Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler

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

 

 

Thomas Payne, while well-meaning and by no means a "revisionist" conspiracy theorist, had written what can best be described as a work of fiction.

Mr. Payne is not out to lie or decieve. But there are many parts of his book which, we now know (and he could have known when he wrote his book) that are based not on actual fact, but on bogus, sensational "biographies" of Hitler which have nothing to do with the truth. The problem with biographies of Hitler is that, being as close as humanely possible to absolute evil, one readily believes ANYTHING bad about Hitler. But it just ain't so in some cases.

Examples:

1). Hitler as a lazy, dirty beggar in Vienna: Yes, Hitler WAS down-and-out in Vienna. But the description of the dirty, lazy beggar is lifted from one of the first bogus "biographies" of Hitler, by one Mr. Hanish, "I WAS HITLER'S FRIEND" from the 1930's. Hanish claims to have known Hitler in early Vienna - but facts prove otherwise; Arno Kubitzek, who really WAS Hitler's friend at the same (and slightly earlier) period, contradicts Hanish, and records also show that at the period Hanish supposedly "knew" Hitler as a pennyless beggar, he was living rather comfortably on his orphan's pension and the small inheritence he was left by his parents. The whole account of the period, which generally quotes Hanish, has all the touches of a melodramatic "made-for-TV" biography. Hitler is not only down-and-out, but "a figure rarely seen amoung christians" in his dereliction. He is not only supposedly helped with old clothes by kind merchants, but (what else?) by JEWISH merchants (I mean, where is the irony factor otherwise?), and so on. But it just ain't so.

2). Hitler's "visit" to England in 1911/12: this is complete fiction. It is lifted from another fake "biography" of Hitler, ghost-written as if by Hitler's sister-in-law, Bridgit [sp?] Hitler, who was married to Adolf's half-brother Alois Jr. According to this book Hitler visited Liverpool for almost a year and became (what else?) a burden on everybody, until he left back to Germany after a row with his brother. In fact, police reocrds show that at the time Hitler was supposedly "visiting" Liverpool (of all places) he was in fact living in Vienna.

The annoying thing about these two episode is that Payne adds insult to injury: not only does he rely on fictional accounts, but he makes far-reaching conclusions of the usual pop-psychology sort about the "origin of Hitler's evil" based on Hitler's "bad behavior" on these (fictional) occasions.

3). A "meeting" between the Soviets and Germans in 1943 in German-occupied territory: A whole chapter is devoted to this supposed "meeting". It never happened, as we now know for sure after the soviet archives had opened.

4). Hitler's suicide: Payne prints a photograph of "Hitler's" body, supposedly clutching a picture of his mother (!). This photograph came straight out of end-of-the-war time tabloid sensationalist press. It is now well-known that it is not a photograph of Hitler's body at all, but simply of a slightly similar man with a mustasche.

In conclusion, Payne does some basic research reasonably well, but one must say that his work must be read with great caution. You never know when Payne will swallow hook, line, and sinker one of the outrageous claims made about Hitler by bogus biographers, and present it as gospel truth.

This was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks when it was released in 1973. I read it as a child and enjoyed it, but I didn't realize as a 10-year-old that it was laden with ridiculous errors. Payne writes well, but entire chapters are completely fabricated, thus making the book worthless. A salient example is chapter 6 where Hitler makes a year-long visit to Liverpool to visit his brother. This is the most embarrassing idiocy to ever appear in a Hitler biography (and there's loads of competition for this dubious distinction).
Hitler was never in England, as his apartment records clearly show from Vienna. Payne relies upon discredited sources again and again, such as William Patrick Hitler and Kurt Krueger, invented Hitler psychiatrist.

The book is good for a few laughs, nothing more. It's aged dreadfully and its errors become more ludicrous as the years past. If you want a solid, reliable and definitive biography of Hitler, consult John Toland's 1977 masterpiece.

