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The Hitler of History

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After reading biographies of Hitler for the past 20 years, I looked forward to reading this book as I wanted an overview of this massive collection of works. It was not to be.

Lukacs is very set in his ways and often passes off his views as fact. Toland is dismissed - even though his biography is a best seller - as being hard to read. A surprise for anyone who has read Toland's work.

He then tries to link Toland with David Irving, even though they have nothing in common. He also points out that Toland has some bizarre views on Pearl Harbour, and says this indicates an authoritarian bent and that Toland admires Hitler, and so does the infamous Irving. I re-read Toland's work and I found it to be a well written biography of Hitler and I really cannot understand Lukacs' conclusion that he is an admirer.

Fest's work - which he likes far more - is difficult to read and yet receives no such attack. The fact is that Lukacs does not like Toland's work and has thrown every bit of mud that he can at him.

Further he basically ignores the work of Konrad Heiden before the war and the huge debt that Bullock had to the writer in his biography. Yet Bullock is praised for his efforts.

Finally his virtual silence on Bracher is a real fault of the book. Bracher provides a far more cohesive argument for the rise of Hitler than Fest - in my opinion - and he is barely mentioned.

Behind a facade of historical accuracy, Lukacs likes what he likes and is unfair to those he does not.

"Hitler" has become less a person than a brand name in the years since his death. His name is applied with equal casualness to left- and right-wing politics, and against anything and anyone one doesn't like. What Hitler and the short-lived Nazi phenomenon really was has been tailored to suit the biases of every historian who has examined them. Lukas shows how Hitler and the Nazis are distorted by the lens of each historian's own bigotry and shortcomings. And yet, at the same time, he demonstrates a truth too often overlooked by historians playing petty oneupsmanship against those who don't share their own political views -- that Hitler was an extremely complex man, whose unique ideology doesn't fit comfortably into either the conventional politics of left or right, but combines the worst aspects of both. This book is a critical examination of Hitler biographies, as well as an assessment of Hitler himself -- which is like grasping water -- Lukan has written a valuable resource for anyone who wants to see beyond typical parochial presentations. And the ultimate conclusion one reaches when reading it is that instead of looking outward for the answer to why Hitler happened, one should look introspectively, at one's own heart.

I have been very intrested in Hitler and national socialism since I was 13. I'm 23 now so I have read quite many books on the subject by now. when I first read this book about two years ago I was stunned by it. The aurthor John Lukacs seem to have a bottomless knowledge of the 20th centurary European history. Although you can criticize his somewhat "was and is always right" attitude, he none the less often presents his case so compelling arguments that I buy most of his thesis. He explains that nationalism, and nationalsocialism not only was a german phenomenon but an universal idea, which dominated th 20th century, and was far more important than communism or even old style UK-US libaral democracy. He also explains Hitlers antisemitism and his place in Germanys history. For me this book was an awakning, and I have read it many times. I understand Hitler and the national socialistic movement much better now. Hitler did not create the national socialism. Even though in Germany he used the radical nationalism in his want for power, he was rather the most central revolutionary figure, of that movement. The only a little bit annoying is that Lukacs takes much time argue against the british history revisionist, and holocaust denier David Irving. This may well be with well intent, but I think its rather unnecessary. It would be better to just ingnore him, this takes needless space from other important insights. Irving has already been repitudated by so many before.

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 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.

Lukacs is an emigre Hungarian professor, and is known in the literary community as a historian of moderately conservative Christian Democratic opinions. Several times through this book Lukacs declares that he is writing a history of Hitler, not the Third Reich. Concentrating largely on biographies of Hitler, Lukacs argues that the key experience of Hitler was his experience in Munich during the Bavarian Revolution, not is life in pre-war Vienna. Hitler was sane; he was a nationalist, not a patriot, and he did not really take racism or anti-communism very seriously. His domestic programs were radical, not conservative, and he attacked the Soviet Union largely to remove Britian from the war. His combination of nationalism and socialism makes him the most influential leader of the century.

The book's key flaw comes from its emphasis on biography. No historian would wish to study Roosevelt's life simply by looking at this biographies, while ignoring William Leuctenberg or Robert Dallek. Lukacs spends too much time criticitizing minor quasi-apologetic works by John Toland and David Irving. But he ignores Kershaw's invaluable historiographical guide, The Nazi Dictatorship. Books on foreign policy by Gerhard Weinberg and Noprman Rich, works on the German economy by Harold James and Richard Overy, specific monographs by Tim Mason, Robert Gellately, and Claudia Koonz; all these go unmentioned. Lukacs does not look at the functionalist studies of Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, nor at the biographies of other Nazis, such as Richard Breitman on Himmler, Gitta Sereny on Speer and Richard Overy on Goering. Particularly striking is his attempt to argue that Hitler was not really hostile to Communism, in contrast to a large historical consensus that Hitler's expansionist plans against the Soviet Union were at the core of his ideology. He seems to argue that the attack, which Hitler began making plans for as soon as France was defeated, was almost exclusively defined to knock Britain out of the war. He ignores the work of Arno Mayer and Omer Bartov who have found that for German soldiers the concept of "Judeo-Bolshevism" was a very real and very lethal concept." He makes not mention of them, or the Commissar Order, or the whole despoilation of Russia.

