The Castle in the Forest: A Novel

Book Description

No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant, varied, and controversial as that of Norman Mailer. In a span of more than six decades, Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt, from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe, from Henry Miller and Mohammad Ali to Jesus Christ. Now, in The Castle in the Forest, his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: He has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler.

The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, gives us young Adolf from birth, as well as Hitler’s father and mother, his sisters and brothers, and the intimate details of his childhood and adolescence.

A tapestry of unforgettable characters, The Castle in the Forest delivers its playful twists and surprises with astonishing insight into the nature of the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all. At its core is a hypothesis that propels this novel and makes it a work of stunning originality. Now, on the eve of his eighty-fourth birthday, Norman Mailer may well be saying more than he ever has before.

Customer Reviews:

Provacative; fascinating.......2007-10-10

Mailer never minces words, and his narrator D.T. doesn't either. What I found most remarkable was the strength of the story-telling as Mailer explored the nature of evil.

Beautiful language, remarkably restrained.......2007-09-09

The Castle in the Forest is a fictionalized account of the childhood of Adolf Hitler and his immediate family. I recommend this book to the interested reader on several levels. First and foremost, Mailer has a beautiful command of language. It's a joy to experience the precision of his words and majesty of his phrasings.

Second is his treatment of this controversial subject - how to "explain" the evil of Adolf Hitler? To Mailer's credit, the answer turns out to be we really don't - not cleanly anyway, and not from his early childhood. His treatment of the subject is remarkably restrained. There are no definitive events in Mailer's life of young Adolf Hitler that create a force of evil. In many ways, this could be the story of any of thousands of boys growing up in Austria at that time, leaving the reader to conjecture endlessly how this particular set of forces sowed the seed of Hitler's later evil.

Lastly is the depth of the character portrayals. Mailer clearly researched Hitler's immediate family in depth, and most readers will find themselves wanting to learn more about his mother, father and siblings to form their own conjectures about this slice of history. I found myself frequently turning to Wikipedia to read about Hitler's immediate family.

I listened to this book unabridged on audio narrated by Harris Yulin, who does a magnificent job. His commanding voice matches well with Mailer's language and the complexity of his characters.

Don't bother.......2007-08-25

I wasted a couple of evenings plowing through this simply awful book. Awful not just for the subject matter but because it is so poorly written, clumsy and ridiculous. It's Mailer's self-indulgence at its worst.

Mailer's Story is a Deep Well.......2007-08-22

Everyone seems to get hung up on the notion that THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST is a biography of Adolph Hitler, but I'm not so sure that's the case. You can't read it as history nor gulp it down as absolute truth, both of which are relative, and yet the piece exists beyond the realm of simple fiction. To me the work is a speculation, a meditation on the complexities ... the "ineluctable modalities" of humanity. So, why center the narrative on Hitler? Because, I think, for Mailer's generation and for several since, that dark personality has been--continues to be--the symbol of a vast mystery (a "Mystery of Iniquity?"), which runs like a sinister undercurrent through the nature and history of the human race. Hitler is hapless. The real voice and purpose here comes to us through Dieter (DL). Pay attention to him. There hasn't been a more telling demon since Mephistopheles; however, Dieter has more power, coming at us from our own contemporary sense of self, and he's much more revealing than Faust's creation, for he speaks to us in a modern context. Let yourself sink into the narration, settle into the narrator's tortured spirit, listen to the subtlties and nuances, which some of us may be really hearing for the first time since Eve, so to speak.
This tale is a deep well to which a reader can return often and always find something to nourish the mind and heart.

Don't Bother.......2007-08-16

Well, Norman Mailer writing a new book is normally a reason to celebrate, but this time around I wished I had missed the party all-together. The premise of the book is interesting enough, although it reads like heady science fiction or poor literature - a lover-level devil describes the upbringing of Adolf Hitler and a whole mythology associated with how God and the Devil interact with one another on earth, fighting for and jostling with one another over people's lives and control of the earth. The book is well-researched, the prose is clean and smooth, but then we get to the book itself - it's boring and over-the-top. Mailer spends so much time explaining the way angels ("Cudgels" in the book) war with devils and how they try to guide the course of history that I simply wanted to bang my head against the table. It's one thing to create a mythology, but one that is explained at such a slow pace makes the reading and digesting of it unbearable. The details and intricacies of the Hitler family are wonderful, but there is an over-sensitivity to trying to explain this particular devil's attitude and perspective that any insights into the interplay between Mailer's mythology and the actual events is lost.

When I look back on this book, I keep thinking about the strengths. Mailer structures the book around incest as well as familiar historical events that makes you woder how the book couldn't have been a success. And yet, the story simply plodded on and there was no suspension of disbelief at any point. One critic compared it to Lewis's "Screwtap Letters," but that doesn't quite cut it as the philosophical implications aren't to be taken into account here and the writing simply isn't as good.

For Mailer fans, this will be a good enough read, but for everyone else, go pick out some decent biographies of Hitler and some WWII movies and you'll be much more entertained.

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The Seeds of Hatred
You will be shocked how logical and appealing Hitler's argument is.
Excellent night time reading
Down & Out in Bavaria Hills
The Hobo Philosopher

Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0395925037

Amazon.com

The angry ranting of an obscure, small-party politician, the first volume of Mein Kampf was virtually ignored when it was originally published in 1925. Likewise the second volume, which appeared in 1926. The book details Hitler's childhood, the "betrayal" of Germany in World War I, the desire for revenge against France, the need for lebensraum for the German people, and the means by which the National Socialist party can gain power. It also includes Hitler's racist agenda and his glorification of the "Aryan" race. The few outside the Nazi party who read it dismissed it as nonsense, not believing that anyone could--or would--carry out its radical, terrorist programs. As Hitler and the Nazis gained power, first party members and then the general public were pressured to buy the book. By the time Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, the book stood atop the German bestseller lists. Had the book been taken seriously when it was first published, perhaps the 20th century would have been very different.

