We have not yet come to
terms with Adolf Hitler, and perhaps we never
will. It's not for want of trying. More than 100
biographies have attempted to make sense of
the Nazi leader -- not counting Hitler's own
unreliable autobiography, Mein Kampf --
and new ones are still hitting the shelves. As
historian John Lukacs observes in his often
suggestive The Hitler of History , we have
not yet come to the crest of the "Hitler Wave"
that German historians first noticed building
nearly three decades ago.
Despite Hitler's inescapable presence in our
popular consciousness, he remains difficult to
pin down. We know everything about him --
except what it all means. In The Hitler of
History , Lukacs attempts to make some
sense of the debate. His book is not, as he
hastens to point out, "a biography of Hitler,
but a history of his history, and a history of
his biographers." In a series of provocative
chapters, Lukacs examines a number of key
questions surrounding the Nazi leader: Exactly
when and where did his ideology first
crystallize? Was he a reactionary or a
revolutionary? An ideologue or an
opportunist? A beloved leader or a despot?
Lukacs navigates this difficult historiographical
terrain with considerable skill -- though, it
must be admitted, he's much better at asking
questions than answering them. (Suffice to
say that his tentative answers to the above
questions resist easy summary.)
Still, there are times when even those who
agree with Lukacs will find themselves
frustrated by this contentious book. Lukacs
dismisses the work of certain historians with
an impressively Olympian disdain -- and
though many of his targets deserve this sort of
dismissal (one thinks especially of the
inexplicably popular Nazi-friendly historian
David Irving), Lukacs would have done better
to engage their arguments in more detail.
(Unfortunately, when Lukacs does get into
specifics, he tends to fall into a sort of
debate-club pedantry, blasting away at
minutiae in rambling footnotes that at times
threaten to overwhelm the text itself. ) And
there are curious omissions: Though Lukacs
devotes a chapter to the question of Hitler's
popularity with the German people, he
manages to avoid discussing the often-vitriolic
debate over Daniel Goldhagen's recent book,
Hitler's Willing Executioners , which (as its
title suggests) argued that there were more
than a few "good Germans" willing and able to
carry out the dirty work of the Holocaust.
It's a pity Lukacs does not weigh in on this
particular debate, for the question of ordinary
German "willingness" to follow Hitler, as
Lukacs himself acknowledges, is absolutely
central to our understanding of the Holocaust
itself. Hitler, as Lukacs reluctantly
acknowledges, "may have been the most
popular revolutionary leader in the history of
the modern world ... He is not properly
comparable to a Caesar, a Cromwell, a
Napoleon. Utterly different from them, he
was, more than any of them, able to energize
the majority of a great people, in his lifetime
the most educated in the world, convincing
them to follow his leadership ... and making
them believe that what they (and he) stood for
was an antithesis of evil." We need to
understand not just the "banality" but the
strange respectability of Hitler's evil if we are
to keep what happened in Germany from ever
happening again. -- Salon
Historian Lukacs has demonstrated in many of his 15 previous books that he is an original thinker. The concept of this new book is brilliant: the volume presents a history of the evolution of knowledge about Hitler by studying the biographies and biographers who have attempted to explain the hold he had on the German masses. In his preface, Lukacs is both clear and modest: clear in explaining that he is not yet another Hitler biographer but rather an historian producing a history of Hitler biographies; modest in conceding that there are so many biographies that "a pretense of completeness would be both mistaken and improper." Unfortunately, the brilliant concept is not brilliantly executed and neither the clarity nor the modesty of the preface prevail throughout the text. Hundreds of compound-complex sentences and much untranslated German make for laborious reading, and Lukacs too often dismisses biographers without offering the evidence that would support his own interpretation. Despite the flaws, the book is a worthy effort. Even the most obsessed amateur scholar is unlikely to have read even half the biographies Lukacs has read, partly because so many of them are in languages other than English. Furthermore, each of the episodes in Hitler's career that Lukacs has chosen to explicate is worth attention. Was Hitler a revolutionary or a reactionary? Was he a successful statesman and war strategist? What was Hitler's primary motive for murdering Jews? Is there any validity to the contemporary Hitler rehabilitation movement? These are just some of the questions with which Lukacs wrestles. History Book Club selection. (Sept.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Since 1945 there have been over 100 biographies of Adolf Hitler. Depictions of the dictator have ranged from the anti-Christ to a man who really did nothing wrong, whose staff caused all the evils. The late noted historian Lukacs (e.g., Destinations Past , LJ 6/15/94) has not written a biography of Hitler but a history of the history of the knowledge we have of Hitler by examining his major biographers. Through the analysis of writers in Germany, England, and the United States, Lukacs wrestles with such problems as where Hitler's ideas were shaped, his racism, his obsession with Jews, and other problems facing anyone studying the leader of the Third Reich. Along the way, he discusses the admirers and defenders of Hitler and Hitler's place in history. This is an important book for anyone wishing to delve seriously into the literature of Hitler. While not an easy work to read, it should be in all academic and large public libraries.Dennis L. Noble, Sequim, Wa.
A unique study of Hitler through his many biographers.
Historians grapple with Hitler (as with any other historical topic) through the prism of their own experiences, culture, and prejudices, making the goal of objectivity elusive, if not impossible. Lukacs (The End of the Twentieth Century , 1993, etc.) has the command of languages and scholarship necessary for the ambitious undertaking of studying the expression of such biases in the myriad biographies of Hitler that have proliferated over the last 50 years. Most valuable for the nonspecialist is the first chapter, where he discusses general historiographical problems, attempts to explain the extraordinary popular interest in the Führer, and reviews how German historians, most of them unknown to an American audience, have treated the dictator (their views range from guarded apologies to rigid ideological or deterministic dissections). The following six chapters deal with such specific topics as whether Hitler was a reactionary or a revolutionary, the problem of racism and nationalism, and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Perhaps the most surprising point that emerges here is that many German historians treat Hitler in a highly nuanced manner, stressing his frequent reversals of policy, his uncertainty, the way in which other individuals could influence or manipulate him. Lukacs draws a rather pessimistic conclusion from this, suggesting that a downturn in Europe's fortunes might cause Hitler to be revived as an example of order and nationalism. Finally, Lukacs struggles with the problem of Hitler's place in history. Although scant attention is paid to the controversial "historian's debate" that erupted in the mid-1980s, when some German historians began to downplay the unique nature of the Holocaust, Lukacs is successful in offering a balanced portrayalnot of Hitlerbut of his biographers.
A valuable contribution that will continue to remind us how central Hitler was to the history of the 20th century.