I was surprised and a bit disappointed to see all the negative reactions here to Robert Payne's fine work on Hitler - in my opinion the most readable and enjoyable of the English-language biographies on that infamous tyrant. I respectfully submit that some of my fellow readers were too busy taking issue with its flaws to see its intrinsic genius.

It is of course undeniably true that there are several glaring errors in Payne's research on Hitler which were exposed by subsequent biographers; it is equally true that he relied very heavily on source material of dubious authenticity to fill in various gaps in Hitler's life. Payne devotes an entire chapter to Hitler's visit to England in the early 1900s, a visit which apparently never happened; he also writes extensively on secret negotiations between Germany and the USSR which supposedly took place in 1943 and which also may never have occurred. These mistakes (and others) are glaring and embarrassing, but readers would do well to remember that Payne was writing in 1968, long before the collapse of East Germany and the Soviet Union, and had much more restricted access to documents than did, for example, Ian Kershaw. He was also trying much harder to paint a picture of Adolf Hitler, the human being, than was Kershaw, Bullock, or Toland, who were more concerned with trying to weave Hitler's life into the fabric of his times - i.e. to tell the "whole story" of the Nazi era.

It is in this last category - Hitler the person - that Payne succeeds where the others often falter. If his details occasionally stray into the erroneous, his reconstruction of Hitler's youth in Braunau and Linz, his self-imposed misery in Vienna, his life as a soldier during the Great War, and the tumultuous early days of the National Socialist movement are all brought to life with the vividness of a novel. Payne may only be a second-tier historian, but he has the gift, as does John Keegan, of using prose to elevate facts, figures, dates and events into the realms the dramatic. He brings to life in vivid terms the beer-hall brawls, the back-room deals, the raucous political rallies, and the frequent moments of despair which often gripped the movement as it struggled for power, never letting us lose sight of the man who was behind it all. Kershaw is a masterful researcher, but like many historians he lags in the writing department, and his massive two-volume work on Hitler (which has become the standard in English-speaking countries) while exhaustive, never really put me in Hitler's shoes. Bullock had advanced writing and researching skills, but he was more interested in mapping out the era than in understanding the man. And Toland offered nothing more than a detailed timeline that never once attempted to penetrate Hitler's soul.

The defects in Payne's work are indeed serious, but so long as one doesn't use THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER as the sole source of his knowledge on the subject, I would recommend it highly for people who are interested in achieving a personal understanding one of the most enigmatic and terrible men in history.

I have read many books on NAZI Germany and specifically Adolf Hitler. I find this book by Robert Payne to be an honest account of Hitler's life, from childhood to his death. It seems to me that the author goes to great pains to be fair and objective, often citing actual transcripts from Hitler's adjutants who recorded his comments during war meetings, etc. The author often states that "the majority of this transcript survives, and says...". This is the kind of objective writing I prefer to read. Allow me to form my own opinions of how and why these events occurred. Payne does a good job of this in his book, unlike some other, "less objective, more subjective" accounts of Adolf Hitler and his rise to ultimate power in Germany.

I agree with some of the reviews: the book IS outdated, and I jumped when I read about his trip to Liverpool. We know almost from day to day his movements in Vienna, and that he never was so down and out as Hitler himself and the author want us to believe. But as I read on, the book started to fascinate me. I understood the atmosphere in Germany in the 20's and 30's better than in any other book I've read about Hitler and the Nazi Germany. So I give the book a 5 star for that reason.

Definitely an interesting read. My only question is "how much can one believe?" Good advice, by the way, to ALL students of history: Just because it's printed doesn't make it "FACT". What I did like, however, was that Payne explored a little-known "rumor" about Hitler's supposed 6-month stay in Liverpool (yet it brings one back to the original dilemma-- where did the author get his facts from?) Reader beware.

Although this book showed the reader that Payne knew the topic of Adolf Hitler well, the reader begins to wonder where Payne acquires all of this information, for he rarely credited his sources.

