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Young Hitler

The Making of the Führer

Pegasus Books 2018

Was Hitler a freak of history? Or an extreme example of a recurring type of demagogue who will do and say anything to seize power? Who thrives on chaos and who personifies, in his words and actions, the darkest prejudices of humankind?


Hitler never accepted the German defeat in the Great War. He satiated his thirst for revenge on the ‘November criminals’ who had signed the Armistice, the socialists whom he accused of stabbing the army in the back and, most violently, the Jews whom he saw as a direct threat to the master race of his imagination and on whose shoulders he would pile Germany’s woes.


In this short, concise biography of the Führer’s early years, I connect the source of Hitler’s consuming hatred to his experiences on the Western Front, a defining period of his life that major biographies have underplayed. I show how the Great War forged an already deeply disturbed mind into the architect of the Holocaust.

QUOTES

The declaration of war gave his life a sacred new direction. War would rescue Hitler from the pattern of serial failure, rejection and loneliness.

REVIEWS

‘A concise study of one of the most fascinating and evil men in history... Essential for anyone interested in military history.’

Soldier Magazine

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