Beyond the anger, hatred, bigotry, and self-aggrandizing, Mein Kampf is saddled with tortured prose, meandering narrative, and tangled metaphors (one person was described as "a thorn in the eyes of venal officials"). That said, it is an incredibly important book. It is foolish to think that the Holocaust could not happen again, especially if World War II and its horrors are forgotten. As an Amazon.com reader has pointed out, "If you want to learn about why the Holocaust happened, you can't avoid reading the words of the man who was most responsible for it happening." Mein Kampf, therefore, must be read as a reminder that evil can all too easily grow. --Sunny Delaney

Book Description

In 1922, just four years after the war to end all wars, an unknown Austrian then living in Bavaria planned a pamphlet to be called Settling Accounts. In it he intended to attack the ineffectiveness of the dominant political parties in Germany which were opposed to the new National Socialists (Nazis). In November 1923, Adolf Hitler was jailed for the abortive Munich Beer Hall putsch along with men willing and able to assist him with his writing. With the help of these collaborators, chief among them Rudolf Hess, the pamphlet became a book. Settling Accounts became Mein Kampf, an unparalleled example of muddled economics and history, appalling bigotry, and an intense self-glorification of Adolf Hitler as the true founder and builder of the National Socialist movement. It was written in hate and it contained a blueprint for violent bloodshed. When Mein Kampf was published in 1925, it was a failure. In 1926 a second volume appeared - it was no more successful than the first. People either laughed at it or ignored it. They were wrong to do so. As Hitler's power increased, pressure was put on all party members to buy the book. Gradually this pressure was extended to all elements of the German population. Soon Mein Kampf was even being passed out to newlywed couples as a gift. Ironically, and frighteningly, by the time Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, what has been considered by many to be the most satanic book ever written was running neck and neck with the Bible at the top of the German bestseller lists. In his excellent introduction to this definitive American translation of Mein Kampf, Konrad Heiden writes: "For years Mein Kampf stood as proof of the blindness and complacency of the world. For in its pages Hitler announced -- long before he came to power -- a program of blood and terror in a self-revelation of such overwhelming frankness that few among its readers had the courage to believe it ... That such a man could go so far toward realizing his ambitions, and -- above all -- could find millions of willing tools and helpers; that is a phenomenon the world will ponder for centuries to come." We would be wrong in thinking that such a program, such a man, and such appalling consequences could not reappear in our world of the present. We cannot permit our selves the luxury of forgetting the tragedy of World War II or the man who, more than any other, fostered it. Mein Kampf must be read and constantly remembered as a specimen of evil demagoguery that people whenever men grow tired of thinking and acting for themselves. Mein Kampf is a blueprint for the age of chaos. It transcends in historical importance any other book of the present generation. In his translation Ralph Manheim has taken particular care to give an exact English equivalent of Hitler's highly individual, and often awkward style, including his occasional grammatical errors. We believe this book should stand as the complete, final, and definitive English version of Hitler's own story of his life, his political philosophy, and his thwarted plans for world domination. Translated by Ralph Manheim with an introduction by Konrad Heiden. A compilation of Hitler's most famous prison writings of 1923--the bible of National Socialism and the blueprint for the Third Reich.

Customer Reviews:

The Seeds of Hatred.......2007-09-24

First of all I'd like to say that yes I read this book and as a person of Jewish descent, struggled through it, not so much for its hatred but its lack of "literary merit" to say the least, yet I think that it is a neccessary read for everyone, even in these times. However, as a person with mental illness, I find it too easy to label it "the ravings of a lunatic". If it was people would have ignored it (unlike "The Triumph of the Will" which is morally despicable but a work of cinematic brilliance). It was a (however poorly written) blueprint for what was to come later (though it toned down the extremity that the third reich would become). Firstly, Hitler was a careful strategist and worked with other hateful idealogues (such as Goebbels and Himmler and the like) to promote his viewpoints. However, the main reason he was such a "success story" was that the country at the time was in economic chaos and the climate of hatred was there, waiting for someone to take advantage of it, so sooner or later, someone would have filled his shoes and the poplulace (see the film "Shoah" for proof of this) not only went along with what he said, they were willing accomplices (as were other countries throughout Europe such as Austria or a large part of France or even Stalin-a despot on his own-had Hitler not betrayed the non aggression pact)as "The Sorrow and the Pity" may attest. But with reviewers who find "The Turner Diaries" to be "brilliant" and a certain "inspirational" Mel Gibson movie to be proof that "Jews control the media" (direct quotes) it shows that there are people like that even now and as for a climate of hatred and intolerance, I'd say that we are in the middle of that right now (on all sides). Read "Mein Kampf" and see the dvd of "It Happenned Here" (about a fictional third reich taking power again) and realize, that this work of hatred, is something still to be feared, not religated to the past.

You will be shocked how logical and appealing Hitler's argument is........2007-09-24

First, a disclaimer: I do not advocate or support Hitler's ideas, but I recommend this book because so much of the world currently thinks this way and applies this philosophy or similar to issues of economy, immigration, international relations, and even their daily business and community lives. Because Mein Kampf reflects the mindset of so many, from leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (President of Iran) down to the common American factory worker, it's important to realize that these ideas--as any really--are as dangerous as they are logical.

Is this an evil book? No. We have several maniacs publishing books, sitting in places of political power, and with loyal followings on political talk shows whose ideas are as or more threatening to world order if they were allowed to reign. And since you should understand those competing ideas for what they are, I recommend reading the father of them all--Mein Kampf.

The most shocking thing about reading this book is that Hitler offers a very logical and appealing argument: that foreigners (the Jews in his time, but perhaps we could substitute the Chinese or Mexicans in ours, or we Americans if you are from Europe or the Middle East, or 'White' Afrikans in 'Black' Africa) are a threat to our wealth and welfare, the health of our society, that they are slowing taking over economically, that it's only a matter of time before they are a ruling, wealthy minority which will subjegate our culture and people--and that they must be stopped.