Robert Payne takes something of a bashing from many serious reviewers regarding the accuracy of his research while I myself have taken his accounts with only a little scepticism.
I read Robert Payne's Hitler biography when it was first published in the early seventies and also have read those on Lenin, Stalin and Gandhi.
I enjoyed them because they are readable, not filled with a lot of cross references and gave information not widely known about the early lives of these prominent people.
While the author gives an overall account of the events surrounding these individuals my interest is just as much about the influences that may have shaped their personalities and what made them to do the things that they did.
The account that Hitler visited England in 1911/1912 is challenged.
So now whether or not it is actually true as Robert Payne suggested that the sight of seeing the British Navy when at the height of Britain's power was what impressed Hitler to later create his own powerful German war machine is in some doubt.
Interesting to know that Hitler was once a quire boy considering the priesthood.
Hitler whos younger brother died of the measles at a young age was close to his mother but had a strained relationship with his father was fiercely patriotic to Germany although he did not become a citizen until 1932.
Hitler was also awarded for bravery on more than one occasion and was a dispatch messenger in the Great War.
Wishing to become an artist with little success at selling any paintings he was rejected by the academy of fine arts in Vienna twice and his fellow boarders often treated him as a bit of a joke.
The trigger for Hitler's anti-Semitism I don't think anyone clearly knows.
While many of the world events involving these subjects are often seen via film documentaries it is something new to many of us to hear of the less generally known personal lives and events.
Perhaps for the serious war historian there may be better books but for the casual biography reader I think anything by this author is satisfying enough.

I could not put this book down. No I don't agree with Hitler's motives or his actions but this book was so well written I couldn't set it down. So much history in the book is revealed. You actually understand WHY he became the monster he portrayed. There is a human side history didn't want you see with Adolf Hitler. He was an artist and loved the opera. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves history!!

I read this book because someone recommended it as the biography that best dealt with Hitler's early life, which I was interested in learning about. I had read about his political career and the years as Fuhrer, but, beyond a broad outline, I had no idea about his childhood and early manhood. Indeed, in that regard, this book did not disappoint; I felt that the portrait of his early life was detailed, well-written and fascinating. However, the same cannot be said for the rest of the book, which leads me to question the accuracy of the first part.

I don't know if Mr. Payne (actual name Pierre Stephen Robert Payne) actually did any original research for the chapters on Hitler's early life, but it is painfully obvious that he simply cribbed his material for the rest of the book from previously published works, WWII propaganda and Hollywood films. In addition to ranging from historically dubious to outright false on a thousand points, the chapters on Hitler's post WWI career is characterized by sloppy writing, undignified asides, a hysterical tone and a generally rushed and unprofessional approach to his subject. It gave the impression of a schoolboy who slapped together a term paper under the pressure of an approaching deadline. He would have done better to have concentrated exclusively on Hitler's early years rather than rush through World War II in 200 pages. How can one claim to have written a professional biography of Hitler and only devote 1 paragraph to Kristallnacht?

Among some of Mr. Payne's more ludicrous historical assertions are that Hitler lived for a time in England before WWI and that a secret peace conference was held between Ribbentrop and Molotov in German-occupied Russia in_1943_! When I read these revelations for the first time, I sat up and took notice, because I had never heard of them anywhere before. However, upon further investigation, I discovered that pretty much all historians find them completely without validity. Similarly, in his hysterical hatred of Hitler and aversion to primary source research, Mr. Payne repeats many assertions which I understand to have been debunked long ago. For instance, Mr. Payne tells us that Horst Wessel was killed by another Nazi, that Hitler was responsible for the Reichstag fire, that the SA under Roehm was not planning a putsch, that the Nazis made soap and lampshades out of Jewish remains and that the famous photo of the dead Hitler look-alike in the ruins of the Reichschancellery was actually Hitler. These, and many, many other similar examples make me seriously question Mr. Payne's reliability, even for the portions of the book which I found to be informative. Therefore, I cannot recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.