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Timothy W. Ryback

Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 21, 2008

by Timothy W. Ryback (Author)

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A brilliantly original exploration of some of the formative influences in Hitler’s life—the books he most revered, and how they shaped the man and his thinking.

Hitler’s education and worldview were formed largely from the books in his private library. Recently, hundreds of those books were discovered in the Library of Congress by Timothy Ryback, complete with Hitler’s marginalia on their pages—underlines, question marks, exclamation points, scrawled comments. Ryback traces the path of the key phrases and ideas that Hitler incorporated into his writing, speeches, conversations, self-definition, and actions.

We watch him embrace Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the works of Shakespeare. We see how an obscure treatise inspired his political career and a particular interpretation of Ibsen’s epic poem Peer Gynt helped mold his ruthless ambition. He admires Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and declares it required reading for fellow party members. We learn how hisextensive readings on religion and the occult provide the blueprint for his notion of divine providence, how the words of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are reborn as infamous Nazi catchphrases, and, finally, how a biography of Frederick the Great fired the destructive fanaticism that compelled Hitler to continue fighting World War II when all hope of victory was lost.

Hitler’s Private Library, a landmark in the study of the Third Reich, offers a remarkable view into Hitler’s intellectual world and personal evolution. It demonstrates the ability of books to preserve in vivid ways the lives of their collectors, underscoring the importance of the tactile in the era of the digital.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Knopf
Publication date

October 21, 2008
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1400042046
ISBN-13

978-1400042043
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hitler's personal library of over 16,000 volumes was picked clean by American troops. But Ryback found 1,200 of Hitler's volumes in the Library of Congress and other caches scattered through the U.S. and Europe. By looking at the books Hitler read (sometimes obsessively, judging from marginalia and other signs of wear and tear), Ryback paints an unusually vivid and nuanced portrait of the dictator. Among the authors and works Hitler was most interested in were Shakespeare (in translation), whose grand historical subjects, Hitler felt, made him superior to Schiller and Goethe; Henry Ford's anti-Semitic The International Jew; adventure novelist Karl May; Dietrich Eckart's interpretation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt; works of the occult and esoterica; and Thomas Carlyle, particularly his biography of Frederick the Great. Ryback (The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau) offers a unique view of Hitler's intellectual life. 47 photos. (Oct. 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Hitler was a voracious reader, finishing a book every night, either at his desk or in his armchair, always with a cup of tea in his hand. His library at one time contained more than sixteen thousand books, of which some twelve hundred survive in various archives. Ryback�s analysis covers books Hitler wrote (including speculation on the content of his missing war memoir), books he read (with extensive comments on marginalia), and books he was given (a copy of the bizarrely titled autobiography �G�ring, What Were You Thinking! A Sketch from a Life� was presented to Hitler by his self-absorbed deputy). Ryback relies heavily on Walter Benjamin�s idea of the private library as a map of its owner�s character, but Hitler�s reading yields few new insights, and some of what Ryback dredges up is merely peculiar: between the pages of an early acquisition, a guidebook to Berlin, is �a wiry inch-long black hair that appears to be from a moustache.�
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

From Booklist

Hitler wasn’t particularly well educated, and he despised the “impotent flabbiness” of intellectuals. Yet he was a voracious reader, and his various personal libraries contained more than 6,000 volumes at his death. Ryback found several hundred of these volumes stored in the Library of Congress. On the assumption that Hitler’s tastes in reading will be revelatory, Ryback examines some of these works, with Hitler’s handwritten notations found in the margins, and he speculates about the effects these readings had upon Hitler’s views. Some of Hitler’s tastes were generally known, such as his love for cheap American western novels, which seemed to appeal both to his romantic fantasies and his obsession with the struggle between civilization and “barbarism.” He also liked Shakespeare, particularly The Merchant of Venice, with its caricature of the greedy Jew. Predictably, Hitler also read such nineteenth-century “proto Nazi” writers as Paul La Garde, who demanded the elimination of Jewish influence in Germany. Ryback doesn’t conclusively demonstrate how these writers shaped Hitler’s beliefs; still, this is an interesting glimpse at an often-neglected facet of Hitler’s personality. --Jay Freeman