After all, this has happened in other countries--you're bound to think--and isn't it happening today? Wouldn't we be right to protect our interests against this imminent threat? Of course, the answer is to irradicate them, seize their assets, erase all traces of their culture. At the very least, doesn't Mein Kampf match very well with the idea of closing United States borders to all immigration, and deporting those who are not already citizens? Hitler himself argues the point far better than any politician today--and boldly.

Hitler does not come off as insane or evil. He's preaching to the chior in his time and place, and it's not much of a stretch to say that this same argument would be very effective today.

It's scary how convincing this book is, and that's exactly why you should read it. Even if you, as I, may not agree with how he incorporated his political philosophy, it's a wake up call to read something by the individual who personified evil for nearly all of us and yet find that his ideas are considerably well thought out.

Excellent night time reading.......2007-09-10

Want to know what went on in the mind of one of the worlds most famous tirants? Then go ask him. Oh no you cant, so read this instead.
Its well written and shows a seriously twisted mind, and acts as a warning to what a twisted mind can achieve given the right circumstances and motivation.
Dont buy this if you expect a cheap jew-bashing novel, but do buy this if you think you can handle a well built up argument as to exactly why Hitler believed what he did.

Down & Out in Bavaria Hills.......2007-09-03

Achtung, Baby!

Mein Kampf has a nasty reputation. When it comes right down to it, Mein Kampf is a bad dog, a bad, bad dawg. If Mein Kampf were human, it would be the balding forty-year old guy with the canting glass eye who loiters down by the stairwell selling tap-dancing aphids out of a hat.

But if you step back, take a deep breath, get the mental picture of grim soot blackened kilns and miles of concertina fence and razor wire and baying German shepherds and slaughterhouses & black-smoke belching smokestacks festering and brooding beneath a slate-grey sky---

Where were we? Oh yes: if you get past that stuff, you'll be able to see Mein Kampf for what it really is: the world's most influential Self-Help manual.

Who needs Dale Carnegie & all that "Smile 'til your Gums Bleed!" crap when you've got Adolf Hitler: Carnegie wants you to wag your tail & get another friend, Hitler wants you to wag your fist in your enemy's face & slice off another rump puppet state.

Let's take a little mental inventory of Adolf Hitler, circa 1923: starving, failed artist, no money to pay the rent, wandered around ranting and drinking all day in beerhalls, and worst of all, stuck in the Munich pokey after he and the boys got knocked around by the local hoo-haw after a wild night gomezing around on the town and a few too many Heffeweisen.

And yet this guy, not even a decade later, is not only shooting hoops and slam dunks but kicking everybody's [EXPLETIVE!] around the court. Around about 1941, Hitler doesn't have any time left to kick [EXPLETIVE!] & take names. Why? Because he's too busy kicking [NAUGHTY!] to take names.

With that in mind, let's break this little masterwork of Teutonic Take-no-Prisoners Motivation down by the numbers & see what Mein Kampf can do for you---today!

1) Give in to your Anger! Your Hate will make you Strong! Whether it's building a battle station that can destroy a planet in a single blast or emptying the Eastern Marches of Bolshevik Scum, get in touch with your Inner Monster & give that bad boy a ticket to ride!

2) It's all about Marketing! Coco Chanel knew it! Tommy Hilfiger knew it! Idi Amin knew it!---Marketing Matters! Hitler proved it. Schwag matters. Gift boxes matter! Little corporate doohickeys with your logo & slogan on it---all of that matters.

WWHD?---'What would Hitler Do?' He'd make it colorful! Primary colors, baby, lots of red and black and white! He'd add chrome! He'd come up with a catchy slogan. He'd probably have a military march with torches somewhere in there! He'd invade Poland!

3) Mission Statement: KISS goes here ("Keep it SS"): make it brutally simple. Example: a) Revenge the betrayed fatherland by shooting the Bolshevik rotters; b) hold lots of torchlit parades; c) invade Russia.

Show me, don't tell me. It's results that count, daddy-o. See #3.

3) Business is War! Get in the other guy's face & scream! Make him wipe your spittle off his mouth! Yes! Go over the line! Pound on the table all you want to, but if you don't get what you want, it's time to cross the enemy's line of Death! No more Mr. Nice Guy!

Your Enemies are a bunch of Fairies! They shave their legs & go cycling after work. Think I'm wrong? Think Carstairs in Accounting has the mojo to take you on, Dear Leader? Try nailing his cat to his desk. Your patience is at an end! Exactly! Would you like a little Belgium or France with your order, Sir?

4)Shoot your rivals. What about Carruthers, the guy from Marketing? Seriously, Old Hoss, keep an eye on that guy. He's quiet, he's shifty eyed, he does what you tell him, and when you screamed at him in that P&L meeting last week he---I jest thee not---he wet himself. That said, remember: it's the quiet ones who get ya, one way or another. Hitler, for instance. Hitler was a frustrated Marketing guy, too.

It's kinda funny to think about, but had someone back on the old arts school admissions council at the Vienna School for Drawing Little Teutonic stick figures decided to let Hitler in, we'd have gotten about 15 years of bad cubist stuff instead of the Blitz & the Holocaust.

5) Strike first! Strike hard! Kill! Kill! Pick yourself up out of the gutter and get back on that Tiger tank! You think it's enough to humiliate Dimwiddy in the board room, you lunk? Fool! You've got to destroy Dimwiddy! You've got to crush him, annex his office space, invade and destroy all those little projects that mean so much to him, get him fired, laugh as he has to haul all his personal shxt out in a cardboard box---and even then it's not over! You've got to gloat, gloat and cackle, when you spot him on the street corner, down in the gutter, eating his daily ration of cat food out of a tin! Shove his face in that horsemeat! Push!

6) Never Underestimate the Stupidity of the Masses: This is a biggie. Think about it: you're German, it's 1930, and one of the candidates for Reichs Chancellor has a shifty looking brush moustache. When asked about his resume, he replies nonchalantly about being big on killing vermin.

Would you vote for that guy? Guess what? They did! Hitler won in a landslide! If he can, you can too!

