Hitler

A Biography

De: Ian Kershaw

Narrado por: Alan Robertson

Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.

Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his 30-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitler's rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 1920s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right and the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 and then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews and others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race.

In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a "drummer" sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch and, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people.

©1998, 2000, 2008 Ian Kershaw (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Beautiful book. Bad German pronunciation.

A masterful book. Beautiful reading voice, but ... couldn't the narrator have been taught proper German pronunciation? If one pronounces Lebensraum as Liebensraum it means "loving space", not "living space". Etcetera.

Excellent Biography of a Megalomaniac...

Would you consider the audio edition of Hitler to be better than the print version?

For me to sit down and read the print version of this work would be impossible, listening for while driving to my various appointments made completing this work possible.

long but good

So many details you wouldn't think about. in the end, he was just a spoiled little brat who knew how to manipulate people.

Kershaw’s omission (I could have missed it)

Loved this book…recommended by Dennis Prager.
The author refers to the Jews as being helpless and defenseless. There’s a reason they were…weeks before the “night of broken glass” all firearms were confiscated from the Jews….if you were a member of the Nazi party it didn’t apply. They were confiscated easily because of gun registration records….6 million died without a fighting chance.

Mad man who should have been stopped

What most stood out was his utter ego and lack of concern for his own people. He only cared about himself and thought he would go down in history as a demigod. The author did an amazing job explaining Hitler the man. While there was some explanation of the war, that of course is not the main focus. Need to listen to it again.