Like many historians Lukacs can be hostile to theory, with unsatisfactory results. He makes the emotionally satisfying but intellectual adequate contrast between good, humane, conservative Patriotism and bad modern abstract Nationalism. At one point he suggests that patriotism can be racist but not inhumane, since American Southerners would not deny that blacks are Americans. Apparently he is unaware that plans for deporting African-Americans were common currecny for more than a century after independence. Lukacs makes no reference to the more historical approach to nationalism made by his fellow Central European emigres, Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner, or by the Czechoslovak historian, Miroslav Hroch. Lukacs praises the military conspirators of 1944 and ignores their anti-democratic and anti-Semitic views, while dismissing worker resistance. At one point he quotes a 1952 account who declares that Nazism was a movement of the "masses of the city," which muddles the fact that the core of Nazi support was in small Protestant villages. After spending ten pages belaboring the obvious conclusion that Hitler was worse than Napolean, Lukacs finally ends with a sententious conclusion meandering on the depths of Hitler's evil. All in all, a rather overrated book.

Lukacs opens his book with the quote above signifying that our obsession with Adolf Hitler is still very much alive. It's a conflicting obsession; we are repulsed by man and his behavior, yet fascinated by the times. It speaks to motives which Lukacs hints at in his conclusion, but which are not central to his book. This is not a psychoanalysis nor a biography of Hitler; it is instead a historiography of the main biographies; "the history of the evolution of our knowledge of Hitler, apparent as that is in the writings of a great variety of his many biographies".

Indeed, there are many, dozens, beginning with the first by Konrad Heiden in 1936. Lukacs surveys many of the principal ones and tells us his preferences - E. Deuerlein's 'Hitler: Eine Politsche Biographie and Joachim Fest's 'Adolf Hitler: A Biography'. Another of significance was by Alan Bullock - one of the first to use German documents from Nuremberg. Germans of course have written many, and it is out of these that emerged the 1980's Historikerstreit (Historical Controversy) in German academia. Neoconservative histories appeared, charged with attempting to 'rehabilitate' Hitler. Counter charges of character assasination were made, and amid the vitriol moderation and debate departed. Lukacs is critical of the revisionist histories but also of the controversy as a whole because of the shredding of "the acceptance of a general consensus, for which many respected German historians and intellectuals had been aiming for at least 40 years" Despite the attention to methodology and academic disputes, the book is not pedagogical. Teaching strives for balance and history demands it, and wheras Lukacs comes down heavily against revisionists he does a good job of synthesis across a broad range of opinions.

Lukacs has written the book for the general reader so we find themes that have broader appeal. Hitler as strategist and statesman; as nationalist and patriot; Hitler's views on arts, architecture and technology. Questions are posed and answers sought. When did he develop his ideologies?, What about racism, anti-semitism, anti-bolshevism? and Lukacs most provocative question - Was Hitler a revolutionary leader? It's provocative because historians understanding of the concept 'revolutionary leader' implies also 'modern' leader. This makes all of us uncomfortable; we prefer not to think of such a leader or leadership style as having any relevance to present day discussions on political science. This is precisely the context in which Hitler is studied in a 1989 biography by German historian Rainer Zeitelmann. Lukacs supports Zeitelmann's view that "Hitler was truly a revolutionary, and that, consequently, his aspirations and visions were modern". Mildly contoversial initially but heatedly so when it became apparent that Zeitelmann had a political agenda, which he buttressed with his history. In Germany, right wing ultranationalism is spelt only one way - s.c.a.r.y. Was this a new Historikerstreit that Lukacs himself got entangled in with his support for Zeitelmann? No, Lukacs supports the revolutionary concept but condemns the ideology. However in his concluding statement, Lukacs seems to show some misgivings about even dabbling in support for Hitler as a 'modern'. He warns "If Western civilization melts away, threatening to collapse [Hitlers] reputation may rise in the eyes of orderly people, who may regard him as a tough last architect of an imperial order." It's a sobering thought to end on and it's depressing that 'we are not finished with Hitler'. Nothing is resolved and we loose sight of the bigger picture with too much attention to written minutiae. The reality remains...