With that in mind, ACHTUNG! Baby! We got a little Liebensrauming to do.

JSG

The Hobo Philosopher.......2007-08-30

I read this book for its political, intellectual, and philosophical content and not its anti-Semitism and vitriol. This book should be studied in every political discussion group or government class in America. Everything that confronts us today in our political debate is and was debated in this book; religion and politics, the individual and the state, social diseases, teenage pregnancy, democracy vs socialism or communism, ethnic cleansing, aggressive war, the right to torture, freedom of speech, the right to organize, unionism, the free market, globalization, internationalism, capitalism, Central banking, the right to unlimited profits, obligation of citizens to state and state to citizens, leadership, organization, advertising, propaganda, private property, entrepreneurship, the news media, the stock market, banking, patriotism, treason, God, science, world peace, imperialism, education, military industrial complex - you name it and it is discussed in this work and Adolf's answer is given on every subject matter.
This book intrigued me so much and so boggled and confused my mind that I decided to write my own page by page analysis. I have been serializing this analysis on my blog - the hobo philosopher. My copy of Mein Kampf is over 1000 pages. I have finished analyzing book one which is only 500 pages and my analysis is over 800 pages. Needless to say reading Mein Kampf has been quite and educating experience for me. You should try it.

In the Bunker With Hitler: 23 July 1944 - 29 April 1945

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In the Bunker With Hitler: 23 July 1944 - 29 April 1945
Bernd Freytag Von Loringhoven
Manufacturer: Pegasus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1933648392

Book Description

Throughout the last nine months of the Third Reich, from July 23, 1944, to April 29, 1945, Captain Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven-aide-de-camp to Adolf Hitler's last two army chiefs of staff, the generals Heinz Guderian and Hans Krebs-daily attended Hitler's military briefings with his highest-ranking officers. Daily, too, he maintained contact by telephone or radio with commanders at the front, and often he himself transmitted to them Hitler's orders and the latest intelligence from the bunker. He also watched-while recording his experiences in his private logs-as the gap increasingly widened between the reality of the war outside the bunker and Hitler's willful illusions of imminent victory in the face of absolute ruin.

In the last catastrophic week of Hitler's regime, Loringhoven, now holed up night and day in the bunker, saw the final hopes of officers and staff dissolve into drink and fade into suicidal despair. He saw, too, his chance to survive: On April 29, when all communications in the bunker broke down, he could no longer do his work, and with Hitler's unexpected blessing, he left. On April 30, Hitler was dead.

Those wartime logs by a young army officer who found that his duty as a soldier lay at the behest of a criminal have sixty years later become this book.

Near the end of World War II, Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven was appointed aide-de-camp to Hitler's headquarters and finally to his bunker, where he experienced the last nine months of the Third Reich.

Hitler's Secret Life: The Mysteries of the Eagle's Nest

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Few facts, mostly invented

Hitler's Secret Life: The Mysteries of the Eagle's Nest
Glenn B. Infield
Manufacturer: Stein & Day Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews:

Few facts, mostly invented.......2004-04-13

In the 1970's, at the height of the Hitler boom, Glenn Infield had a cottage industry. He produced numerous books on Hitler and Eva Braun, made a ton of money and then thankfully, disappeared from the face of the earth. I say "thankfully" because Infield never was bothered to get his facts straight. He was (in)famous for making up interviews with long-lost Hitler associates, and even inventing people if it suited him. He even claimed to have interviewed Unity Mitford in 1976; the only problem was that she had been dead for 35 years. Oh well, Infield never was one to allow the facts to get in the way of telling a juicy story.

So the text is inaccurate, shoddy and unintentionally funny. He claims Hitler necked on the sofa with a British woman at Bayreuth in 1935, never mind that the woman herself later admitted she'd never even met the Fuehrer or Glenn Infield, for that matter, who claimed to have interviewed her. I could go on and on, but let's just say the book is mostly fiction. The photographs, however, are exceptional. There are actually some rare gems in here, though, as usual, Infiel misidentifies dozens of them. There are at least twenty photos of Gretl Braun (Eva's sister), that are identified as Eva. Infield even has a photo of Max Amann that he says is Heinrich Himmler. Sigh.

Customer Reviews:

Were they human beings?.......2007-04-10

This book has become a classic and justifiably so. It succeeds in drawing a chronological, sociological and psychological comparison between the two most inhuman dictators in recent history. Some pictures are as revealing as Bullock's brilliant text: the school class picture showing both Hitler and Stalin in the same defying position at the same age, some 10 years apart, is ominous and already frightening.
The comparison between the ultimate, sly and ruthless burocrat and the violent, seductive and emotional politician, both deceitful, both obsessed with power and both verging on insanity, ultimately leading the same deadly and disastrous policies, is a brilliant piece of narrative history.
This is definitely a reference book, a landmark.

UNDERSTANDING HISTORY.......2007-03-09

THIS BOOK BY ALLAN BULLOCK IS AN AMAZINGLY HYPNOTIC WORK OF ART THAT DESCRIBES TWO OF THE 20TH CENTURY'S MOST INFAMOUS MONSTERS TO HAVE SURFACED UPON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. THESE INDIVIDUALS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE; INCLUDING FOREIGNERS AND FROM THE SAME RESPECTIVE COUNTRIES. UNDERSTANDING THESE EVENTS LEAD INDIVIDUALS TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE CAN BE MORE MASS ATROCITIES, MORE DEATH AND MUCH MORE SUFFERING LIKE PREVIOUS INSTANCES. IT IS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIETY TO UNITE IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE THAT THESE SCENARIOS DO NOT REOCCUR BECAUSE THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR DURING THESE TIMES WOULD INDEED, BE CATASTROPHIC.

Two of a kind.......2006-02-25

Bullock takes on the daunting task of writing a dual biography on the two most notorious men in the Twentieth Century. He is able to provide a well written in-depth look at both Hitler and Stalin while showing the numerous parallels in their lives. Drawing on several first hand accounts, Bullock shows how each rose to power and ultimate destruction. The author shows little bias towards or against his subjects which is difficult considering the disdain his subjects have garnered. Hitler and Stalin is a stand alone epic that educates and entertains. Well worth the 1100 plus pages.

