The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler [Paperback]

Peter Wyden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2002

In spring 1945, as the Russians moved on Berlin and it became clear the Nazi cause was lost, Adolf Hitler assured his most trusted henchmen that even if he were to die, "the seed of National Socialism will grow again one day [in] . . . a radiant rebirth." Several times after the war, the distinguished author Peter Wyden, himself a victim of the Nazis, returned to Germany to discover, to his dismay, that Hitler's prediction was all too true. In these unsettling pages, Wyden documents the reality that the "Hitler virus" is still very much alive. A harrowing companion to Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, this book is Wyden's legacy to the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The virus referred to in the title of this uneven but passionate book is the staying power of Hitler and his ideology, a half-century after the end of WWII. Wyden (Stella), who, as a child, escaped from the Nazis before the war, focuses on many of the usual suspects in Germany in addressing Hitler's legacy: skinheads on trial for murder; "New Right" historian Eric Nolte, who says, "I don't consider [Hitler] the embodiment of evil"; Judge Rainer Orlet, notorious for lenience with neo-Nazis. He highlights Germans who continue to celebrate the Fhrer's birthday and those (numbering about 150,000 annually) who visit his refuge at Berchtesgaden. He records, with obvious rancor, his interviews with Holocaust deniers such as British historian David Irving (himself the subject of another new book, D.D. Guttenplan's The Holocaust on Trial, Forecasts, Apr. 23). At times, he vacillates between an optimistic conviction that Germany has learned its lesson and a fear that neo-Nazism will have its day. Wyden is at his best in uncharted territory, i.e., ordinary people's continuing fascination with Hitler. After spending time with some of the visitors to Berchtesgaden, Wyden is disturbed by, but unable to discern what lies behind, their fascination. For local tourist officials, it is clearer: Hitler "is their star" and "their migraine. They prize him but cannot officially admit it." The Hitler virus seems almost epidemic in Wyden's account, and his portraits linger in the mind. (Wyden died before the volume was completed; his publisher, with the collaboration of his widow, completed the manuscript.)

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hitler has been dead for 56 years, but the "Hitler industry" is alive and well, and these two new books get to the heart of it. German-born Wyden (who previously explored the horrors of Nazism in Stella, LJ 10/15/92) was consumed with his mission to document the "Hitler virus" he found prevalent in modern Germany but died in 1998 before his work was finished. His publisher, identified only as "R.W.S.," completed the research and frames the book with introductory and concluding essays. Wyden constructs his case slowly, describing instances of neo-Nazi sentiment, skinhead terror, and acts of violence against immigrants. He chillingly details a festive trek by tourists to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountain retreat, and worries about the still-powerful significance of Hitler's birthday to many Germans. He also investigates the comfortable fates of Nazi leaders and dissects the Holocaust deniers. Perhaps the most effective portion of Wyden's indictment is his depiction of intellectual support for new right-wing movements in Germany. Yet, despite the accumulation of evidence, the book feels fragmented and lacks the kind of kick that Wyden might have provided had he lived a bit longer. In Seduced by Hitler, first published a year ago in England, British journalists LeBor and Boyes examine daily life in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied countries. Describing in vivid detail the choices people made to survive, the authors seek to learn why so few Germans made the choice to resist the state. Although most ordinary Germans were not affected by surveillance or terror, many of them had to compromise certain moral principles. An atmosphere of mistrust and accusation festered beneath the surface of daily routine. The authors find no clear-cut answers to their question, but the personal stories presented here make for compellingAand disturbingAreadreading. Both works are useful additions to the World War II and modern German collections in academic and large public libraries.AThomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (May 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559706163
• ISBN-13: 978-1559706162
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,017,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hitler in the twenty first century, July 7, 2001

By 

John Barry Kenyon - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler (Hardcover)

What you make of this book depends what you expected when you picked it up. The expression 'virus' rather suggests an analysis of how Hiterlism still infects the body politic. Up to a point, that is right. Wyden (who died before completing the text) does consider ultra right movements such as Haider's in Austria and is adroit in considering the continuing fascination for the Fuhrer amongst tourists and skinheads. But those references hardly add up to a comprehensive treatment. The author is far more successful in tracing the post war political careers or influence of card carrying nazis, for example Remer (who saved the regime in the failed July 1944 coup)and a veritable tribe of unpunished former SS who popped up all over the world in new guises. For my money, this book illustrates that Hitler's influence has certainly persisted since 1945 without really telling us why or to what end. Perhaps those loathsome internet hate groups have some of the answers.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rancid and exploitive, June 27, 2002

By 

Katherine Keirns (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler (Paperback)

I will admit, I was leery of the book when I bought it. Mostly because of the opening line in the introduction detailing how this was not a indictment of a "complex people." I was not pleasantly surprised.