Review

“Fascinating.”
-Washington Post Book World Best Nonfiction of 2008

“In Hitler's Private Library Timothy Ryback turns Hitler's reading into a way of reading Hitler–his mind, his obsessions, his evolution. It's an original and provocative work that adds valuable context to the skeletal and mystifying historical record.”
-Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler

“Hitler's Private Library is a meticulously researched and highly original focus on one of history's most enigmatic figures. Timothy W. Ryback shines his laser-like perceptions into the library and mind of Adolf Hitler in a way no previous book has done. Anyone even vaguely interested in the uses and misuses of ‘a little bit of knowledge’ and ideology will marvel–and shudder–at Ryback's riveting insights.”
-Steven Bach, author of LENI: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl

“Remarkably absorbing . . . A tantalizing glimpse into Hitler’s . . . self-improvement program.”
-Jacob Heilbrunn, The New York Times Book Review

“Fascinating . . . Hitler’s Private Library will appeal to anyone interested in what books mean to us, and is ‘must’ reading for anyone who doubts the power of written words to sway the human imagination toward good or evil.”
-R. V. Scheide, Sacramento News & Review Best Books of 2008

“Sensitively handled . . . and intelligently presented . . . Ryback’s portrait is both original and rewarding.”
-John Gross, New York Review of Books

“Fascinating . . . Timothy Ryback writes gracefully, and the story he weaves around the books from Hitler’s private libraries . . . offers fresh perspectives . . . Deftly, and with an economy of words, he sketches the future dictator’s transition from young volunteer to bitter and hardened soldier.”
-Charles A. Radin, The Boston Globe

“Elegantly written, meticulously researched, fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . Ryback has produced a valuable short addition to attempts to understand this strange man whose impact on the world was so baleful.”
-Ian Kershaw, The New York Sun

“Dramatic . . . Ryback derives fascinating and suggestive material from the books that he examines . . . Ryback’s useful book brings us a little closer to the mind of the monster.”
-Anthony Grafton, The New Republic

“Intriguing . . . Ryback is not the first to study Hitler’s marginalia, but he does make the perfect guide, intelligent, well-informed, and careful.”
-Douglas Smith, The Seattle Times

“Crisply written . . . Thoroughly engrossing . . . Fascinating.”
-Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

“Rewarding . . . Carefully researched.”
-Ritchie Robertson, Times Literary Supplement

“Approaching Hitler from an unexpected angle, Timothy Ryback isn’t adding a gimmicky volume to the vast bibliography: he’s shedding more light on the man than I have found in many full-dress studies . . . irresistible.”
-John Wilson, Christianity Today

About the Author

Timothy W. Ryback is the author of The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, a New York Times Notable Book for 1999. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He is cofounder and codirector of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation and lives in Paris with his wife and three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Man Who Burned Books

FOR HIM THE LIBRARY represented a Pierian spring, that mataphorica source of knowledge and inspiration. He drew deeply there, quelling his intellectual insecurities and nourishing his fanatic ambitions.He read voraciously, at least one book per night, sometimes more, so he claimed. “When one gives one also has to take,” he once said, “and I take what I need from books.”

He ranked Don Quixote,along with Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Gulliver’s Travels,among the great works of world literature. “Each of them is a grandiose idea unto itself,” he said. In Robinson Crusoehe perceived “the development of the entire history of mankind.” Don Quixotecaptured “ingeniously” the end of an era. He owned illustrated editions of both books and was especially impressed by Gustave Doré’s romantic depictions ofCervantes’s delusion-plagued hero.

He also owned the collected works of William Shakespeare, published in German translation in 1925 by Georg Müller as part of a series intended to make great literature available to the general public. Volume six includes As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Troilus and Cressida. The entire set is bound in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eaglevflanked by his initials on the spine.

He considered Shakespeare superior to Goethe and Schiller in every respect. While Shakespeare had fueled his imagination on the protean forces of the emerging British empire, these two Teutonic playwright-poets squandered their talent on stories ofmidlife crises and sibling rivalries. Why was it, he once wondered, that the German Enlightenment produced Nathan the Wise, the story of the rabbi who reconciles Christians, Muslims, and Jews, while it had been left to Shakespeare to give the world The Merchant of Veniceand Shylock?