PARALLEL MONSTERS.......2006-01-10

This is an excellent read for anyone interested in the lives of these 20th Century Monsters. I was particularly keen on learning about their worldviews and how they were shaped by historic events. For the most part Bullock does an excellent job here, jumping back between the two evil minds as they manuevered through European politics. The possibility that the two could have brushed shoulders in Vienna in 1913 is especially chilling.

Sadly, though the book falls apart some during the crucial war years! Bullock abandons comparitive analyses here, and gives us a traditional WWII history, including little the history reader won't already know. He should have concentrated on the dictators themselves, and how they saw the conflict. Instead we get a textbook account of the European conflict. Still a fairly good job overall.

Excellent.......2005-01-09

This dual biography is excellent. Bullock is an excellent writer with an uncluttered style and the content of this book reflects Bullock's considered judgements based on a careful reading of a large volume of scholarship. The balance between the narratives of Hitler's and Stalin's lives, explanations of the relevant contemporary history, and efforts at psychological insight is excellent. While a very thick book, it is a gripping read.
Bullock shows very well the distinct courses of Hitler's and Stalin's lives, a function both of their very different circumstances and personalities. Hitler rose to power in a partially democratized society, his success based on charismatic leadership, demagogic mass politics, and shrewd exploitation of the political weaknesses of his opponents. Once in power, he delegated power to trusted subordinates and presided over an anarchic state composed of competing power centers jockeying for his approval. Stalin, on the other hand, was a consummate bureaucrat and backroom politician. A tireless worker and master political infighter, he largely constructed the state apparatus that was the instrument of his power. His serial purges had the effect of elimnating any potential rival seats of power.
The major question, of course, is why produce a combined biography instead of 2 separate books? It is true that Hitler's and Stalin's lives intersected in very important ways but these issues could easily have been handled in separate books. The advantage of Bullock's approach is that it demonstrates, both implicitly and explicitly, the convergence of the Nazi and Stalinist states. Both were based on personal rule, crude but powerful ideological constructs that held the loyalty of the leaders and numerous followers, ruthless repression, and both states produced results that garned significant popular support. Both were constructed by monsters with considerable insight into human nature but no real sympathy for their fellow men. Both leaders were incredible egoists. Bullock uses the term narcissism in its clinical sense to describe both Hitler and Stalin, who saw the states they led as extensions of themselves. Not surprisingly then, in the depth and organization of repression and many other features, the Nazi and Stalinist states had major similarities. These basic patterns can be seen in many tyrannical states throughout human history and are independent of ideology.

Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth

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Wagner and the Third Reich
Fascinating historically and musically
FASCINATING INSIGHTS INTO THE WAGNERS AND HITLER

Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth
Brigitte Hamann
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 015101308X

Book Description

Winifred Wagner was a British-born orphan who became Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, head of the Bayreuth festival, and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest personal friends.

A no-nonsense Englishwoman who displaced Wagner’s formidable widow to become head of the family and the Festival, Winifred fell adolescently in love with Hitler and made Bayreuth the summer gathering place for the Nazi elite from 1933 to 1939. And yet this staunch German nationalist leaped to the aid of Jewish acquaintances and artists as they were increasingly threatened by exile, imprisonment, or death.

Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Brigitte Hamann has produced a meticulously researched and elegantly written biography—the story of the private Hitler and his monumental obsessions, and of the headstrong, dedicated, and misguided woman who remained loyal to his memory until her death in 1980.

Customer Reviews:

Wagner and the Third Reich.......2007-05-11

This biography is for those with a deep interest in classical music history, Hitler and the Third Reich. For those who have the particular interest, this book repays close reading. I must personally thank the author, Brigitte Hamann, for the enormous research project she undertook to bring Winifred Wagner to 21st century readers, and to history. Hamann has meticulously read correspondence, archives, newspapers and conducted personal interviews with those still living. And unlike so many researchers, she brought her story to life in readable language. This is a jam-packed history, brimming with event, and I read almost every word with intense interest. Winifred Wagner's purpose in life was the Richard Wagner festival in Bayreuth, and as head of the festival she maintained a close friendship with Hitler, who was her chief sponsor from 1933 to 1944. The source of this partnership was the so-called "spiritual" relationship between the German nationalist ethos of Wagnerism and the theoretical underpinnings of Nazi Germany. Winifred Wagner was a hyper-nationalist and ardent Hitler supporter since the Munich putsch of 1923, she was a strong anti-Semite as her many letters attest; and yet she extended herself for individuals, especially Jews, many of whom she personally helped and who survived Nazi Germany because of her intervention with Hitler on their behalf. This is fully documented in the book. After the war, unlike most Nazis who hastened to obliterate their past, Winifred Wagner was proud of her friendship with Hitler and made no apologies; never did she try to whitewash her history. She was a remarkable, deeply deluded woman, who ran the Bayreuth festival and headed the Wagner family for many years. Her logistical abilities could easily have been put to deadly use in World War II - luckily, she was buried in Bayreuth where she could do the Allies no military harm! There is no doubt that Bayreuth today is implicated and besmirched by its close Nazi ties. This biography is a brilliant accomplishment. Only toward the end does the story begin to flag as Winifred's life winds down in a series of futile family quarrels. But til then it is a fascinating history. Do read it!

Fascinating historically and musically.......2007-02-13

One of the most interesting books of the many that have been written about Nazi Germany. The book explains the motivation behind the seeming adoration of Hitler by the Wagner family. Having read Friedelind Wagner's book "Heritage of Fire" , it was very interesting to get a more objective account of those years in Bayreuth. The book can be read on several different perspectives and is carefully document. this is a "saver"

FASCINATING INSIGHTS INTO THE WAGNERS AND HITLER.......2005-10-04

The subtitle of this book is important - A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth - for Winifred Wagner's institutionalised childhood, her youth with the ageing hippie Klindworth couple and the early years of her marriage to Siegfried are all raced through in around 50 pages (out of 500). Another mere 50 cover the 30 odd years after her de-nazification hearings and the takeover of the Bayreuth Festival by her two sons. The main bulk of this book concerns itself with the 25 years of her relationship with Hitler (and his with the Wagner family and the Festival) and its immediate aftermath.

