David Irving might use. His treatment of Goring's contributions to the Reich does get short shrift, but his brief portrayals of Goebels and Himmler are fascinating, but Ribbentrop gets virtually no stage time at all, and Speer is mercifully left waiting in the wings.

If there is one aspect of the history of Hitler that he pushes too hard, it is his assertion that Hitler had Jewish extermination planed and premeditated from an early point, and was fairly open about in his later 1930's speeches. I don't quite buy it, but until I can find texts of those speeches, specifically one given at Sonthofen in 1938 or 1939, I can't say definitively yes or no on this point.

The last point to remember about Toland is that he was a journalist first, and not a trained historian, and so the professionals tend to look down their noses at him, Kershaw and Hastings most of all. But I love his writing. He is a storyteller by profession as a journalist, and he really brings you into the story, with solid writing and good flow. He belabors nothing, and so long as you have a basic familiarity with the story of the Reich, you can take the very long trip in this book and enjoy it quite heartily.

Footnote: Mussolini and Franco are fleshed out well, too, while Stalin, Churchill and FDR remain at long range, viewed from Hitler's eyes, over the hill and through a glass dimly.

I give I 4 and a half stars and recommend the full two volume edition, which is sometimes hard to find these days. Be sure what you're buying if you look for it. There is an audio edition available from major library systems now also, which I listened to, and it's narrated quite well, with a voice actor who is very familiar with German (thank goodness!) and doesn't fumble any of the names or pronunciations.