A rigorous life of Hitler strips away the myth to reveal the man
This is the year when Mein Kampf has been published in Germany for the first time since the end of the war. Seventy years on, the Bavarian state government, which was entrusted with the rights by the American occupying forces, has allowed the dissemination of Hitler’s seminal work. It has done so with the utmost care, handing to academics the job of reproducing a heavily annotated version of the book, which has won plaudits for the tone of the scholarship.
Also in 2016, to a new biography of the man himself: volume one of the work, entitled simply Hitler, by Volker Ullrich, which was published in German in 2013, going straight on to the bestseller list. And with good reason: this is, by any measure, an outstanding study. As Ullrich notes in the introduction, this most difficult task for a historian “demands the greatest responsibility”. This 750-page volume, which transports the reader from Hitler’s curious Austrian antecedents to the start of the second world war, is in turns learned, calm and riveting.
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