That said, Brigitte Hamann provides a fascinating and eminently readable account of that relationship. Her attitude towards her subject seems to change as the book progresses. Initially she presents Winifred as a fervently (German) Nationalist, anti-Semitic character, much influenced by the writing and the presence around Wahnfried of her brother-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, even before she met and fell under the spell of Onkel Wolfi, as the family referred to Hitler. (Incidentally, Chamberlain was also English by birth but, like Winifred, became more German than the Germans.) The older Winifred is a rather different person as portrayed here. Throughout the war, as evidenced by many of the testaments taken from her de-nazification hearings, Winifred became some kind of Schindleresque saint, saving everyone she could from the clutches of her top Nazi friends - friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, people she didn't know at all, jews, gentiles, the lot. One suspects that all this is coloured by Winifred's own practical need for self-justification at those hearings and should be taken with a slightly larger pinch of salt than Hamann seems prepared to. One can accept that there was a certain naivety to Winifred that wouldn't allow her to accept either what was happening to these people or that her beloved Fuhrer had any knowledge of what was being done in his name. But her continued and oft-expressed loyalty to both Hitler and the principles of National Socialism throughout her later life would suggest that her opinions had not changed gthat much since her youth.

What comes clearly out of Hamann's narrative is a Hitler who found in the Wagner family and its mistress a privacy, a domesticity and a family life he so obviously needed and lacked elsewhere. Hamann remains remarkably tacit on whether the Adolf/Winifred relationship was ever consummated. One suspects not. What does come as a surprise, though, is how early in the War the relationship between them broke down. After all those secret midnight trysts in the 30's, it comes as a shock to realise that they didn't meet at all during the last four years of the War and that correspondence between them became more and more infrequent and formal.

Most of the other members of the Wagner family and many around the periphery come out of this book pretty badly. It seems as though there's something in the genes that drives Wagners to the bloodiest and most internecine of family wars. What is currently going on around the succession to possession of the Green Hill and all that goes with it appears to be little more than a re-run of what occurred towards the end of the war with the previous generation. Wieland emerges particularly badly. A spoiled kid determined to get his way and inclined to smash things if he didn't, he played the most political of games in securing the Festival for himself, conducting vicious and potentially lethal campaigns against the likes of Tietjen, Preetorius and even his own mother. And he was certainly the most duplicitous of all of them about his relationship with AH and the party. It transpires that he was actually second-in-command of a local concentration camp in the latter days of the War - something he would never admit to in later life. Wolfgang remains a much shadowier figure - perhaps because he was necessary to the writer for allowing access to the family archives, albeit still severely restricted and censored. Even Furtwangler turns out not have been quite the Parsifalian simpleton, devoted only to his art, that he and his supporters made him out to be after the Fall of Berlin. In fact, both before and after the War he was a dedicated schemer, determined to get the better of Toscanini, Tietjen and later the one he called the `K man', von Karajan, by whatever means it took.

So this book provides a good sprinkling of gossip as well as a fair amount of new material and information about a crucial and shaming period in Bayreuth's history, all meticulously researched and referenced. It also does us the service, like the film Downfall, of showing Hitler as a human being with human foibles and human insecurities rather than just as a mythical ogre - and that is what is so much more frightening.

Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History

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Not Good
Rubbish from a cheap trash crackpot!
Great insight and understanding will be gained.

Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History
Gerhard L. Weinberg
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521474078

Book Description

Far more than a conflict of imperial aggression, World War II was about "blood and soil," a fight to determine who would control the earth's resources and which races would be exterminated because they were deemed inferior or undesirable. This collection of essays, many never before published in English, illuminates the nature of the Nazi system and its impact on Germany and the world. Included are careful examinations of the Holocaust, the connections between the European and Pacific theaters of war, a comparative analysis of the leadership styles of Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, and Roosevelt and a look back at postwar Germany.

Customer Reviews:

Not Good.......2007-01-04

Oh yay; more on Germany compiled from the German hater. Much to like here if you hate Germans. As objective as anything from Moscow in the 50's.

Rubbish from a cheap trash crackpot!.......2005-07-21

I have read most of Weinberg's so called works on German history and find them to be highly subjective and of dubious value to any serious understanding of the NS era, or German foreign policy in those years.

Belittling all German sources as aplogias or fakes, Weinberg has time and again proves himself to be a most unrelaible author, with axes to grind and who is prepared to go to the extreme of falsifying sources and translations to get his hate propaganda across.

This work is not worth the paper it's printed on.

Great insight and understanding will be gained........2001-02-12

Weinberg's short interpretations and insights make this a great book. If you are looking for a large quantity of in-depth information on the entire war then this is not the book for you. However, if you are seeking a broad overveiw of the German attitude before and during the war with regards to specific information of broad topics; this book is for you. Weinberg deals with issues such as;the European balance of power in 1918, the German generals' reaction to the planning of a war against Poland, what Germany was planning to do with their victory, the German perspective on Pearl Harbor, and many more topics. Overall this book provides great insight to areas that are not traditionally covered in other books.

Average customer rating:

Great reading & useful lessons
Euro-Bonfire of the Vanities
The Scoop that Wasn't
Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH
Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH

Selling Hitler
Robert Harris
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140099484

Book Description

Written with the pace and verve of a thriller, this is the story of the biggest fraud in publishing history. In 1983, it seemed that one of the most startling discoveries of the century had been made, and that one of the world’s most sought-after documents had finally come to light – the private diaries of Adolf Hitler. What followed was a fiasco of fakery, greed, the duping of experts, and the exchange of enormous sums of money for world-wide publishing rights.

