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Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War - Thomas Weber
Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War
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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... show more
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 consequent rise.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9780199233205 (0199233209)
ASIN: 199233209
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
markk
markk rated it
3.5 Debunking the myths surrounding Hitler's wartime service
Adolf Hitler stands today as the First World War’s most famous enlisted man. This is not just a consequence of his subsequent role as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich, but because Hitler founded his political career on his experiences during the war, asserting that it was his service in it which shaped...
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