He appears to have imbibed his Hamlet. “To be or not to be” was a favorite phrase, as was “It is Hecuba to me.” He was especially fond of Julius Caesar. In a 1926 sketchbook he drew a detailed stage set for the first act of the Shakespeare tragedy with sinister façades enclosing the forum where Caesar is cut down. “We will meet again at Philippi,” he threatened an opponent on more than one occasion, plagiarizing the spectral warning to Brutus after Caesar’s murder. He was said to have reserved the Ides ofMarch for momentous decisions.

He kept his Shakespeare volumes in the second-floor study of his alpine retreat in southern Germany, along with a leather edition of another favorite author, the adventure novelist Karl May. “The first Karl May that I read was The Ride Across the Desert,” he once recalled. “I was overwhelmed! I threw myself into him immediately which resulted in a noticeable decline in my grades.” Later in life, he was said to have sought solace in Karl May the way others did in the Bible.

He was versed in the Holy Scriptures, and owned a particularly handsome tome with Worte Christi,or Words of Christ,embossed in gold on a cream-colored calfskin cover that even today remains as smooth as silk. He also owned a German translation ofHenry Ford’s anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, and a 1931 handbook on poison gas with a chapter detailing the qualities and effects ofprussic acid, the homicidal asphyxiant marketed commercially as Zyklon B. On his bedstand, he kept a well-thumbed copy of Wilhelm Busch’s mischievous cartoon duo Max and Moritz.

WALTER BENJAMIN ONCE SAID that you could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps—his tastes, his interests, his habits. The books we retain and those we discard, those we read as well as those we decide not to, all say something about who we are. As a German-Jewish culture critic born ofan era when it was possible to be “German” and “Jewish,” Benjamin believed in the transcendent power ofKultur.He believed that creative expression not only enriches and illuminates the world we inhabit, but also provides the cultural adhesive that binds one generation
to the next, a Judeo-Germanic rendering of the ancient wisdom ars longa, vita brevis.

Benjamin held the written word—printed and bound—in especially highr egard. He loved books. He was fascinated by their physicality, by their durability, by their provenance. An astute collector, heargued, could“read”a book the way a physiognomist decipheredt he essence of a person’s character through his physical features. “Dates, placenames, formats, previous owners, bindings, and all the like,”Benjamin observed, “all these details must tell him something—not as dry isolated facts, but as a harmonious whole.”In short, you could j udge a book by its cover, and in turn the collector byhis collection. Quoting Hegel, Benjamin noted, “Only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight,” and concluded,“Only in extinction is the collector comprehended.”

When Benjamin invoked a nineteenth-century German philosopher, a Roman goddess, and an owl, he was of course alluding to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s famous maxim: “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk,” by which Hegel meant that philosophizing can begin only after events have run their course.

Benjamin felt the same was true about private libraries. Only after the collector had shelved his last book and died, when his library was allowed to speak for itself, without the proprietor to distract or obfuscate, could the individual volumes reveal the “preserved” knowledge of their owner: how he asserted his claim over them, with a name scribbled on the inside cover or an ex libris bookplate pasted across an entire page; whether he left them dog-eared and stained, or the pages uncut and unread.

Benjamin proposed that a private library serves as a permanent and credible witness to the character of its collector, leading him to the following philosophic conceit: we collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector. “Not that they come alive in him,” Benjamin posited. “It is he who lives in them.”

FOR THE LAST HALF CENTURY remnants of Adolf Hitler’s library have occupied shelf space in climatized obscurity in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress. The twelve hundred surviving volumes that once graced Hitler’s bookcases in his three elegantly appointed libraries—wood paneling, thick carpets, brass lamps, over- stuffed armchairs—at private residences in Munich, Berlin, and the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, now stand in densely packed rows on steel shelves in an unadorned, dimly lit storage area of the Thomas Jefferson Building in downtown Washington, a stone’s throw from the Washington Mall and just across the street from the United States Supreme Court.