Customer Reviews:

Great reading & useful lessons.......2005-08-24

This is a great book! It read like a detective story combined with farce. Harris who later became a succesful novelist has done a terrific job of investigative reporting in uncovering this ridiculous scandal which should never have happened. And there's plenty of blame to go around. We meet gullible Nazi wannabes, greedy businessmen, & pompous academics. the story is so entertaining but also contains important lessons in human nature. Beware of what you want to believe!

Euro-Bonfire of the Vanities.......2002-02-08

Robert Harris's non-fiction work "Selling Hitler," the tale of petty swindle and media corruption in the 1980s, is Europe's answer to "Bonfire of the Vanities," and, like Wolfe's novel, it has an absurd mix of characters. Leading the pack is the amazing forger and con-artist who forged the diaries, closely followed by the gullible German reporter whose willing ignorance led to their publication. On the other side of the channel, British academics, newspapaper editors and press barons were all drawn into the controversy, as the Sunday Times decided the Diaries were fit to print. A comedy of errors on a grand scale.

The Scoop that Wasn't.......2001-12-08

A terrific expose of the greatest journalistic hoax of the 20th century, the "unearthing" of the long-lost Hitler Diaries. Harris turns the case inside out and presents us with a series of well-drawn character profiles. It's impossible to decide what's most appalling, the shabbiness of the hoaxers (the soon-to-be-legendary forger Konrad Kujau, aided by a deeply-closet-fascist German journalist), the gullibility of the British academics or journalists who accepted them at face value, or the cynicism of those who should have known better, i.e. the Sunday Times' publisher as well as the professional controversialists who kept the diaries in the headlines. Farcical and deeply disturbing at the same time.

Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH.......2001-08-15

A well-told and detailed account on the biggest publishing mess in the whole of history, Harris' "Selling Hitler" is hilarious, but has serious lessons to impart. Behind his account of how some of the biggest names in international publishing were conned into making the most enormous fools of themselves are some very chilling scenarios which we witness -- the callousness of the "primitive" Kujau, as well as the publishing world where money is above everything and the pursuit of profit is considered above journalistic integrity, the dishonesty and readiness of one such as Heidemann to believe in the authenticity of the diaries and the unrepentance of the reminiscing Nazis on the "good old days". Most importantly, we see the prevalence of and influence of Hitler and the Nazis on the world so many decades after the demise of the Third Reich, and have to imagine what would have happened had the 'diaries' been used to rewrite history if proof that they were forgeries was not conclusive. Harris' book explains the hold Hitler continues to have on the generation which had undergone the war as well as those after it, and serves as a warning on how memory or delusion can be harmful. A fantastic read, this book should be brought back into publication and made accessible to more people. Highly recommended if you're interested in seeing how people make monkeys of themselves on the world stage.

Sit Back, Read, Learn & LAUGH.......2001-08-15

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Everything you wanted to know-- in fact, too much
HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST, MORE REVELATIONS THAN ANY OTHER GOEBELS BIOGRAPHY
worth reading
Europe's Machiavelli
its fiction, not history

Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich
David Irving
Manufacturer: Focal Point Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1872197132

Customer Reviews:

Everything you wanted to know-- in fact, too much.......2006-05-07

My main criticism of this book is that it contains simply too much information. The indefatigable Irving includes much boring information on Goebbels, which bloats the book to a staggering 750 pages. This is especially true during the Kampfzeit in the 1920's, where every move, drive, nap and reverie is dutifully recorded by the author. It becomes almost ludicrous and it's tedious to wade through such extraneous information in order to get to the heart of the matter. Had Irving culled the biography to a neat 400 pages, the results would have been pleasing. As it stands, the book is compromised by a plethora of useless, trivial facts.

However, there are some fascinating new revelations here, and anything new in a book on Nazi leaders is a coup. Goebbels relates that Hitler in the 20's was anything but the ascetic, uptight and sexually repressed person he's been depicted as in so many other inferior books. Goebbels constantly scribbles in his diary that Hitler's rampant womanzing was jeopardizing the party.

And what of Goebbels notorious reputation as a lady killer? Incredibly, Irving misses the boat here and inexplicably claims Goebbels was a virgin until he married Magda in 1931. Never mind that there are boatloads of evidence to show Goebbels had numerous love affairs before his marriage, and dozens afterwards. Irving also sides with Goebbels in his long dispute with Leni Riefenstahl, which Leni aptly detailed in her memoirs.

I've always admired Irving as a researcher and one able to dig out little-known nuggets. But increasingly he throws in ludicrous opinions which are contrary to fact (to put it mildly). Goebbels was obviously fanatically anti-Semitic, but this doesn't fit into Irving's M.O., so he claims Goebbels used anti-Semitism solely as a "political device." By this time, the reader is wishing the book would come to a conclusion, after 700+ pages of unnecessary detail and some truly tedious asides.

After 40 years of writing on the subject, Irving should have learned he needs an editor, especially with this offering. In addition, he needs to reign in his ridiculous political opinions which needlessly compromise an otherwise reasonable book. It's hard to praise a biography where the author believes Goebbels didn't despise the Jews and merely used them as a political pawn. It's not only delusional, it's bad history.

HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST, MORE REVELATIONS THAN ANY OTHER GOEBELS BIOGRAPHY.......2006-02-03

This is an incredible biography of Goebbels. Irving was the first to translate the missing portions of Goebbels own diaries, which lay hidden for decades in the cold war Soviet union files. Making a nonsense of many histories of the Nazi era, Irving has come up with a priceless work.
The internal rivalries of Nazism are fascinatingly revealed, Goebbells spiting vitriol about rivals Goring, the Strasser brothers, and occasionally the fuhrer himself. Debunking the myths of kristallnacht, Irving shows Goebbels to be the orchestrator of the violence against Jews and their businesses, much to their rage of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders, who called an immediate hault to their mayhem.

On a personal level, Goebbels comes across as an intriguing, often bizarre individual. Afflicted with a club foot, and of Gandhi-esque proportion - 5 feet 4 and barely 100lb. One of the most intellectual of Nazis, his formative years were a mix of academic achievements and periods of poverty inbetween. Irving portrays these years vividly, against the backdrop of WW1 and the years afterwards.

