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Product Description
Product Description
History records no phenomenon like Adolf Hitler. No name still evokes such hate and fear, and no individual has left so much terror, death and destruction in his wake. Even today historians speculate over the question: how did it happen? Was Hitler a madman on the rampage? A puppet of Germany's elite? Or an evil man who planned everything to the last? Joachim C. Fest's now classic biography is the first major post-war German study of Hitler. Scholarly yet highly readable, it reconciles these differing views of Hitler, both bringing unique insights into his obsessive, hubristic personality and examining the economic, political and cultural conditions that aided him in his terrifying rise to power.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Joachim C. Fest was born in Berlin in 1926. After the Second World War, in which he served and was taken prisoner, he joined the radio station RIAS-Berlin, where he became the head of the Department of Contemporary History. In 1961 he became the Editor-in-Chief of TV for Norddeutscher Rundfunk. He is the author of 'The Face of the Third Reich' (Penguin, 1963) and 'Plotting Hitler's Death' (1996).
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The extraordinary life of Adolf Hitler holds enduring mainstream and cult fascination. The best-selling placing of Professor Kershaw's recent Hitler biography (Vo.2) shows a public still unsatiated.
The sheer volume of the Third Reich archive available to researchers, and the rewards which bring some of the most skilled historians to work on this material has meant the Hitler publishing industry has been very well served.
None more so than by Joachim Fest. It is a testament to Fest's 'Hitler' that it remains a landmark biography more than twenty years after first publication in Germany.
Joachim Fest was not a professional historian when 'Hitler' was written, nevertheless he created a prodigy of a book. Weighty, perceptive and impressively researched, it is a remarkable history of a period so personally identified with the Dictator.
The sustained power of the book derives from the flair with which the author analyses the psychological drives of his subject and explores the contrasts between the self-image and the actuality. Fest's 'Hitler' belongs to the 'psycho-History' school of historiography. He examines Hitler's essential rigidity, the intellect dwarfed by prejudice and the origins of the enormous up-draughts of his imagination (autobahn, racial-extermination, New World Order) which his autocrats hastened to accomplish.
He successfully tests his assumptions about Hitler against the choices he made (and didn't make) through his personal odyssey from obscurity to power and the final days as a 'cake-gobbling wreck' in the bunker.
With wonderful fluidity and expression, Fest has raised biography to an art form in this book, but 'Hitler' is not an easy read. Philosophically it is determinist, unravelling a bleak view of unstoppable fate and destiny. In spite of this it remains a bravura work of imagination, veracity and force.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
17 reviews
47 of 52 people found the following review helpful
As much a biography of Germany as of Hitler
9 Aug 2001
Format:Paperback
I'm a big fan of biographies, and this remains (some 10 years after reading it) one of my favorites. There is no dearth of books on Hitler, of course. Fest's accomplishment here is that each section on Hitler is straddled by a section describing other events in the world and Germany, always giving the reader a larger context in which Hitler's activities can be placed.
I'm a little dismayed by [people] who suggest that Hitler was merely a sufferer of post-traumatic-stress syndrome after his experience in the trenches of WWI, and that Fest does a disservice (to Hitler?) by leaving this information out. But many people have suffered in the trenches in many wars without later moving on to attempt world domination and genocide.
In any case, Fest's biography omits nothing. It is written in a clear, beautiful language, and will leave you with an entirely new understanding of Hitler, Germans and Germany.
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
No other biography comes closer to the subject
12 Feb 2000
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a devoted reader of history, especially of the early 20th century period, I probably have gone through every popular and even arcane book on Hitler and National Socialism. I've read Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich," Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reach," Alan Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives," . . . yet, these books, while informative, lack the depth of understanding of the horrible phenomenon of Hitler that Joachim Fest brings to his biography. Maybe because Fest himself is German and is therefore closer to his subject. Yes, the style is dry, and the book is indeed rather biased at times--the preface is titled incredibly "Hitler and Historical Greatness!" Yet, within that preface, you will find insights and observations that are lacking in all other biographies on the Fuehrer. I myself was riveted from page one all the way to the end. So, if you want to really understand Hitler, read this book. If you want to read a lighter biography, read the sections on Hitler in Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives."
30 of 37 people found the following review helpful
A fairly good biography
21 July 2000
Format:Paperback
The life story of Adolf Hitler is so compelling that it is hard to imagine a book about it ever being boring. Fest's account is thoroughly researched and and meticulously detailed and was a best sellerin West Germany before being published in the U.S. Though not as readabled as Robert Payne's superior "The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler," it still paints a fairly complete portrait of the man. If the book has any drawback, it is that it does not spend enough time on Hitler's pre-World War I activities. Payne much more thoroughly documents the humiliation and disappointment in Vienna that searled Hitler's soul and helped turn him into a monster. Nevertheless, Fest's "Hitler" remains one of the defining biographies of the 20th century's most evil figure.
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