The sinews ofemotional logic that once ran through this collection— Hitler shuf?ed his books ceaselessly and insisted on reshelving them himself—have been severed. Hitler’s personal copy of his family genealogy is sandwiched between a bound collection of newspaper articles titled Sunday Meditationsand a folio ofpolitical cartoons from the 1920s. A handsomely bound facsimile edition ofletters by Frederick the Great, specially designed for Hitler’s ?ftieth birthday, lies on a shelf for oversized books beneath a similarly massive presentation volume on the city of Hamburg and an illustrated history of the German navy in the First World War. Hitler’s copy of the writings of the legendary Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, who famously declared that war was politics by other means, shares shelfspace beside a French vegetarian cookbook inscribed to“Monsieur Hitler végétarien.”

When I first surveyed Hitler’s surviving books, in the spring of 2001, I discovered that fewer than half the volumes had been catalogued, and only two hundred ofthose were searchable in the Library ofCongress’s online catalogue. Most were listed on aging index cards and still bore the idiosyncratic numbering system assigned them in the 1950s. At Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, I found another eighty Hitler books in a similar state of benign neglect. Taken from his Berlin bunker in the spring of 1945by Albert Aronson, one of the first Americans to enter Berlin after the German defeat, they were donated to Brown by Aronson’s nephew in the late 1970s. Today they are stored in a walk-in basement vault, along withWaltWhitman’spersonal copy of Leaves of Grassand the original folios to John James Audubon’s Birds of America.

Among the books at Brown, I found a copy of Mein Kampf with Hitler’s ex libris bookplate, an analysis of Wagner’s Parsifal published in 1913,a history of the swastika from 1921,and a half dozen or so spiritual and occult volumes Hitler acquired in Munich in the early 1920s, including an account of supernatural occurrences, The Dead Are Alive!, and a monograph on the prophecies of Nostradamus. I discovered additional Hitler books scattered in public and private archives across the United States and Europe.

Several dozen of these surviving Hitler books contain marginalia. Here I encountered a man who famously seemed never to listen to anyone, for whom conversation was a relentless tirade, a ceaseless monologue, pausing to engage with the text, to underline words and sentences, to mark entire paragraphs, to place an exclamation point beside one passage, a question mark beside another, and quite frequently an emphatic series of parallel lines in the margin alongside a particular passage. Like footprints in the sand, these markings allow us to trace the course of the journey but not necessarily the intent, where attention caught a...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; 1st edition (October 21, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400042046
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400042043
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,441,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Hamilton Beck

The Collection of a Gifted Dilettante

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 18, 2016

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First some statistics. At his death, Hitler's library consisted of some 16,000 volumes, of which it seems only around 1,300 have surfaced, many of them in the Library of Congress. Eighty volumes are housed at Brown University in Providence, RI. Others are scattered across the US and Europe. The original shelving system has of course been lost. So what we are dealing with is not so much Hitler's actual library as some remnants of it.

Timothy Ryback had made it his task to examine the stories these books – and their marginalia – tell. He delves into them and their authors, many of whom are likely to be unfamiliar to readers in the English-speaking world. His approach is primarily chronological by date of acquisition. As far as is known, the first surviving book Hitler bought was Max Osborn's guide to Berlin, published in 1909, which he purchased in late November 1915 at a bookstore in Tourney, France, just two miles behind the front-line trenches there. Osborn, a prominent cultural critic of the time, looks at first glance like he might be worth re-discovering, though his Prussian patriotism, which veered into chauvinism, would not do today.

It is in Osborn's guidebook that Ryback discovered an inch-long hair from Hitler's mustache, a detail that is almost invariably brought up in reviews, though to my knowledge no one has suggested subjecting this hair for DNA analysis to see what it might reveal. The mention of Hitler's fingerprints has attracted less attention.

