Review of Hitler by Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler is a detailed and weighty insight into the life of the Nazi leader. It covers everything from his early life growing up in Austria, to his rise to power in Germany and death in the bunker. Having read it you will be in no doubt of the evil and total disregard for human life which Hitler had. Also the skill and deviousness he used to manipulated the foreign powers and the German people.

I listened to the book as an audiobook from Audible. It’s certainly one of the longer books I’ve listened to coming in at roughly 45 hours. I was able to comfortably listen to most of it at 1.75 speed going up to 2.0 speed at some points. Even at this speed it took me two weeks to complete.

As an audiobook Hitler works well. There are occasions, for example, where you have a list of Generals where it can be hard to follow but in the main it’s fine. My normal issue with history audiobooks is not being able to see the maps but because the action takes place in Central Europe and at a large scale that didn’t apply to this book. The one thing I did miss were photos so I did find myself supplementing the listening with internet searches.

Obviously with a book of this length you would expect a lot of detail and that’s exactly what you get. I particularly liked some of the stories of his early life. For example, when Hitler lived in Vienna after he had failed his art school exams the first time he shared rooms with his childhood friend Kubizek. Kubizek went home for a few weeks in the summer and Hitler retook the exam failing it again. When Kubizek returned Hitler had disappeared with no forwarding address being too embarrassed to see him again. They only met up again when he had become Chancellor.

I had not realised how much of a down and out he was in Vienna. Living rough and spending quite a long time in a hostel. Eventually being persuaded to sell his paintings from which he made a modest income. It was the First World War which really gave him some direction and in a sense saved him.

I felt that the book didn’t quite explain his anti-jewish feelings despite this being one of its main aims. I mean it described how he disliked them and blamed them for the loss of the First World War but surely there’s a big gap between that and the atrocities he committed against them. This leads into my main criticism of the book which is that you don’t really get into the head of Hitler. The book is more of a collection of facts, Hitler did this, Hitler did that rather than explaining why he did them.

There are also points like him going to great lengths to ensure that there wasn’t a paper trail to his orders with only a few of his signed directives existing. I would have liked more information about why he did that. He was a man in total control of the country and almost total popularity. He also felt that he was ideologically right in everything he did so why would he be bothered about leaving a paper trail. The implication of this lack of a paper trail was that he didn’t want to face possible legal consequences. However I think it was more of a personal reason to ensure that he always had a way out and if things didn’t work could blame other people.

All in all this is a very comprehensive book about Hitler’s life. It doesn’t cover everything you’d like to know but it’s likely that we’ll never know some of these things.

For more info take a look at the World War II timeline.

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