1962, Harper & Row, pages 23-57

Being a war gamer who has read hundreds of books on World War II, and generally enjoy playing the Germans in a given game, I have always been dismissive of the character of Hitler. The man threw away over a half million men in Stalingrad and Tunisia just to satisfy his ego, as there was zero strategic merit to these decisions and he was surrounded by the best general staff in the world who appraised him of the facts. I just can’t develop much interest in a jerk of that magnitude, a leader that was so traitorously wasteful of his own loyal soldiers.

My reasons for looking into Alan Bullock’s heroically researched and balanced history of Hitler are two:

1. The friend who leant it to me has read more on WWII than I and he recommended the book highly as it used primary sources, such as the journals and interviews of men who knew, worked with, fought with—and once he came to power—served, Hitler.

2. For the past 10 years documentaries and books on Hitler and the Third Reich have become like parodies of their predecessors, casting Hitler as an almost supernatural fiend, a force of evil that exceeds anything John of Patmos could have concocted in his twisted mind.

This is a huge book which I plan on eventually finishing. My main interest is in the first four sections which document his formation as a person and his rise to power.

In this portion of the book the author establishes how to use Hitler’s own book, My Struggle, as a research tool. Hitler blatantly lies about and concocts the facts of his own coming of age and his years of poverty in Vienna. On the other hand, his own work is baldly honest as to his beliefs and worldview, which include the utility of ruthless deception and naked power.

Hitler’s father was a jerk and he came of age rather emasculated. He was a dreamer with no work ethic who liked to argue and manipulate. He was alternately supported by his mother, an orphan stipend from the state [welfare], his aunt, and a charitable establishment run by an old Jew who befriended and clothed him. He operated as a small time criminal peddling art forgeries, did work briefly as a luggage handler, and generally refused to do more work as a commercial artist than necessary to keep himself in newspapers.

Hitler had no traditional vices such as smoking, drugs, alcohol or women and seemed to live for fanciful ideals and the arguing of political points. He educated himself in cafes among the newspapers and pamphlets found there and was generally regarded as insane. The picture of Hitler emerges as one of the most alienated and emasculated men I have read of. He seems a lot like many of the young men I have employed out of half way houses. He did live in this way, in a charitable hostel for men.

As a reader I identify greatly with the young Hitler’s formation of political opinion: namely that most people are witless followers who need and want to be led, and should be used by their leader to the utmost, and should find no soft shoulder to lean on once discarded or turned on by there master.

Hitler appears to have been a peacetime draft dodger for some years. But, when war started he became interested, joined up, and actually reveled in his wartime experience. Although he proved not to be officer material, he is redeemed in this reader’s eyes, by the fact that his fellow soldiers despised him, one saying, “There was this little white crow among us that didn’t go along with us when we damned the war.”

Hitler’s fellow soldiers were slackers, gripers and even cowards, and they resented his enthusiasm for what was to them hell.

As with many enthusiastic wartime soldiers, Hitler—a lazy, troublemaking parasite in peace time—became an enthusiastic and dutiful soldier, having found meaning and purpose in war. Lacking the ability to serve as a professional soldier, the end of the war crushed his hopes. There remained room only for a small professional peacetime force. His course was set. Hitler had fallen in love with war; not with its glorious ideal, but with its brutal actuality. Having found what gave his hollow colorless life meaning, and then lost it like a fleeting lover, he would recreate it.

Alan Bullock, in neither trying to defend or condemn Hitler, has revealed in his formative years a picture of a supremely alienated, often depressed, and thoroughly emasculated young man. Interestingly enough, a far greater percentage of our postmodern male population fits this mold than did the population of Hitler’s time. Perhaps from our own alienated, emasculated and emotionally depressed ranks a Hitler might one day emerge to set the world on fire. Fortunately for us, there is no chance of an economic depression coming along to give some white crow wings—what with our ever expanding—oops.

I am now once again fascinated by this evil little prick. Really, when one looks at the young Hitler through the eye-witness and documentary evidence, he seems more of a frustrated fantasist than a threat to anyone; a sad lonely boy looking for meaning in life.