To judge by his book purchases, Hitler's hatred of the Jews dates from the early post-war years, when he came under the influence of Dietrich Eckhart, publisher of "the hate-mongering weekly 'Auf gut deutsch' (In Plain German)." (pg. 30) Later, Ryback provides a useful list of the anti-Semitic readings Hitler recommended, including of course Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" and Henry Ford's "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." (pg. 50ff)

An autodidact since dropping out of high school, Hitler read voraciously, consuming one book per night. When it comes to literature, he seems to have preferred Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to the German classics, Goethe and Schiller. His real favorite, of course, was Karl May. Ryback points out that on the whole, Hitler seems not to have read much for enjoyment; rather, he scanned texts for arguments and facts that agreed with his preconceived notions, always looking for mosaic pieces that would fit into a larger pattern, discarding the rest.

Turning to Hitler's own books, Ryback pays close attention to the opening paragraphs of "Mein Kampf," but little thereafter. He does examine early drafts, finding them full of elementary spelling errors (not just typos). Hitler often misspelled the name of one of his supposedly favorite philosophers, Schopenhauer. I say "supposedly" because Hitler's essential core, as Ryback says, was "less a distillation of the philosophies of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche than a dime-store theory cobbled together from cheap, tendentious paperback and esoteric hardcovers, which provided the justification for a thin, calculating, bullying mendacity." (pg. 183)

Though Hitler most definitely labored over "Mein Kampf," in the end it is unlikely that many people found the patience to read more than a few dozen pages. It is typical that he originally wanted to give it the long-winded title "A Four and a Half Year Battle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice." It was his publisher, Max Amann, who shortened this to "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), a much better choice.

In the early postwar years, Hitler saw the USA as some kind of Nordic Union. With time, though, he came to regard Americans as a mongrel race, whose racial inferiority meant they would inevitably succumb to the Aryans. This helps explain why he so cavalierly declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor.

As it happened, many of the leaders in the attempt to use eugenics to create a master race were Americans such as Madison Grant, whose degree from Columbia was in law; Leon Whitney, author of "The Case for Sterilization"; and Charles Davenport (professor of zoology, Harvard). Paul Popenoe majored in English with coursework in biology; an expert in dates, he later edited the Journal of Heredity. While it's not clear if Hitler owned their books, he was familiar with their work. Lothrop Stoddard (whose Harvard Ph.D. was in history), was actually granted an audience with the Chancellor himself in December, 1939. Ryback doesn't mention it, but Stoddard also met with Goebbels and Himmler on this occasion. Moreover, he was the model for "Goddard" in "The Great Gatsby," said there to be the author of "The Rise of the Colored Empires"; Stoddard had in fact written "The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy" (1920). Stoddard kept his word and never revealed the substance of his conversation with Hitler.

Thankfully, Ryback does not restrict himself to books, for even his tangents are interesting. Using the circumstance that some of Hitler's collection was housed in his retreat on the Obersalzberg, he writes insightfully about the layout of his office there with its magnificent view of the Unterberg, describing it as a place of "both refuge and inspiration." (pg. 174) This was the place where all his great plans were conceived, as Hitler himself acknowledged. Ryback asks why then he decided not to make his last stand there, and speculates that if Hitler had left Berlin as the Soviets approached, it would have looked like he was trying to escape. It was important to him not to be thought a coward, to die at (or near) the front. As he heard the sound of the approaching artillery bombardment in April 1945, it must have taken him back to the Western Front during the First World War. It comes as little surprise that at the end, Hitler had a collection of the prophecies of Nostradamus at his bedside in the bunker. Being an autodidact often goes hand in hand with a fascination for astrology and the occult.

