The Hitler of History

"A valuable service . . . serious, entertaining, provocative and distinctive." --Cleveland Plain Dealer In the fifty years since his suicide amid the ruins of Berlin, Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more biographies than any comparable figure of our time--and at the center of a crucial historical debate over the nature of evil and moral responsibility in the twentieth century. In this brilliant and original book, the historian John Lukacs climbs above the fray to produce a definitive "history of a history: the history of the evolution of our understanding of Hitler's life and our debates about its meaning."Like an expert attorney, Lukacs puts the biographies on trial, identifying their strengths, weaknesses, and hidden agendas. And through their intersecting and conflicting accounts, he addresses the enduring enigmas surrounding the demiurge of the Third Reich. Was Hitler a revolutionary or a reactionary? How successful was he as a statesman and a strategist? What was his primary motive for the extermination of the Jews? The Hitler of History answers these questions as fully as any modern work can hope to, with an intellectual boldness that makes it absolutely essential to any understanding of the post-Hitler world."Lukacs is a shrewd historian and an engaging writer . . . a sharp and sober portrait." --Philadelphia Inquirer Binder1.pdf......Page 0 001.tif......Page 2 002.tif......Page 3 003.tif......Page 4 004.tif......Page 5 005.tif......Page 6 006.tif......Page 7 007.tif......Page 8 008.tif......Page 9 009.tif......Page 10 010.tif......Page 11 011.tif......Page 12 012.tif......Page 13 013.tif......Page 14 014.tif......Page 15 015.tif......Page 16 016.tif......Page 17 017.tif......Page 18 018.tif......Page 19 019.tif......Page 20 020.tif......Page 21 021.tif......Page 22 022.tif......Page 23 023.tif......Page 24 024.tif......Page 25 025.tif......Page 26 026.tif......Page 27 027.tif......Page 28 028.tif......Page 29 029.tif......Page 30 030.tif......Page 31 031.tif......Page 32 032.tif......Page 33 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A broadly researched analysis of decades of Hitler biographies that reveals his unique criminality and his place in history.

David Futrelle

We have not yet come to terms with Adolf Hitler, and perhaps we never will. It's not for want of trying. More than 100 biographies have attempted to make sense of the Nazi leader -- not counting Hitler's own unreliable autobiography, Mein Kampf -- and new ones are still hitting the shelves. As historian John Lukacs observes in his often suggestive The Hitler of History, we have not yet come to the crest of the "Hitler Wave" that German historians first noticed building nearly three decades ago.

Despite Hitler's inescapable presence in our popular consciousness, he remains difficult to pin down. We know everything about him -- except what it all means. In The Hitler of History, Lukacs attempts to make some sense of the debate. His book is not, as he hastens to point out, "a biography of Hitler, but a history of his history, and a history of his biographers." In a series of provocative chapters, Lukacs examines a number of key questions surrounding the Nazi leader: Exactly when and where did his ideology first crystallize? Was he a reactionary or a revolutionary? An ideologue or an opportunist? A beloved leader or a despot? Lukacs navigates this difficult historiographical terrain with considerable skill -- though, it must be admitted, he's much better at asking questions than answering them. (Suffice to say that his tentative answers to the above questions resist easy summary.)

Still, there are times when even those who agree with Lukacs will find themselves frustrated by this contentious book. Lukacs dismisses the work of certain historians with an impressively Olympian disdain -- and though many of his targets deserve this sort of dismissal (one thinks especially of the inexplicably popular Nazi-friendly historian David Irving), Lukacs would have done better to engage their arguments in more detail. (Unfortunately, when Lukacs does get into specifics, he tends to fall into a sort of debate-club pedantry, blasting away at minutiae in rambling footnotes that at times threaten to overwhelm the text itself. ) And there are curious omissions: Though Lukacs devotes a chapter to the question of Hitler's popularity with the German people, he manages to avoid discussing the often-vitriolic debate over Daniel Goldhagen's recent book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, which (as its title suggests) argued that there were more than a few "good Germans" willing and able to carry out the dirty work of the Holocaust.

It's a pity Lukacs does not weigh in on this particular debate, for the question of ordinary German "willingness" to follow Hitler, as Lukacs himself acknowledges, is absolutely central to our understanding of the Holocaust itself. Hitler, as Lukacs reluctantly acknowledges, "may have been the most popular revolutionary leader in the history of the modern world ... He is not properly comparable to a Caesar, a Cromwell, a Napoleon. Utterly different from them, he was, more than any of them, able to energize the majority of a great people, in his lifetime the most educated in the world, convincing them to follow his leadership ... and making them believe that what they (and he) stood for was an antithesis of evil." We need to understand not just the "banality" but the strange respectability of Hitler's evil if we are to keep what happened in Germany from ever happening again. -- Salon

