Customer Reviews

A Concise Biography of Adolf Hitler

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The life Of Adolph Hitler is a facinating journey which has become riddled with myths by our popular culture. While adjectives such as evil and maniacal accurately describe Hitler, he was also a very intelligent man. Thomas Fuchs attemtps to dispell many of the myths, and bring out the truth with this book.
Hitler seems to have be obsessed with creating poltical change since his career in art failed. Hitler also had other fascinations aside from anti-semitism (which was not his original idea). The book suggests Hitler to be a hypochondriac, which is somewhat beleiveable whether or not you believe that he had syphillis and bad teeth. Also, Fuchs discusses Hitler's obsession with wolfs, often seeing himself as sort of a lone wolf.
My only objetion with this book is that it tends to be redundant at times. However, this is mostly due to the encyclopedia-like format of the book.
For a reader that desires to learn more about perhaps the most hypnotically potent speaker in the history of humankind, this book is an excellent place to start. Many of the other Hitler biographies carry on far to long.

This is unquestionably the ultimate resourse on a very complex individual. Formatted in a user-freindly encyclopedic style, this book details everything that was but never should-have-been concerning Hitler's entire life. Author Fuchs digs up some amazingly obscure facts about the much-chronicled Hitler. Most impressive are the chapters concerning his family life. I have personally used this volume numerous times for historical research, and insist this book used by all those interested in learning the truth behind Adolf Hitler.

"A concise biography of Adolf Hitler" is the premiere book for people wanting to start learning about the former dictator and tyrant of Germany. The author lays the book out into a series of different topics and within these different sections he gives a complete viewpoint of Hitler. These range from his eating habits, sexual life, as well as his controversial mind set. The author also dispels of some of the myths that we have always heard about Hitler. The book finishes with very short biographies of some of the leader's friends. The one true stenghth of this book is it causes the reader to want to know more about the subject.

Even with this said there are some weaknesses with the book. The first is the fact that each chapter is a separate section within itself, which means there is not a unity that flows from chapter to chapter. This in turn, leads to a difficult readability and almost encourages the reader to stop after each chapter instead of wanting to read the whole book. This is compounded even more by the author's need to insert the phrase "See Chapter 3" or "See Chapter 8", which might have seemed helpful at the beginning but after the tenth repetition it became an unwanted and dreaded statement. Secondly, there is a complete absence of pictures, or maps. This forces the reader to count on the author to illustrate images through the use of words. A practice that Mr. Fuchs fails to complete. For example, the author only attempts to describe Heinrich Himmler as the "one with pince-nez glasses" and yet he than tries to give a 4 page biography about the complex German SS captain.

Even with these weaknesses the book is still an informative piece of historical data. It must also be noted that the source index stretches out over 80 plus pages. The author justifies this by saying he wishes for the readers to use his book as a "stepping stone" for further research. This leads this reviewer to wonder what Thomas Fuchs could have done if he had expanded his research and maybe had not so hastily rushed to the publisher.

Pro: 1) Stepping stone for Hitler research

Cons: 1) Fragmented chapters, lack of unity 2) Lack of maps and illustrations 3) Research could have been expanded throughout the book

This is a review of A CONCISE BIOGRAPHY OF ADOLF HITLER by Thomas Fuchs. I have the paperback edition published in New York by Berkley Books in 2000. It's a new edition with a new PREFACE and introduction. The original was published in 1990 by Fountain under the title THE HITLER FACT BOOK.

The author seems to value his privacy. All I could learn about him is that he's a German journalist and pretty well informed about the Fuhrer. We learn, for example, that Hitler had an armored hat and serious problems with flatulence.

I enjoy insights like that, but found myself wondering why so little had been included about Hitler's childhood, his reported homosexuality and his views on religion. Was he a neo-paganist like Himmler or a "materialist" like Alan Bullock described?

Mr. Fuchs attempted a very difficult task. His CONCISE BIOGRAPHY OF ADOLF HITLER is designed to be a reference tool, but he's run into the same problem other authors encounter with this format.

Should his entries be longer and more comprehensive or shorter and more numerous? There's no right answer to this question. It all depends on what the reader likes. I like shorter entries with lots of collateral references. Mr. Fuchs doesn't oblige me, but I did find the book useful anyway and it has a very handy chronology as well as end notes, bibliography and index. It's also interesting to see a biography of Hitler by a German. Joachim Fest's landmark biography of Hitler came out in 1973 and is the only other postwar biography by a German that I've read other than Lothar Machtan's HIDDEN HITLER which came out in 2001.