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John Bragg

Hitler's Private Library

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 14, 2010

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There is no shortage of books about Adolf Hitler and each year new views of his life appear in print. Author Timothy Ryback uses a novel technique to unravel the source of Hitler's obsessive philosophies by a careful examination of the books of this complex and troubled man read.
Ryback spent nearly ten years researching the various book collections that starting as a young man Hitler had accumulated, ending during his final days as Reichkansler of Germany. Hitler, was by all accounts, a voracious reader, who eventually created libraries in each of the locations that he lived or worked in. His holdings were said to exceed 17,000 volumes.
Ryback bases most of his research on the 1200 volumes resting in the rare book section of the US Library of Congress. These books were seized by US Army forces at the close of the war. The author has carefully gone through all of the relevant books searching for marginal notes that give some hint of Hitler's particular interest and his acceptance or repudiation of theses put forward by the various writers. Books to Hitler represented a "Pierian spring, that metaphorical source of knowledge and inspiration" that quelled "his intellectual insecurities and nourished his fanatic ambitions." An outstanding feature of this book is that while you are taken through the analysis of his literary holdings, Ryback also provides the reader with a history of Hitler's life, his struggle to become a writer and the people that were most influential in shaping his view of the world. Men such as Max Osborne, the art critic, playwright Dietrich Eckart, who was seen as Hitler's mentor, Schopenhauer, Ernst Junger, and the US racist author MadisonGrant.
The Chapter entitled "The Book Wars" provides details of his battle with the Catholic Church, a battle that Hitler wished to avoid. Conversations between Hitler and Archbishop of Munich Michael Faulhaber provide an intimate view of the personal dialogue between senior church officials and Hitler.
Near the end of the war Hitler clung to his belief of a "miraculous salvation" of Germany, a belief rooted in his readings of Frederick the Great, who was saved from defeat at the last moment by the death of the Russian Tsarina Elizabeth, ending the Seven Years War. Hitler saw the death of Roosevelt as another salvation for Germany, but this time it did not occur.
Rybacks careful examination if the marginalia in Hitler's books is thorough; commenting on the color, the accentuation, and the depth of the comments provides him the basis for his interesting conclusions as to what made Hitler click.
This book is a must read for students of WWII, and Hitler in particular.
John E Bragg

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Professor Joseph L. McCauley

Der liebe Adolf

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 26, 2014

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Ryback's book is both thought-provoking and informative. According to this report der liebe Adolf had fixed notions at an early age and read, not to understand (as scientifically), but rather largely with the aim of filtering out passages that reenforced his preconceived notions. I got onto this book after reading Wouk's carefully researched historical novels Winds of War and War and Remembrance. We learn from Ryback the key people who helped to shape Hitler and set him on his path, also who knocked out the serious opposition to this highly focused psychopath. We learn of forerunners of Jew hate as far back as Martin Luther, which is a disappointment, but let the truth fall where it may. In a somewhat related if polemical work 'Metapolitics' Viereck emphasizes the influence of the Romantic Era on forming the mentality that encouraged so many to see Hitler as the savior. To their credit, Ryback and Wouk did not write polemically. In any case, if you find yourself satisfied with the notion that the Versailles Treaty and war reparations are the sole cause of Hitler, the Nazis, and the murder of so many people, then you might want to read these books in order to become better informed. As Hitler angrily told a female critic, one must learn to hate (the Jews).

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Top reviews from other countries

J.P

Informative read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 24, 2017

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I wanted to find out more about Hitler after reading the history of WWII combat. Though the Western world equates him to evil itself, I found Hitler to be enigmatic and wanted to find out more about him as a person. What better way than through books!
This is part autobiography, part study on Hitler's reading habits. It's concise and holds your interest all the way throughout. I plan on reading some of the books mentioned from his library just out of curiosity.

Compared to the highly rated Hitler biography by Ian Kershaw I'm currently reading, I find "Hitler's Private Library" to be infinitely less opinionated. For example, Kershaw paints Hitler's showdown with Otto Dickel as an ill thought out hot-headed affair in which Hitler simply threw a tantrum to get what he wanted, but bypasses work that actually transpired - which is that the uneducated and severely disadvantaged Hitler counterattacked the highly esteemed professor by scrutinizing Dickel's work and presented an actual argument to his party, giving Dickel a taste of his own medicine. Hitler's position in the party, which was basically his calling at the time was under threat. Everything he worked for could have been taken away from him and he fought to secure that by fighting with everything he had. To undermine it with a few brief sentences makes me question the integrity of Kershaw's work. But this is why I'll be looking at multiple sources to piece together a more complete picture.

I highly recommned Hitler's Private Library to anyone who's interested in Hitler or books.

