Hitler

A Biography

By: Ian Kershaw

Narrated by: 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.

Simply Wonderful

Would you listen to Hitler again? Why?

There are so many details in this incredible volume and yet it never feels try or devoid of storytelling. Simply a wonderfully done volume.

Great biography, so-so narration

Would you listen to Hitler again? Why?

The book is brilliant and is said to be one of the best Hitler biographies out there.

How could the performance have been better?

Sadly the narrator does not speak German. It is very difficult to keep focus on what is being read when every German name or word in the book - and there are a few, given the subject - is pronounced wrongly. Goebbels is Gurbles, Nazi is notzie, and so on. The narrator does a good job except for the fact that he does not know a word of German. It drives me insane listening to this book.

Any additional comments?

Read it yourself instead.

I'm not a "big" book reader

I bought this book in 2020 for a movie script that I wanted to write and never read a book this thick.

So...

I decided to cheat and bought the audio book.

The audible book was far more than I expected and helped me get through the read much easier than expected.

Great job

In depth and detailed

The detail in this book is amazing. I did not expect to learn so much more about WWII which was extremely interesting.

Pronunciation of German names very bad

Overall, the book is breathtakingly chilling and hard to put down. Fascinating details about this satanic character. The reading is excellent, except for the pronunciation of German names. Even I, whose native tongue is German , had often a hard time understanding what was being referred to.