...Nothing I wrote in the thirties saved one Jew from Auschwitz (W. H. Auden)

I lived in London throughout the Second World War, until I was conscripted into the British Army. I spent three years, 1945 to 1948, in occupied Germany. To try to understand that part of my life, I read many histories and personal accounts of the war. I had great hopes for Professor Lukacs' book, for there have been radical changes in how Adolf Hitler is viewed. I am now reading it for the second time. The book is well written and I enjoy his kind of elaborate footnotes. However the Professor casually injects his own opinions but caustically criticizes his colleagues for what seem relatively minor lapses. Certainly he helps us better understand historians' differences. I would find the book more valuable were it not for his violent dislike (perhaps even hatred) of David Irving, which dislike he expresses ad nauseum. Yet one great value of Irving's books is the way in which they bind the Hitler of the war years to the little people elsewhere in Europe. Another, is that Irving on occasion rather refreshingly counters today's PC doctrines with obstinate facts. Professor Lukacs criticizes Irving and the historians who agree with him so continually and severely, that the title should be "The Hitler of Lukacs-approved History."

I must confess that I am fascinated by larger than life bogeymen of history. I devour biographies about such characters as Mao, Hitler, Himmler, Beria, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Franco, Robespierre, Lenin, Fouche, Napoleon, Richelieu. While obviously one could never lump them all together (there is a universe of difference between a psychopathic genocidal maniac such as Pol Pot and a respected architect of royal authority such as Richelieu), they all share one common trait, and that is of having been thought (fairly, in most cases) to be dark, even satanic. And the darkest and most satanic of all is Hitler. The man seems irredemeable, a compendium of all that is beastly and vulgar. Hannah Arendt's dictum about Adolf Eichman ("the banality of evil") seems even more adequate for Eichman's namesake and compatriot Hitler.

Lucaks' book shines a light through the Fuehrer's inner darkness. In so doing he actually manages something of a re-appraisal that is, nonetheless, far off from a rehabilitation. He shows how Hitler as a person was actually a much more complex and unfathomable being than the pantomime villain he has frequently been represented (remember the Hitler of "Springtime for Hitler" in Mel Brooks' "The Producers"? Many serious historians have not been much more realistic in their portrayals). He shows that this brand of spiritual evil is not diminished by Hitler's many positive personal traits (such as his fearlesness, his photographic memory, his iron will, or his personal honesty). I thought it very fitting that he would dare to discuss evil in an explicitly religious context. Contemporary indifference to traditional categories such as good and evil, and relativistic appraisals of everything, get in the way of an accurate understanding of what Hitler was about. Hitler was not a cartoon character dribbling spit from his lower lip as he ranted and raved for the benefit of a few like-minded maniacs. He was an intelligent, hard-working man who was able to inspire an great nation with his vision. Unfortunately, this vision was inhuman and hellish. The evil that he conjured burned him from the face of this earth. The tragic magnificence of his destiny is well conjured by Lucaks' erudition and elegant writing style. His strong moral sense is also useful to have as one gazes into the abyss.

If you will only read one book about Hitler, make it this one, and if possible follow it up with Burleigh's "Third Reich".

John Lukacs has written a brilliant, scholarly and authoritative masterpiece about the historical aspect of the central figure of the twentieth century. Lukcas artfully and at times eruditely strips away the superfical impression we have of Hitler as a madman who mirco-managed his generals, knew nothing of U.S. industrial power and was self assured, even to the end the Third Reich would win the war to show none of these impressions are true.

He has removed Hilter from the shadows and under the cold hard light of historical analysis given him a human dimension that is even more chilling and frightening than anything we've imagined before.

I'm writing this review having read both Lukacs' book and Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler."

Some have criticised Lukacs for his omissions, and for what they suppose to be some attempt on his part to mitigate the seriousness or vileness of Hitler's misdeeds.

I can only say that

(i) It is hardly possible to imagine a book that manages to treat a historical figure at once concisely AND comprehensively. Short and to-the-point books do have a legitimate place in the world, and vacuous, padded and emotion-driven volumes like Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler," make one appreciate Lukacs' achievement much more keenly.

(ii) Far from seeking to downplay Hitler's responsibility for Germany's atrocities, or to "contextualize" them away as just one more example of Man's Inherently Evil Nature, Lukacs for the most part plays the skeptic, examining the underlying motivations of those who would have attitudes towards the Third Reich "normalized," while at the same time grasping something many passionate haters of Hitler seem to forget: in blaming wider forces such as "The Teutonic Soul," Germany's "Sonderweg," his (supposed) sexual perversions, and so forth, such people essentially relieve Hitler of the responsibility, and necessarily, the guilt, for his actions. After all, what right have we to blame Hitler for anything, if his parenting and German culture destined him to his actions?