HITLER

by Joachim C. Fest ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 17, 1974

Amid the glut of Hitleriana, this is an exceptional biography. It provides a first-rate history of the Fuhrer's career and its psychological penetration is remarkable. Fest sees Hitler as neither megalomaniac nor hypocrite: success came from his ""quality of excess"" and his ""talent for combination"" in both oratory and political maneuvering. Through Hitler's takeover of a tiny rightwing group from the bumbling Anton Drexler, his annihilation of Goebbels' faction, and his casting out of wealthy backer August Hugenberg in 1928, Fest recreates the man's cool ferocity and conscious ability to build political momentum. The Rohm purge snuffed out the limited revolution based on the thugs Hitler himself had built up; now the regime would be a firm ""disciplined state."" Hitler's ideas as such, Fest concludes, were merely the gutter swill of the age, until blended with the financial and labor policies laid down by Reichsbank head Hjalmar Schacht. The book bogs down somewhat in details of the war, the Fuhrer's drug use and loss of health, and anti-Hitler plots. But its capacity to draw together Hitler's ""talents as stage manager,"" the Nazi policies themselves, and the way one dingy emanation of Munich's ultra-nationalist nests was able to cast Europe into darkness and slavery, makes this an invaluable work -- comparable to Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Pub Date: April 17, 1974

ISBN: 3549071728

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION