Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography [Paperback]

John Toland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1991

A national bestseller with more than 370,000 copies in print, this is "the first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or the war in Europe must read... a marvel of fact."--Newsweek

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A national bestseller with more than 370,000 copies in print, this is "the first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or the war in Europe must read... a marvel of fact."--Newsweek

From the Inside Flap

A national bestseller with more than 370,000 copies in print, this is "the first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or the war in Europe must read... a marvel of fact."--Newsweek

Product Details

• Paperback: 1120 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (December 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385420536
• ISBN-13: 978-0385420532
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( H ) > Hitler, Adolf
  • #88 in Books > History > Europe > Germany

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Single Best Biography of Hitler Yet Written!, June 21, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Paperback)

For anyone truly interested in finding and reading a definitive biography of Adolph Hitler, this is the book. This work is at once carefully documented and scholarly yet is also eminently readable and entertaining. Although there is no single volume that adequately explains the mysterious truth of Adolph Hitler the phenomenon, author John Toland delivers a most informative and exhaustively researched manuscript that does help us to understand Adolph Hitler the man. Toland spent several years researching this book with intensive interviews by surviving principals, and had access to a wide range of archival data and previously unpublished data and facts. The result is this magisterial work.

This is a book much like Toland's previous efforts in that it concentrates heavily on interviews with a literal torrent of people who had significant contact and knowledge of Hitler, from those who surrounded him in his rise to power, and who followed him into the ash and ruins of the embattled and besieged Third Reich. From his early days in Austria, to his school boy experiences and the discouraging failures of his early adulthood, through the heady but painful days as a volunteer in the front lines during World War I, Toland faithfully traces the rise and growth of this strange young man as he falls prey to a variety of venomous and unfortunate ideas and prejudices that mark him for life, and set the path to the kind of pathological aberrances that characterized his beliefs and behaviors from that point on.

Yet Toland makes a painful effort to be non-judgmental, and carefully presents all the facts as he can best determine them. This sometimes makes him err on the side of presenting personal and perhaps subjective opinions of others as fact, and this is typical of the Toland approach. While recognizing the dangers in presenting a lot of information into the record that might be inaccurate, twisted, or fanciful, he also wants us to hear the whole story from all of the participant's viewpoints so we can make our own informed judgment. In this sense Toland has a somewhat archaic belief in the historical reader's critical skills and to be well-enough formed as thinkers that he lets us judge for ourselves based on our interpretation of the `facts' he presents rather than pre-digesting and coming to his own conclusions for us.

The busman's tour he takes through pre-war Germany, observing and describing the collection of rag-tag malcontents accompanying Hitler in his rise to power is quite interesting, as is his casual and matter-of-fact presentation of what is certainly a horrifying plethora of unbelievably provocative, ruthless and despicable acts on the parts of Hitler and the national Socialists. Yet this is also history at its best, unblinking, without comment or sentiment, and in-your-face. Much of what you will read you can find elsewhere, but nowhere else can you find it presented in the style and grace that Toland brings to the printed page. Simply stated, this is an outstanding piece of historical biography, and is also truly the standard against which all other, more recent works on Herr Hitler must be judged. Enjoy!

77 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best ever biography of Hitler!, June 18, 2000

By 

Gary Gardner "Your resident dillettante" (Ellsworth, ME United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Paperback)

This book has to be one of the longest biographies ever written about a historical figure, but it is greatly the worth the effort expended to read it. John Toland is as good a historian as one will ever experience in the modern era. His books, to a one, are eminently readable. There is no historian who has the ability to make his subjects appear so lifelike, even to those who lived long after the events he writes about. By taking actual quotes and putting them into proper context, Toland marinates a genre long known for its aridity. Hitler the man was as complex a person on the political stage as any that preceded him, or have followed. Toland wades through Hitler's many complexities and seeming contradictions, and sheds light on what drove the Fuhrer's madness and his need to bring Europe (and later the world) to the brink of destruction. Toland offers plausibility to what drove Hitler to vilify and massacre the Jewish race in Europe, his goals of conquest, and his political system...areas in which historians have argued about for generations. We learn many things about Hitler's childhood and early adulthood, things which may shed some light on the future dictator's raison d'etre. From a disappointing childhood to dreams of being an artist and architect in Vienna, Austria, to his service in the German army during World War I, Hitler's dreams of a Germanic empire are mapped out every stage of the way. Toland's treatment of Hitler is fair, which is deeply hard to do, as the leader of Germany's Third Reich has caused much misery and destruction to people all over the world. His detachment makes Hitler appear much more scarier. It is hard to envision a man who would hold so true to his demonic visions over a span of twenty years, as Hitler did with his blueprint for domination of Europe and the Soviet Union. If you love twentieth-century history, particularly that of World War II, this book will satisfy your craving...and then some! I highly recommend all of Toland's books relating to the World War II era, particularly "The Last 100 Days" and "Infamy," which is about the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan on the U.S. on December 7, 1941, and the apparent subsequent cover-up by the government of its foreknowledge of the attack. Toland has also written a couple of fictional books that are not quite as good, but worth a look-see.

70 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of the ones I've read this is the DEFINITIVE one!, February 28, 2004

By 

Mannie Liscum (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Paperback)

As an amateur student of WWII history I have tried hard to understand more about how the major "players" came to be, thought, and operated before, during, and after (when applicable) the war. John Toland's biography of Hitler is an amazing piece of historical literature!! If you've ever read any of Toland's books (I've read "Battle: The Story of the Bulge" and "The Last 100 Days" - both excellent) you know he can convey a story that makes the words feel alive. He does that here equally as well in a 900 page masterpiece. He starts with a historical background of the Hitler lineage (and possible Jewish blood!) and ends in with various Nazi elites and their capture, deaths, etc after the fall of Berlin and Hitler's suicide. In between we get a marvelous picture of a child Adolf - his closeness to his mother and estrangement from his father; a young man searching for his place - time spent in Vienna flop houses struggling to survive, failing to acheive and finding his place in the political upheaval leading to the Great War; his time at the front - from runner to gassed Iron cross winner; his "Time of Struggle" in forming the NADSP and leading a failed putsch, prison, and release to a country ready to embrace him; to his rise to Chancellor, dictator, statesman, warlord, self-proclaimed Christ, mass murderer; to a broken, pre-aged, sickly man how ultimately takes his own life to avoid paying the butchers bill. Toland weaves a story that is both easy to read and historically engaging. I learned a lot and had fun doing it - just the way I love history!!!

Highly recommended.