In other works, Dr Goebbels is portrayed as a lifelong womaniser, in this biography the peculiar and complicated evolution he goes through belies this notion. Though having numnerous 'girlfriends' in his Univiversity years, the Doctor conducted these intense relationships on a platonic basis, only losing his virginity in hie early 30's.

To touch on even a fraction of the themes worth reading in this book would take hours. It offers a deeply personal portrait of the man himself, but also reveals a greater depth on the Nazi era, both individual events and the time as a whole.

worth reading.......2004-12-29

rediculous that people have to systematically review all his books with the same garbage about his "lies"

see what germans say about his work!

get off your American Propaganda please!
this is an attempt at exposing goebells that isn't American/British Biased like every other work that comes out of these countries...

some people aren't interested in the holocaust aspects, just the factual history of the third reich and a particular writer's opinion on it... people can publish what they want, if you don't like it, DONT READ IT

He has the right to write and you have the right not to read

should we ban Mein Kampf too? or Karl Marx works? or the Protocols of the wise men of zion?

Europe's Machiavelli.......2004-05-17

It's amusing in the extreme to see so many people froth at the mouth over David Irving. If he is "so discredited," why is he thrown such a fit about? The fact of the matter is that history should never be written about until fifty years after the occurences in question.

Remember, Watergate was first derided as lunatic conspiracy theory, and one that eventually toppled Richard M. Nixon...

Here, Irving neither "apologizes" for Nazi Germany or its architects, nor does he simply goose-step in unison with the current gospel according to the cereal box. What he has done was to obtain 1,200 plates of glass upon which were written heretofore unavailable Goebbels diaries entries, that were "missing" when Louis Lochner released his work of Goebbels' diaries circa 1943-1945, and utilize them to take the reader into the mind of the man who was Hitler's "false prophet."

A brilliant portrait of a perverse, twisted and sad soul that impacted the world in an (ultimately) destructive fashion.

I suggest you read, and judge for yourself.

I suggest you read, and decide for yourself.

its fiction, not history.......2001-11-19

Unfortunately, this interesting bit of history relies on fictional details to support its larger claims. There is documentation about the falsities in this volume that came to light at David Irvings libel trial in London that removes any value to this book other than the interesting and fascinating way that Mr. Irving is able to weave his stories. If you like other WWII fiction you might enjoy this. If you are looking for REAL history then you are better off reading Goebbels diary entries in their original German than relying on David Irvings misguided attempt to channel the Third Reichs thinkers in this book.

Average customer rating:

The classic and definitive biography of Adolf Hitler
Hitler Defined
Very well done
The One Bio of Hitler to Have!
Best Book on Adolf Hitler, yet a better one could be written still.

Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography
John Toland
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385420536
Release Date: 1991-12-01

Book Description

A national bestseller with more than 370,000 copies in print, this is "the first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or the war in Europe must read... a marvel of fact."--Newsweek

Customer Reviews:

The classic and definitive biography of Adolf Hitler.......2007-06-10

If you own only one biography of Adolf Hitler, this is the one to own. It covers his life from his birth, through the abusive years with his father, through the loss of his mother, his years years as a aspiring artist in Vienna, his service in the first world war, his joining and making the Nazi Party into a powerful political party, the beer hall putsch, his time in jail, his seizure of power, his iron fist rule over Germnay, the war and finally his death.
Very through, in-depth and its a pleasure to read for the chapters are broken into smaller sub-sections so you can read for 10-15 minutes or for hours if you want. Excellent biography of the sometimes genius, sometimes lucky and mostly insane fuhrer of Nazi Germany.

Hitler Defined.......2007-01-11

This is a must buy for history buffs and those fascinated by deranged leaders of other nations. Very Very in-depth. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Very well done.......2007-01-05

This book details the life of Hitler and seems very well researched. It is a long read though. I found that it took me several days to spend the time I needed to digest the information being provided.

The One Bio of Hitler to Have!.......2006-12-02

This is it, the real bio of Hitler. It is far and above the most thorough, most even-handed work on a very complex man. The "Hitler was a monster" works all try to turn this fascinating historical figure into a one-dimensional characature. Like it or not, Hitler was a person. If you want to find out about that person instead of reading a bunch of psychobabble above the "epitome of evil", read this book.

Best Book on Adolf Hitler, yet a better one could be written still........2006-09-15

I first read Toland's abridged paperback edition,in 1986.This book is the best researched work ,concerning the Hitler topic,written so far. From his Braunau childhood to his Vienna boheimian wanderings ,onto his WW1 return to a men's homeless shelter and until his shadowy Berlin bunker suicide;this book is painstakingly correct.Yet,i always wondered what hitler's true motives were for leading the Third Reich.How could the inner Nazi elite allow such a questionable character as Hitler,lead their new political party?The Nazis represented family values,yet Hitler was illegitimate and inbreed (uncle/niece off-sprung product).Hitler adored his niece,Gisella Ruebel.I believe Heinrich Himmler ordered her death,and staged it as a "suicide" ,out of of concerns for the "family image",of the Nazi party.Himmler was indeed the son of a chicken-farmer,yet he was also a college-schooled "eugenics technician".I saw Himmler as a "Bavarian communist",rather than a Hermann Goering ,"Bavarian Nationalist".Was Hitler really bent on destroying Germany,by spreading his armies too quickly,around the Eastern hemisphere?I believe if Hitler was killed,in a coup d'etat purging,Goering would have succeeded.Yet,after a fifty year succession of Nazi stalwarts,the dictatorship would have crumbled .Not because of liberal leftists overthrowing them,but because of "Globalisation".World population pressures would force the hinterland Germans to deal with other geo-cultures,via daily trade or outright warfare. As an inside look,of what went on in Hitler's life,this is an excellent book.Yet,many theories could be discussed about Hitler's social motives and the motives of the Nazi elite, with their thoughts about Hitler.

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