Customer Reviews

Speeches of Adolf Hitler: Early Speeches, 1922-1924, and Other Selected Passages

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

 

 

This is a commendable little volume.

Adolf Hitler is known to have delivered about 5000 major speeches in his lifetime and there exists a major corpus of these speeches running into several thousand pages.

This dauntingly large body of material is beyond the time and resources of the average intelligent enquirer.

However this volume offers a particularly useful introduction into Hitler's thinking by reason of at least two major considerations:
Firstly, Norman Baynes was himself a medieval scholar of distinction and this brings a refreshing detachment and accuracy to his translations.
Absent therefore, are the relentless rantings of the compilers and editors of similar anthologies.

Secondly, most of the speeches quoted here are from Hitler's early public addresses where he spoke extempore and to purely German audiences - and where there was no need to guard against malicious misrepresentation (in mainly foreign media) - something which occurred all too frequently later in his career.

This Howard Fertig edition captures some of the most illuminating statements of the aspiring Hitler, and goes a long way to providing an explanation of why this man was able to make such an impact on Germany and the history of our time.

One hopes that the publishers find the resources and encouragement to bring out a fuller collection of these speeches.

Strongly recommended.

This 220-page book is an abridged version of the 2 volume, 1,980-page THE SPEECHES OF ADOLF HITLER - April 1922 - August 1939 (2 Volume Set). Please click on the link and read my detailed review.

Note that analyzing Hitler does not mean agreement with him or admiration of him. The five-star rating refers to the historical value of the work.