Volume 49, Number 3 · February 28, 2002
'A Talented Amateur'
By Gordon A. Craig
The Hidden Hitler
by Lothar Machtan, translated from the German by John Brownjohn
Basic Books, 434 pp., $26.00
Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany
by Robert Gellately
Oxford University Press, 359 pp., $35.00
Inside Hitler's High Command
by Geoffrey P. Megargee
University Press of Kansas, 327 pp., $34.95; $17.95 (paper)
Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945
by Richard Overy
Viking, 650 pp., $32.95
The most distinguished of the many books on Hitler are almost exclusively political in nature and concentrate for the most part on the genesis, evolution, and eventual collapse of the policies of the German dictator. This is true of Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, which was published in 1952, of Joachim Fest's masterly biography, which appeared twenty-one years later, and of Ian Kershaw's two-volume Hitler, subtitled 1889–1936: Hubris and 1936–1945: Nemesis and published in 1998 and 2000 respectively. In these works, relatively little attention is paid to Hitler's private life and personality. Indeed, Kershaw maintains that Hitler had 'as good as no personal life or history outside the political events in which he [was] involved,' and that consequently the biographer must 'focus not upon [his] personality...but squarely and directly upon the character of his power.'
Review, 4441 words
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