Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (ISIS Large Print) [Import] [Hardcover]

Spike Milligan (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 145 pages
• Publisher: ISIS Large Print Books; Large Print Ed edition (July 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1850891966
• ISBN-13: 978-1850891963
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A British friend gave me the paperback., May 7, 2001

By 

Betti Trapp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Hardcover)

And I haven't stopped laughing. I had never heard of Spike Milligan before, but I found his book funny in a way that only the Brits can be, and touching with many moving parts about the war from a crazy man's perspective. I have since read five other Spike Milligan books, and none of them were a disappointment. Seeing WWII from Spike's point of view is realistic, funny, and very thought provoking. My British friend told me he (Spike) was crazy. At first I thought that was just a saying, but it's true. Spike is mentally defunct, in a very happy and bubbly kind of way. You will enjoy this book.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Has anybody seen our gun? No, what colour is it?, March 8, 2000

By 

Harry the Mighty (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall (War Memoirs Vol. 1) (Paperback)

This is a review of the series of seven embellished autobiographies as a whole, rather than just this one book. "Adolf Hitler:..." sees our skinny hero called up to serve his country in 1940 and introduces many of the other characters - particularly those involved in the genesis of The Goon Show. In subsequent books the war takes Spike to Africa, Italy and Liberated Europe and is a wonderful insight of those turbulent times through the eyes of a sometimes scared, sometimes overbearingly joyful, sometime shellshocked trumpet playing clown from London. This series takes you through the ups and downs: the death of friends, the pining for a world forever changed, romance in Capri, continual banter between friends, cold collation and the bloody awful Warsaw concerto. The first book was written in 1973 (I think) and the last was sometime in the early nineties; and you can definitely see the change in Spike as his writes the later books - the pathos is much stronger, the notes about wartime friends who recently died are truly moving. Spike acknowledges he is writing history, but that "I spiced mine up a bit". It's the history of wartorn and postwar europe from the individual man's perspective - a man who eats pasta on italian balconies, drinking cheap red wine until he passes out; who plays raucous tunes and chases the girls; who always goes for the punch line - but it's also the eulogy of his wartime friends, friends he loved. It also explains (in part) how Spike Milligan, as we know him, came to be.

Free flowing comedy counterchanged with pathos and bathos - it's all there and I love every word.

The other books are "Rommel? Gunner Who?", "Monty: His Part in My Victory", "Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall", "Where Have All the Bullets Gone?", "Goodbye Soldier" and "Peace Work".

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, and yet so sad, February 9, 2003

By 

Lee E. "idlefingers" (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Hardcover)

I'm usually not one to read autobios, but since it is Spike Milligan I made the exception. It was funny, just as I expected it to be, but there were parts that were very moving and sad; as should be expected I suppose for a WWII novel. His accounts of the absurd are always dead on hilarious, and I found myself reading a passage over and over and just cracking up.
I knew that Spike suffered from depression, and I think in parts it was very apparent. The places that are especially poignant are when he relates a humorous tale, and then explain how he visited the place years later, and how the memories are too much for him to bear. In one particular paragraph he laments: "Oh, Yesterday, how you plague me!"
I love Spike Milligan and his comedy, and have read several run-of-the-mill internet bios on him but his own biography really brings him to life. A great read!