Table of Contents
Preface to the Updated Edition vii
Introduction: The Baby Pictures and the Abyss xi
Part 1 The Beginning of the Beginning
Chapter 1 The Mysterious Stranger, the Serving Girl, and the Family Romance of the Hitler Explainers 3
Chapter 2 The Hitler Family Film Noir 16
Chapter 3 The Poison Kitchen: The Forgotten First Explainers 37
Part 2 Two Postwar Visions: Sincerity and Its Counterfeit
Chapter 4 H. R. Trevor-Roper: The Professor and the Mountebank 63
Chapter 5 Alan Bullock: Rethinking Hitler's Thought Process 78
Part 3 Geli Raubal and Hitler's "Sexual Secret"
Chapter 6 Was Hitler "Unnatural"? 99
Chapter 7 Hitler's Songbird and the Suicide Register 118
Chapter 8 The Dark Matter: The Sexual Fantasy of the Hitler Explainers 135
Part 4 Hatred: Complex and Primitive
Chapter 9 Fritz Gerlich and the Trial of Hitler's Nose 155
Chapter 10 The Shadow Hitler, His "Primitive Hatred." and the "Strange Bond" 179
Part 5 The Art of Evil and the Future of It
Chapter 11 To the Gestapo Cottage: or, A Night Close to the Fuhrer 201
Chapter 12 David Irving: The Big Oops 221
Part 6 The War over the Question Why
Chapter 13 A Tale of Three Kafkas: A Cautionary Parable 239
Chapter 14 Claude Lanzmann and the War Against the Question Why 251
Chapter 15 Dr. Louis Micheels: There Must Be a Why 267
Part 7 Blame and Origans
Chapter 16 Emil Fackenheim and Yehuda Bauer: The Temptation to Blame God 279
Chapter 17 George Steiner: Singling out the Jewish "Invention of Conscience" 300
Chapter 18 Singling out Christianity: The Passion Play of Hyam Maccoby 319
Chapter 19 Daniel Goldhagen: Blaming Germans 337
Chapter 20 Lucy Dawidowicz: Blaming Adolf Hitler 369
Afterword to the Updated Edition 396
Notes 421
Acknowledgments 447
Index 451
About the Author 465