Synopses & Reviews
Perhaps no individual in modern history has received more intensive study than Adolf Hitler. His many biographers have provided countless conflicting interpretations of his dark life, but virtually all agree on one thing: Hitler's formative experience was his service in World War I. Unfortunately, historians have found little to illuminate this critical period. Until now.
In Hitler's First War, award-winning author Thomas Weber delivers a master work of history--a major revision of our understanding of Hitler's life. Weber paints a group portrait of the List Regiment, Hitler's unit during World War I, to rewrite the story of his military service. Drawing on deep and imaginative research, Weber refutes the story crafted by Hitler himself, and so challenges the historical argument that the war led naturally to Nazism. Contrary to myth, the regiment consisted largely of conscripts, not enthusiastic volunteers. Hitler served with scores of Jews, including noted artist Albert Weisberger, who proved more heroic, and popular, than the future Führer. Indeed, Weber finds that the men shunned Private Hitler as a "rear area pig," and that Hitler himself was still unsure of his political views when the war ended in 1918. Through the stories of such comrades as a soldier-turned-concentration camp commandant, veterans who fell victim to the Holocaust, an officer who became Hitler's personal adjutant in the 1930s but then cooperated with British intelligence, and the veterans who simply went back to their Bavarian farms and never joined the Nazi ranks, Weber demonstrates how and why Hitler aggressively policed the myth of his wartime experience.
Underlying all Hitler studies is a seemingly unanswerable question: Was he simply a product of his times, or an anomaly beyond all calculation? Weber's groundbreaking work sheds light on this puzzle and offers a profound challenge to the idea that World War I served as the perfect crucible for Hitler's subsequent rise.
About the Author
Thomas Weber is Lecturer in Modern European, International, and Global Political History at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. His first book,
The Lodz Ghetto Album, won the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography and the Golden Light Award. His second book,
Our Friend "The Enemy", won the Duc d'Arenberg History Prize.
Table of Contents
Part I
Chapter 1 A Crowd in Odeonsplatz
Chapter 2 Baptism of Fire
Chapter 3 Two Tales of One Christmas
Chapter 4 Dreams About a New World
Chapter 5 Of Frontline Soldiers and 'Rear Area Pigs'
Chapter 6 Towards the Somme
Chapter 7 Exhaustion
Chapter 8 Delusion and Doom
Part II
Chapter 9 A Field Wide Open
Chapter 10 Divided They Stand
Chapter 11 Private Hitler's Reich
Conclusion
Further Reading
Index
Part I
1. A Crowd in Odeonsplatz
2. Baptism of Fire
3. Two Tales of One Christmas
4. Dreams About a New World
5. Of Frontline Soldiers and 'Rear Area Pigs'
6. Towards the Somme
7. Exhaustion
8. Delusion and Doom
Part II
9. A Field Wide Open
10. Divided They Stand
11. Private Hitler's Reich
Conclusion
Further Reading
Index