Hitler

January 16, 2012
Adding to the enormous literature on Hitler, prolific British biographer and novelist Wilson (Dante in Love) focuses as much on the man and his relationships as on his actions and times, for instance, devoting as much attention to the Führer’s friendship with British aristocrat Diana Mitford as to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Similarly, Wilson devotes more space to the years 1924–1929, when the Nazi Party was in eclipse, than to the WWII years. Wilson engages in some facile comparative history that lends a measure of ordinariness to Hitler. In one case, he makes the untenable statement that Hitler “in his racial discrimination was simply being normal”—this because the U.S. and Britain were “racist through and through”—and that Hitler “was an embodiment, albeit an exaggerated embodiment, of the beliefs of the average modern person.” Wilson uses Hitler as an excuse for a backhanded slap at the Enlightenment—the godless age that gave birth to the “modern scientific” outlook that, Wilson believes, led in turn to Hitler. Given the monumental impact of Hitler on modern history, this far too short, superficial biography fails to measure up to its subject.

February 1, 2012
The award-winning journalist, biographer and novelist offers a short, often-pugnacious biography of the Fuhrer. Wilson (Dante in Love, 2011, etc.)--who has written a novel about Hitler (Winnie and Wolf, 2008) and who in 2009 announced his return to the Christian faith he'd abandoned for atheism--finds in Hitler an avatar for a century that turned away from God and embraced Darwin. "He believed in a crude Darwinism," writes the author, "as do nearly all scientists today, and as do almost all 'sensible' sociologists, political commentators and journalistic wiseacres." Wilson concludes his otherwise sensible biography with the observation that Hitler was just like the rest of us--only more so. The author appears to attribute to atheists and "the liberal intelligentsia who control the West" most of the blame for World War II--and for the perils of today--though he never gets around to mentioning the wars and other horrors visited on people because of religion. His tendentiousness aside, he provides a useful, even entertaining, life of Hitler. He revisits the expected events--his rise, his incarceration, Mein Kampf, his vicious henchman, his anti-Semitism, his enormous prewar popularity (not just in Germany), his poor military judgment, his women, his fall and death--and adds some nasty details (he couldn't control his farting; he was lazy and dressed oddly). He has few kind words for Churchill (crediting him with a "brutal mind") and also takes some shots at Americans, noting that we named one climactic action the Battle of the Bulge because we didn't bother to learn local place names. Wilson declares that Hitler's greatest gift was his ability to dazzle and motivate crowds (and, of course, his mad ambition), and he traces our current fondness for political pageantry to the Nazis' mass gatherings. The author's salty certainty both enlivens and diminishes his work.

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April 1, 2012

Is a new Hitler biography necessary? This short volume's "Select Bibliography"--listing 17 earlier biographies--would suggest not. Even the half-awake history student has absorbed at least the outline of this tale: failed art student and layabout becomes the 20th century's "ultimate horror-tyrant," as Wilson puts it. Wilson (Tolstoy: A Biography), a journalist and prolific biographer and novelist, has erected a bare scaffolding of the much-considered life of this "Demon King of history" in order to offer some incisive judgments. For instance, he argues that Hitler and Goebbels each derived from their Catholic upbringing a "system of control" on which the entire Nazi edifice was modeled. Atop this scaffolding sits a provocative final chapter in which Wilson confronts readers with the notion that Hitler might not have been such an utter anomaly. Hitler, Wilson says, "believed himself to be enlightened and forward-looking, non-smoking, vegetarian, opposed to hunting, in favor of abortion and euthanasia." Sound like anyone you know? VERDICT Wilson does not uncover new facts about Hitler's life. He provides instead a brisk overview capped by a "Final Verdict," the title of his unsettling last chapter--one that may raise discussion among its readers.--Sebastian Stockman, Emerson Coll., Boston, MA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2012
Why did Hitler threaten to commit suicide in January 1936 but not carry out his threat? Wilson's sharply focused capsule biography allows readers to see the 1936 suicide threat as just one of the pivot points in the transformation of an aimless idler with mesmerizing rhetorical talents into a demonic dictator. Wilson particularly highlights those pivot points at which Western leaders could have blocked the megalomaniac's ascent and so saved millions of lives, including those of the Jews he openly promised to annihilate. Of course, at his final pivot point, in the Berlin bunker, Hitler must make suicide more than an empty threat. But Wilson will not allow his readers to take this final pivot point as a reason for complacency. In his conclusion, he provocatively raises the possibility of a twenty-first-century Hitler by emphasizing the persistence of cultural impulses that the German monster affirmed, impulses such as those elevating science over religion while eliminating restrictions on abortion and euthanasia. A portrait as disturbing as it is succinct.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)