Books
Unsuccessful search for Hitler's humanity
Ben Barkow finds too little in too much
May 6, 2016 07:14
Ben Barkow finds too little in too much
May 6, 2016 07:14Hitler: Volume 1:Ascent 1889-1939
By Volker Ullrich
Bodley Head, £25
Reviewed by Ben Barkow
Pub Quiz question: How many books are there about Hitler: a) 5,000, b) 120,000 or c) 200,000? Answer: I'm not certain, but Volker Ullrich suggests b), while one of his German reviewers claims c). Whichever it is, it is far, far too many and points to a prurient and sick fascination with the worst dictator in history. In reality, the number of important books about Hitler is probably no more than about 50 or 60.
Anyway, here's possibly number 200,001. And it's vast, weighing in at 1,000 pages just for volume one, which takes us only as far as the outbreak of war. Its claimed unique selling point is twofold: Ian Kershaw's mighty Hitler biography is now 15 years old and research hasn't stood still; and Kershaw's focus was less on Hitler's personality than it was on the political and social structures he inhabited.
The notion that a masterwork like Kershaw's can expect a lifetime of only 15 years is absurd. Nothing has come to light in the past decade-and-a-half to require a major revision of Hitler's life story. As for a need to learn about Hitler the Mensch, the claim surely can't be met with anything but the most extreme scepticism.
But this is the central point of Ullrich's enterprise. The introduction announces that the "key chapter" will be the one entitled Hitler as Human Being. But when we get there, the 30-odd pages on the topic comprise banality after banality. Two-and-a-half pages give us the moustache, the eyes and the apparent beauty of the hands (the Nazis published a whole photo-essay about the hands, so nothing new there).
Then we get the charm, the screaming rages, the auto-didacticism, the staring people down, the not liking to be touched, the bad teeth, the hypochondria, the laziness, the bad art, the love of movies, and so forth - basically a long list of things that for the most part we already knew. One interesting curiosity relates to a couple of graphologists who, well before the war, got Hitler's number: they assessed his handwriting as showing that he would fail at the decisive moment and commit suicide.
But the heart of this portentous book is hollow. The quest after Hitler's human dimension never had much to offer and the research effort has produced little of note (another author has accused Ullrich of purloining material).
Nor should you expect any light to be thrown on the central question of Hitler's hatred of Jews. The index lumps together "Jews/antisemitism" and, even combined, the number of references is barely half of those to the Social Democrats, and about the same number of mentions as Richard Wagner.
If you want to know about Hitler, read Konrad Heiden, Alan Bullock, or Ian Kershaw and you will gain far greater insight than this overweight but undernourished book can offer.
Ben Barkow is the Director of the Wiener Library
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