I believe the index could have been more complete and this book would be a better reference tool if the author had included a lot more collateral references. I liked it, though, and gave it four stars for its usefulness.

I don't think you could come up with any question about Hitler -- no matter how silly, serious or obscure -- which isn't answered in this book. You can try, but you probably won't succeed. My young nephew was assigned this book in a college level history course. When I was in college, none of the history books we were forced to read were anywhere near as entertaining (if I can use that word about Hitler) and down-right fascinating as this one. It is carefully researched and documented, scholarly, without ever being the least pedantic. Even if you think you already know enough about Hitler, I highly recommend you read this book.

Any book with the name of Adolph Hitler in the title is bound to catch the eye of all Germanophiles - serious and semi-serious - and those people will grab this book off the shelf, automatically. It is only 195 pages, and so, is not really a serious biography of Hitler - but it is, nevertheless, a very readable book , especially for those who are already somewhat familiar with Hitler and German history - which means, I guess, sadly, mainly for just those people over 60.
Nevertheless, there are many people with a sense of history who will remember that Hitler was an Austrian-born megalomaniac with mesmerizing oratorical skills, who after fighting in the trenches in World War I gravitated to politics and eventually - in 1933 - rose to become the leader (eventually the dictator) - the "Fuehrer" - of Germany. Hitler was determined to right all the wrongs he thought Germany had been subjected to following the Treaty of Versailles, to restore the German economy, to establish Germany as the leading country of the world, to establish the German Third Reich (Empire)which was to endure one thousand years (it lasted 12) and to purify the German Aryan race - which, for various reasons, required the elimination of the Jewish population - wherever and whenever the opportunity permitted. While this book contains bits and pieces of that unbelievable saga, it deals with none of those issues in any great detail.
What author Fuchs does focus upon in his little book is certain trivia, personal ideosyncracies and eccentricities of Hitler that he judges will be of interest to fans of Hitler
and German history. Fuchs divides his book into 35 short chapters (5-10 pages per), which makes for easy reading. A sample of some of the chapter headings will illustrate the variety of subjects that Fuchs deals with: Hitler's mustache, his dog, his book ("Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), Nazi party stuff ( songs, flags, uniforms, greetings, titles, etc.), the "People's Car" (Volkswagen), Hitler, the orator, Hitler's women friends, Hitler, the hypochondriac, Hitler's diet, his dentist, his wardrobe, his reading habits, his tastes in movies, his artistic passions, his money, his anti-Semitism, his relationships with Goering, Goebbles, and Himmler - and more.
The book also contains some 38 pages of notes (but no foot notes), 8 pages of bibliography (containing titles of some more serious biographies of Hitler) and a 26-page chronology of the major events that transpired during Hitler's life - private and
political. The book is in its way entertaining - and reading this book might prompt the reader to move on to other, more serious, more comprehensive books on these matters.

I like reading biographies but oftentimes when they are about a historical figure I get bored before the author gets to the interesting stuff. This biography is organized by subject -- i.e. Hitler's favorite foods, wardrobe, etc. It is nice because, to be honest, it's that kind of thing I'm interested in anyway. I don't particularly care to go through every aspect about him.

I enjoyed being able to read about one aspect of his character at a time. I gained a lot of insight into how he lived and what might have influenced his views and decisions without getting bored in the process.

Learning 'little details' about Hitler the man doesn't really seem to make him seem any less enigmatic. He seems to have been an odd person to say the least based on his habits and personality quirks, but in my opinion, even though the author's purpose is to make him seem more 'human', to me learning all these wierd little details about the life of Hitler makes him as enigmatic as ever.... That aside, it is a fascinating book. cold hard facts on Hitler without a 'spin' are interesting, but there is not much examination of Hitler, just a collection of details and anecdotes.

Very different, not really about the war so much but more about the personality traits
& daily habits of Hitler told by those that were employed by him.
Easy read, short chapters about the Fuher's weirdness.

Great book of Hitler. Find out who he really was... a mentally insane man! I learned a lot of new things about Hitler and I have to consider him insane, not because of the Holocaust or the war, but literally crazy outside of war and genocide. This book will make you laugh a lot. But Hitler was not all bad at heart (he is still probably the most evil man ever, but I can no longer consider him heartless). There was actually a Jew that he spared and appreciated and he loved animals. The most surprising thing that I learned was that there was already a swastika symbol and that Henry Ford inspired Hitler's hatred of Jews... This will be the best book you will ever buy. You will find it both amusing and dark.