Hitler: The Pathology of Evil

by George Victor

Book Overview

Victor's book is the first to show that implementing the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574882287
• ISBN13: 9781574882285
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

5th Book I have read on Hitler

While my interests is mainly the establishment of the Nazi party in Germany, this book gave a really good background of Hitler himself. It was fascinating. Be prepared for something which deals a lot with psychology and psychoanalysis. It is good to read this book about the same you read Sebastian Haffner or Claudia Koontz's books on Hitler and the Nazi party. It is a quick read and really well written. While we can never excuse the actions of the Nazis, we can understand what led them to do what they did and how we can keep it from happening again.

Is it possible to have sympathy for the devil?

This book attempts to un-demonize Hitler long enough to understand his development as an abused child, a failed person, and as the most evil dictator in human history. Only a Jewish Psychololgist could attempt such a feat, and the author, George Victor, has done a remarkable job. Most interesting was how Victor pointed out in great detail the conflicted personality of Hitler, piece by piece, and tied those conflicts to the abuse that he and his beloved mother suffered at the hands of his father. Virtually everything Hitler said or did was a contradiction, due to his extreme self-loathing, wherein he masked his own intense hatred of himself and his father, by pretending to be superhuman, while projecting everything he hated about himself and his family, a tall order, onto every other group imaginable, all of whom paid the ultimate price for reminding Hitler of himself. Must read for anybody interested in WWII and/or German/Austrian history.

At last...

someone has made sense out of it all...by filling in Hitler's background,as it has never been revealed before...we can understand how madness and evil converged in the persona of one man who managed to murder millions because of his completely illogical beliefs..My whole life I have been trying to understand him(his evil influence),and this book has really helped me considerably.I can even see how his vile minions,the SS,were attracted to him and his ruthlessness..and obeyed him til the end.This is a fact-filled book,yes,but it is extremely well-written and researched,and I have read it over the course of two days.If you are, as I am,fascinated and repulsed at the same time about the most powerful and evil (well..I can't use bad language here,so fill in the blanks)"human being" of the 20th century...then this most excellent book will help you further in understanding just what happened,and why.

Now Hitler makes perfect sense

Not to be confused with "Hitler: the search for the origins of his evil".I advise readers not to be concerned at seeing the word psychoanalysis being bandied about here. It is true that Victor comes from a background in this but the book does not lean on the spurious nature of psychoanalysis and it makes sense in its own terms. I strongly recommend the book. Now Hitler makes perfect sense. An essential supplement to a Hitler biography for students of the man.

This book was a great help

In his book Hitler: The Pathology of Evil, George Victor does what no author has yet been able to do, portray Hitler not only as the evil villain the he was, but also as a tortured soul that he was. He portrays Hitler as a man with a troubled past and tries to explain why he did the things that he did. Yet at the same time showing what happened to him in his childhood and during his past, and explaining how it affected his future action, it does not make concessions for his actions. It merely tries to explain the reasons why he did the thinks that he did. This book isn't only a historical biography on a man that has had many other such books written on him. This book is much more of a psychological analysis of certain points in Hitler's life, and shows how these some how insignificant actions of his past affect not only his future but that of all of Germany, Europe, and the world. Victor, a former psychologist and psychotherapist for over thirty years, does an excellent job of doing this. On of the best parts of the book is over the conflict of Hitler being an abused child, the fact that we should feel sorry for him in a way, and the problem that this fact raises. Part of the problem that people have with this fact is that in no way should we feel sorry for this `monster'. At the same time if it were anyone else we would feel sorry for him or her and make conscious for this fact. Victor says that the reasons that people don't want to accept this fact of Hitler's past is because it makes him seem more human, something that people have refused to see him as. Victor take the position that we should feel something for him, yet at the same time realize that fact that millions of other abused children don't grow up and murder millions of people.One other area that Victor does a great job is tracing Hitler's family tree. He goes back to Hitler's father and explains the situation of his birth that have led many to believed that Hitler's grandfather was most likely Jewish. He gives evidence that for the first time makes this seem as if it truly is a possibly true. This would explain Victor's theory that he hated what he was, and therefore killed others that were like the true him in some form of misguided aggression. Victor paints a picture of Hitler that no author has been able to do before. Well still portraying him as the evil that he was, but also as a man. Victor does an outstanding job of doing this. One of the better Hitler biographies out there.