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Daniel Blake

Opinion Mixed With Fact

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 20, 2021

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I think this book is great from the outset that we are able to know what books Hitler read in order to get a better understanding of one of the most prominent figures in history, however, distracting from the factual research in this book is the author making comments which show a clear bias, and although we can agree Hitler is definitely not a saint, the author insulting his intelligence on multiple occasions only shows ignorance on his part. A villain he was, an idiot he was not. I did find myself irritated by the need to drop insults at every turn though, at the start of the book where his comportment was talked about as a solider as very good and honourable I did find the contrast somewhat jarring later on in the book. Though perhaps these days you need to equalise the playing field lest the author by accused of being a Nazi Sympathiser by stating the man actually was capable of good as well! Well researched - recommend to anyone who is learning about WW2.

Martin Davies

A Brave and Illuminating Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 1, 2013

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Timothy Ryback has tackled a difficult subject with erudition, sensitivity and remarkable imagination. His study liberates us from the overfamiliar journalistic clichés, and shows instead the inner mind of a man whose simmering rage and fury changed the course of world history. Hitler remains less of an enigma after reading this book, together with Lothar Machtan's exemplary exploration of the dictator's long-concealed homosexuality, "The Hidden Hitler". Both chart with an astonishing command of the sources the curious path from obscurity to infamy. If I have one criticism, it is Ryback's evident weakness on certain aspects of Central and East European history. On p. 209 stage Frederick the Great is given nineteenth-century dates (these could be typos and laid at the door of poor copyediting) and the author also underplays the historical complexities of German minorities that found themselves under Polish and Czech rule after 1918. He treats Hitler's attitude to such matters, along with the shameful settlement of the Peace of Versailles, in standard Anglo-Saxon tabloid manner, whereas they were key factors to the build-up to World War II and deserve a proper, judgment that recognizes the mistreatment of German nationals in these areas. But these are quibbles. A first-rate book in almost every single way, extremely readable and highly informative.

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Leif Asbjørnsen

The Making of a Führer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 21, 2013

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Timothy W. Ryback tells us how Adolf Hitler by the time of his suicide at the age of 56 had accumulated a large library with about 16000 items. The author has come across remnants of this large collection scattered across two continents - Europe and the US. Many of the books contain marginalia, underlined words and marked paragraphs, which show that the dictator, famous for his monologues, at least had a dialogue with the text in books that interested him. These books were those that shaped Hitler's worldview and actions.
Ryback starts with Hitler's front line readings during WW1 that reveal his artistic interest, his favourite being Max Osborn's Berlin - an architectural guide. Ironically, Osborn who was a Jew, became blacklisted in the 30-ies and immigrated to America. However, that was after Hitler's mentor, the journalist and translator of Peer Gynt, Dietrich Eckart, had shaped the Führer's fierce anti-Semitism. Not surprisingly then Hitler devoured the most notorious anti-Semitic literature of the time, among others works by Houston Chamberlain and Henry Ford - books that fuelled the virulent racism of his speeches.
According to Ryback Hitler had a meagre understanding of serious education since he lacked formal education himself. He was a half-educated man who mastered neither basic spelling nor common grammar as can be seen from the drafts to Mein Kampf. He was an eclectic reader who accumulated knowledge that supported his preconceived prejudices. The American Madison Grant's book "The Passing of the Great Race Or the Racial Basis of European History" - in German translation - was Hitler's Bible. This book mirrored the great interest in eugenics of his time. Hitler was not alone in his view on racial hygiene but the one remembered for transforming it into official state policy.
Other books that mainly preoccupied him were books devoted to military matters. He impressed his generals with his knowledge of details, but during operations, many of the same generals looked upon him as a dangerous amateur and dilettante. Last but no least should be mentioned Carlyle's books on heroes and hero-worship and especially his biography of Frederick the Great. From here, Hitler had it that it is not enough to be a good leader. The people must also be worthy and deserve such a leader. Consequently, since the Germans did not stand up to the allied forces when the Reich imploded they had not in Hitler's view passed the test before history and were doomed to downfall and destruction. The future belonged to stronger nations...

Miff

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 3, 2015

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excellent

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Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 21, 2008

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