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Historians grapple with Hitler (as with any other historical topic) through the prism of their own experiences, culture, and prejudices, making the goal of objectivity elusive, if not impossible. Lukacs (*The End of the Twentieth Century*, *1993*, etc.) has the command of languages and scholarship necessary for the ambitious undertaking of studying the expression of such biases in the myriad biographies of Hitler that have proliferated over the last 50 years. Most valuable for the nonspecialist is the first chapter, where he discusses general historiographical problems, attempts to explain the extraordinary popular interest in the Führer, and reviews how German historians, most of them unknown to an American audience, have treated the dictator (their views range from guarded apologies to rigid ideological or deterministic dissections). The following six chapters deal with such specific topics as whether Hitler was a reactionary or a revolutionary, the problem of racism and nationalism, and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Perhaps the most surprising point that emerges here is that many German historians treat Hitler in a highly nuanced manner, stressing his frequent reversals of policy, his uncertainty, the way in which other individuals could influence or manipulate him. Lukacs draws a rather pessimistic conclusion from this, suggesting that a downturn in Europe's fortunes might cause Hitler to be revived as an example of order and nationalism. Finally, Lukacs struggles with the problem of Hitler's place in history. Although scant attention is paid to the controversial 'historian's debate' that erupted in the mid-1980s, when some German historians began to downplay the unique nature of the Holocaust, Lukacs is successful in offering a balanced portrayal—not of Hitler—but of his biographers. A valuable contribution that will continue to remind us how central Hitler was to the history of the 20th century. (History Book Club selection) [Kirkus Reviews][1] [1]: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/search/?sf=r&q=The%20Hitler%20of%20history In this brilliant, strikingly original book, historian John Lukacs delves to the core of Adolf Hitler's life and mind by examining him through the lenses of his surprisingly diverse biographers.Since 1945 there have been more than one hundred biographies of Hitler, and countless other books on him and the Third Reich. What happens when so many people reinterpret the life of a single individual? Dangerously, the cumulative portrait that begins to emerge can suggest the face of a mythic antihero whose crimes and errors blur behind an aura of power and conquest. By reversing the process, by making Hitler's biographers--rather than Hitler himself--the subject of inquiry, Lukacs reveals the contradictions that take us back to the true Hitler of history.Like an attorney, Lukacs puts the biographies on trial. He gives a masterly account of all the major works and of the personalities, methods, and careers of the biographers (one cannot separate the historian from his history, particularly in this arena); he looks at what is still not known (and probably never will be) about Hitler; he considers various crucial aspects of the real Hitler; and he shows how different biographers have either advanced our understanding or gone off track. By singling out those who have been involved in, or co-opted into, an implicit'rehabilitation of Hitler,'Lukacs draws powerful conclusions about Hitler's essential differences from other monsters of history, such as Napoleon, Mussolini, and Stalin, and--equally important--about Hitler's place in the history of this century and of the world. "A valuable service . . . serious, entertaining, provocative and distinctive." --Cleveland Plain Dealer In the fifty years since his suicide amid the ruins of Berlin, Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more biographies than any comparable figure of our time--and at the center of a crucial historical debate over the nature of evil and moral responsibility in the twentieth century. In this brilliant and original book, the historian John Lukacs climbs above the fray to produce a definitive "history of a the history of the evolution of our understanding of Hitler's life and our debates about its meaning." Like an expert attorney, Lukacs puts the biographies on trial, identifying their strengths, weaknesses, and hidden agendas. And through their intersecting and conflicting accounts, he addresses the enduring enigmas surrounding the demiurge of the Third Reich. Was Hitler a revolutionary or a reactionary? How successful was he as a statesman and a strategist? What was his primary motive for the extermination of the Jews? The Hitler of History answers these questions as fully as any modern work can hope to, with an intellectual boldness that makes it absolutely essential to any understanding of the post-Hitler world. "Lukacs is a shrewd historian and an engaging writer . . . a sharp and sober portrait." --Philadelphia Inquirer In the fifty years since his suicide amid the ruins of Berlin, Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more biographies than any comparable figure of our time--and at the center of a crucial historical debate over the nature of evil and moral responsibility in the twentieth century. In this brilliant and original book, the historian John Lukacs climbs above the fray to produce a definitive "history of a history: the history of the evolution of our understanding of Hitler's life and our debates about its meaning." Like an expert attorney, Lukacs puts the biographies on trial, identifying their strengths, weaknesses, and hidden agendas. And through their intersecting and conflicting accounts, he addresses the enduring enigmas surrounding the demiurge of the Third Reich. Was Hitler a revolutionary or a reactionary? How successful was he as a statesman and a strategist? What was his primary motive for the extermination of the Jews? The Hitler of History answers these questions as fully as any modern work can hope to, with an intellectual boldness that makes it absolutely essential to any understanding of the post-Hitler world.--Publisher website