Young Hitler

April 30, 2018
In this serviceable but not comprehensive analysis, journalist and historian Ham argues that Adolf Hitler’s experiences in WWI “acted like a forge for his character, hammering his embittered mind into a vengeful political machine.” Ham describes Hitler’s WWI service as fundamentally different from that of the ordinary soldier: he was a message-runner. It was an elite job—involving periodic episodes of high risk and demanding great alertness and self-reliance, followed by ample time for self-contemplation and self-cultivation—that evaporated with the armistice. Ham presents a post-defeat Hitler devastated and drifting, turning to politics out of opportunism and desperation. In expressing his personal fury and frustration, Ham argues, Hitler found success replicating his wartime experience: calling on the qualities necessary to get a message through and bring back the reply. His situational awareness made him both a loudspeaker and an echo chamber for those Germans dislocated and brutalized by the Great War and its consequences, correspondingly susceptible to a rhetoric of hatred. This is a useful general-audience perspective on Hitler as more drummer than leader. Agent: Helen Edwards, Transworld Publishing.

May 1, 2018
Another book on the making of the world's most studied dictator.As former Sunday Times correspondent Ham (Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath, 2014, etc.) notes, the rise of Adolf Hitler from provincial nobody to central figure on the world stage would have been impossible without a chain of extraordinary catastrophes: the collapse of the old European empires, economic depression, and, particularly, the bloodletting of World War I. In that regard, Hitler, already known as a prudish and abstemious young man, was a brave, dutiful soldier who, unlike so many in the trenches, "never abandoned his belief in the sacrifice, for the glory of the German Army and the future of the Reich, a goal for which every man must be willing to give his life." Even so, Ham adds, Hitler was never quite the war hero of later Nazi myth. He did not single-handedly capture a squad of enemy soldiers at the end of a pistol, and neither did he oppose the anti-war left, at least at the beginning of a political career marked by "opportunity, hypocrisy, skill and sheer desperation." In his study of formative politics, Ham ponders why Hitler's anti-Semitism grew to such virulent proportions when, throughout much of his early years, that sentiment was absent. The author's speculations in that regard will be of interest to students of mass psychology as much as history, as are his notes on Hitler's protean ability to be all things to all people and make promises he never intended to keep--but also ones he did. Perhaps the greatest contribution of this book in a time of resurgent nationalism is its quiet reminder that Hitler was an all-too-human product of his time who "personified the feelings of millions, and still does."Ham makes many good points, but while useful and well-executed, this is an ordinary entry in a field dominated by more authoritative books.

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Starred review from April 15, 2018
When Germany's List Regiment assaulted Allied positions in October 1914, British bullets killed hundreds of the attackers but somehow missed one combat-intoxicated regiment infantryman: Adolf Hitler. In this probing account of Hitler's early life, Ham identifies the Great War as the crucible forging Hitler's passion for vengeance against those he believed had betrayed the German army, especially the Jews. Scrutinizing many of the same life events examined by Thomas Weber in Becoming Hitler (2017), Ham shares Weber's perspective on a young Hitler deploying fiendish oratory to preach racial hatred while convincing German listeners of his own heroic stature as an evangelist of Aryan superiority. But Ham differs from Weber in regarding WWI as truly decisive in galvanizing the mental outlook of this missionary of ethnic malice. Moreover, Ham concludes that only the traumatizing effects of that war on the German people as a whole can account for their willingness to embrace an uneducated demagogue as their national savior. As he marvels at the impotence of Hitler's critics to stop his ascent, Ham worries about the rise of populist demagogues in the twenty-first-century world, and he summons his readers to the imperative task of fighting their influence. A biographical inquiry of disquieting contemporary relevance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)