Wyden, a German born American Jew who had worked in the the US Army's denazification program and later as a journalist takes the reader on a disorganized, disjointed journey though modern Germany (with random side trips to the US and Austria as well as to the past). Almost every sentence until the closing chapters of this book reeks of disdain for the "complex people" he was not indicting.

The Hitler Virus' first and major sin is it's disorganization as the reader is taken from chapter to chapter in random directions with no controlling vision of what he is trying to say. The few good chapters (dealing with David Irving and the children of Nazi parents) are dealt with much better in books he cites (Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust and Sichrovsky's Born Guilty).

The second deadly sin of this book is it's terrible abuse of statistics when he does use them. Numbers are clothed in yellow language meant to slant the reader without explaining other factors which can only be inferred. When the numbers are not as shocking as he'd like, Wyden often mentions how Germans are unlikely to admit unpolitic feelings to pollsters, which I thought was a novel defense of desperation.

The best example of this is early in the book:

"Another poll in the new millennium revealed that 79 percent of Germans see May 8, 1945, as a day of liberation rather than a day of defeat. However, if one considers different age groups separately, 87 percent of people under the age of thirty think that May 8, 1945 was a day of liberation, while only 67 percent of those over fifty do."

Perhaps, being an American, I tend to think of 67 percent as a high figure for any poll, and hardly worth an "only", especially given that if it was indeed taken at the end of the century than this poll would have included East Germans for whom the end of World War II was the start of a forty year nightmare, and certainly not a day of liberation.

Wyden also fails to place facts in context--in a chapter on Konrad Adenauer he proposes what he thinks will be a shocking revaluation that the post-war chancellor was not a true democrat. I haven't read any serious book on post war Germany that suggested he was. It is a well known fact that Adenauer hated consulting the Bundestag and would frequently end run the parliamentary process if he could.

Wyden though infers the chancellor was a nazi because of the brown past of several of his appointees. One has to wonder how one was going to find enough people qualified to run the government in post war West Germany with no brown past. After all, this was not an occupied state being freed.

Another proof Wyden gives to paint Adenauer brown is the fact that he pushed High Commissioner McCoy to commute the death sentences of several convicted war criminals. A point to remember is that the Federal Republic had outlawed the death penalty in the forming of the Basic Law and at the very least the chancellor had asked that the sentences be commuted to fall in line with this. This is not to say that is the only reason Adenauer lobbied for McCoy on behalf of the war criminals, but it is a side that Wyden simply does not inform the reader of.

Perhaps to me most insidious is not the German bashing, or the disorganization, or even the 'lies, damn lies and statistics' but the fact that this subject deserved better.

The only thing I agree with Wyden about is that Adolf Hitler is the big pink elephant sitting in the middle of German life, and of any conversation about history between Germans or with Germans and non-Germans. But sadly, Wyden abandons his stated goal, only talking about neo-Nazies and anti-emegrant feeling in passing and ignoring the basic hardships left behind in the old DDR which might foster a rise of a right-wing party.

Wyden treats Germans and Austrians as if they are interchangeable, and my great fear is that the lay reader which this book is aimed at will not understand the fundamental difference between the two German speaking nations. Farther afield are discussions of American hate publishers and Nazi collectors which seem to have only tangential baring on the issue of if the virus is alive in Germany today.

The only people who will be satisfied with this book are those who had preconceived notions about a people who's national guilt will last much longer than anyone has a right to demand of them. The author began his work by telling the reader he was close to the subject, what he did not tell his readers is that he was TOO close to his subject.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A great disappointment. Important topic badly let down., June 24, 2001

By 

OoOoOoO "OoOoOoO" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler (Hardcover)

The nostalgia of many for Hitler and his Third Reich, the allure of his ideology, the sympathy of old and young in Germany and many other parts of the world for Hitler's lost cause, the strange attractions to many (including ironically Jews!) of Nazi memorabilia - all these are important sociological issues which merits a careful and forensic analysis. The demise of the extreme right spectrum of the world political stage since WWII also deserved scholarly treatment. What accounts for the strange, surprisingly international appeal of Hitler in this day and age!? This book offers none of that. Yes, as the author admitted, it is a deeply personal enquiry into the question of why Hitler as the ideologue and model has refused to die - notwithstanding that Nazism was literally bombed into the sub-basement at the end of WWII. It is personal to the extent of being badly organized, poorly conceptualized, and not held together by any coherent or well-thought out system or order. This is a very shoddy treatment of a historically and sociologically significant topic, nearly an insult. It reads like the author simply wrote out into full essay length his personal scrapbook. Only mildly entertaining in odd places. A grave disappointment. Adolf deserves a better class of analyst.