Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography

Description

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland's classic, definitive biography of Adolf Hitler remains the most thorough, readable, accessible, and, as much as possible, objective account of the life of a man whose evil effect on the world in the twentieth century will always be felt. Toland's research provided one of the final opportunities for a historian to conduct personal interviews with over two hundred individuals intimately associated with Hitler. At a certain distance yet still with access to many of the people who enabled and who opposed the f hrer and his Third Reich, Toland strove to treat this life as if Hitler lived and died a hundred years before instead of within his own memory. From childhood and obscurity to his desperate end, Adolf Hitler emerges as, in Toland's words, "far more complex and contradictory . . . obsessed by his dream of cleansing Europe Jews . . . a hybrid of Prometheus and Lucifer."

John Toland, the author of fifteen works of history and fiction, including Infamy- World War II and Its Aftermath, received the Pulitzer Prize for his magisterial Rising Sun- The Decline of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. Mr. Toland died in 2004.

"The first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or [World War II] in Europe must read. . . . A marvel." -Newsweek "Toland weaves the epic tapestry of popular history, meshing together thousands of details into monumental narratives of wartime drama." -Chicago Tribune "An unusually revealing picture . . . highly detailed . . . marvelously absorbing . . . must be ranked as one of the most complete pictures of Hitler." -The New York Times "A significant contribution." -Houston Chronicle