Synopses & Reviews
A brilliantly original exploration of some of the formative influences in Hitlers lifethe books he most revered, and how they shaped the man and his thinking.
Hitlers 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 Hitlers marginalia on their pagesunderlines, 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 Ibsens epic poem Peer Gynt helped mold his ruthless ambition. He admires Henry Fords anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and declares it required reading for fellow party members. We learn how his extensive 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.
Hitlers Private Library, a landmark in the study of the Third Reich, offers a remarkable view into Hitlers 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Hitlers Private Library offers a remarkable view of Hitlers intellectual evolution. It also demonstrates the ability of books not only to convey their contents but also to preserve in very real ways the life of the collector.
During Hitlers military service in World War I he began to amass a private library that he treasured, volumes of which accompanied him to the front during World War II and to the bunker where he committed suicide. Most of the books that comprised this library have disappeared, but some were found by Americans soldiers, and made their way to the Library of Congress, where they remained unexamined for several decades until Timothy Ryback came upon them.
Synopsis
A
Washington Post Notable Book
With a new chapter on eugenicist Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race
In this brilliant and original exploration of some of the formative influences in Adolf Hitler’s life, Timothy Ryback examines the books that shaped the man and his thinking.
Hitler was better known for burning books than collecting them but, as Ryback vividly shows us, books were Hitler’s constant companions throughout his life. They accompanied him from his years as a frontline corporal during the First World War to his final days before his suicide in Berlin. With remarkable attention to detail, Ryback examines the surviving volumes from Hitler’s private book collection, revealing the ideas and obsessions that occupied Hitler in his most private hours and the consequences they had for our world.
A feat of scholarly detective work, and a captivating biographical portrait, Hitler’s Private Library is one of the most intimate and chilling works on Hitler yet written.
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.