The Hitler of History

by John Lukacs

Book Overview

"A valuable service . . . serious, entertaining, provocative and distinctive." --Cleveland Plain Dealer In the fifty years since his suicide amid the ruins of Berlin, Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more biographies than any comparable figure of our time--and at the center of a crucial historical debate over the nature of evil and moral responsibility in the twentieth century. In this brilliant and original book, the historian John Lukacs climbs...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375701133
• ISBN13: 9780375701139
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Concise Yet Comprehensive

Original as always, Lukacs offers a study not of Hitler himself but of how historians have treated Hitler: how they see him and his actions. No other book on the Third Reich is like this one, because it isn't about the Third Reich. Rather, it considers how we understand the Third Reich through our understanding of Hitler. It's a kind of history about history, then, and not a history about world events. The book reads well--an achievement in itself, considering that the author is originally from Hungary--and is filled with insights not readily available in other books. I have one cavil: Lukacs seems to think that Hitler had an agreement with the Japanese that if they went to war with the U. S., Hitler would have to join them. This is not so. Their agreement was that if Japan was attacked by the U. S., Hitler would take their side--not if the Japanese did the attacking. Still, this is a work unique in the huge library of Hitler studies.

Showing the True Colours of the Prince of Darkness

I must confess that I am fascinated by larger than life bogeymen of history. I devour biographies about such characters as Mao, Hitler, Himmler, Beria, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Franco, Robespierre, Lenin, Fouche, Napoleon, Richelieu. While obviously one could never lump them all together (there is a universe of difference between a psychopathic genocidal maniac such as Pol Pot and a respected architect of royal authority such as Richelieu), they all share one common trait, and that is of having been thought (fairly, in most cases) to be dark, even satanic. And the darkest and most satanic of all is Hitler. The man seems irredemeable, a compendium of all that is beastly and vulgar. Hannah Arendt's dictum about Adolf Eichman ("the banality of evil") seems even more adequate for Eichman's namesake and compatriot Hitler.Lucaks' book shines a light through the Fuehrer's inner darkness. In so doing he actually manages something of a re-appraisal that is, nonetheless, far off from a rehabilitation. He shows how Hitler as a person was actually a much more complex and unfathomable being than the pantomime villain he has frequently been represented (remember the Hitler of "Springtime for Hitler" in Mel Brooks' "The Producers"? Many serious historians have not been much more realistic in their portrayals). He shows that this brand of spiritual evil is not diminished by Hitler's many positive personal traits (such as his fearlesness, his photographic memory, his iron will, or his personal honesty). I thought it very fitting that he would dare to discuss evil in an explicitly religious context. Contemporary indifference to traditional categories such as good and evil, and relativistic appraisals of everything, get in the way of an accurate understanding of what Hitler was about. Hitler was not a cartoon character dribbling spit from his lower lip as he ranted and raved for the benefit of a few like-minded maniacs. He was an intelligent, hard-working man who was able to inspire an great nation with his vision. Unfortunately, this vision was inhuman and hellish. The evil that he conjured burned him from the face of this earth. The tragic magnificence of his destiny is well conjured by Lucaks' erudition and elegant writing style. His strong moral sense is also useful to have as one gazes into the abyss.If you will only read one book about Hitler, make it this one, and if possible follow it up with Burleigh's "Third Reich".

A Well Writen, Concise and Level-Headed Book

I'm writing this review having read both Lukacs' book and Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler." Some have criticised Lukacs for his omissions, and for what they suppose to be some attempt on his part to mitigate the seriousness or vileness of Hitler's misdeeds. I can only say that (i) It is hardly possible to imagine a book that manages to treat a historical figure at once concisely AND comprehensively. Short and to-the-point books do have a legitimate place in the world, and vacuous, padded and emotion-driven volumes like Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler," make one appreciate Lukacs' achievement much more keenly.(ii) Far from seeking to downplay Hitler's responsibility for Germany's atrocities, or to "contextualize" them away as just one more example of Man's Inherently Evil Nature, Lukacs for the most part plays the skeptic, examining the underlying motivations of those who would have attitudes towards the Third Reich "normalized," while at the same time grasping something many passionate haters of Hitler seem to forget: in blaming wider forces such as "The Teutonic Soul," Germany's "Sonderweg," his (supposed) sexual perversions, and so forth, such people essentially relieve Hitler of the responsibility, and necessarily, the guilt, for his actions. After all, what right have we to blame Hitler for anything, if his parenting and German culture destined him to his actions?

Hitler in his place

"Hitler" has become less a person than a brand name in the years since his death. His name is applied with equal casualness to left- and right-wing politics, and against anything and anyone one doesn't like. What Hitler and the short-lived Nazi phenomenon really was has been tailored to suit the biases of every historian who has examined them. Lukas shows how Hitler and the Nazis are distorted by the lens of each historian's own bigotry and shortcomings. And yet, at the same time, he demonstrates a truth too often overlooked by historians playing petty oneupsmanship against those who don't share their own political views -- that Hitler was an extremely complex man, whose unique ideology doesn't fit comfortably into either the conventional politics of left or right, but combines the worst aspects of both. This book is a critical examination of Hitler biographies, as well as an assessment of Hitler himself -- which is like grasping water -- Lukan has written a valuable resource for anyone who wants to see beyond typical parochial presentations. And the ultimate conclusion one reaches when reading it is that instead of looking outward for the answer to why Hitler happened, one should look introspectively, at one's own heart.

The Man of the Century

John Lukacs has written a brilliant, scholarly and authoritative masterpiece about the historical aspect of the central figure of the twentieth century. Lukcas artfully and at times eruditely strips away the superfical impression we have of Hitler as a madman who mirco-managed his generals, knew nothing of U.S. industrial power and was self assured, even to the end the Third Reich would win the war to show none of these impressions are true.He has removed Hilter from the shadows and under the cold hard light of historical analysis given him a human dimension that is even more chilling and frightening than anything we've imagined before.