Selected as a Book of the Year by the New York Times Times Literary Supplement and The Times
Despite his status as the most despised political figure in history there have only been four
serious biographies of Hitler since the 1930s. Even more surprisingly his biographers have
been more interested in his rise to power and his methods of leadership than in Hitler the
person: some have even declared that the Fuhrer had no private life. Yet to render Hitler as a
political animal with no personality to speak of as a man of limited intelligence and poor
social skills fails to explain the spell that he cast not only on those close to him but on
the German people as a whole. In the first volume of this monumental biography Volker Ullrich
sets out to correct our perception of the Fuhrer. While charting in detail Hitler's life from
his childhood to the eve of the Second World War against the politics of the times Ullrich
unveils the man behind the public persona: his charming and repulsive traits his talents and
weaknesses his deep-seated insecurities and murderous passions. Drawing on a wealth of
previously neglected or unavailable sources this magisterial study provides the most rounded
portrait of Hitler to date. Ullrich renders the Fuhrer not as a psychopath but as a master of
seduction and guile - and it is perhaps the complexity of his character that explains his
enigmatic grip on the German people more convincingly than the cliched image of the monster.
This definitive biography will forever change the way we look at the man who took the world
into the abyss.
