Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris charts the rise of Adolf Hitler, from a bizarre misfit in a Viennese dosshouse, to dictatorial leadership. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, Kershaw recreates the world which first thwarted and then nurtured Hitler in his youth, from early childhood to the first successes of the Nazi Party. As his seemingly pitiful fantasy of being Germany's saviour attracted more and more support, Kershaw brilliantly conveys why so many Germans adored Hitler, connived with him or felt powerless to resist him. 'Supersedes all previous accounts. It is the sort of masterly biography that only a first-rate historian can write'
David Cannadine, Observer Books of the Year 'The Hitler biography for the 21st century ... cool, judicious, factually reliable and intelligently argued'
Richard Evans, Sunday Telegraph 'One of the major historical biographies of our times ... a riveting read'
Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times, Best Biographies of the Year 'His analysis of Hitler's extraordinary character has the fascination of a novel, but he places his struggle and rise in the context of meticulously researched history ... Deeply disturbing. Unforgettable'
A.N. Wilson, Daily Mail 'A sane, erudite, moral and intellectually honest biography of the 20th century's most destructive politician'
Ruth Scurr, The Times Ian Kershaw's other books include Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, Making Friends with Hitler, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-4 and The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45. Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis received the Wolfson History Prize and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize.
Noted for his excellent structural explanation of the Third Reich's political culture in
The Hitler Myth, eminent historian Ian Kershaw shifts approach in this innovative biography of the Nazi tyrant. The first of a two-volume study,
Hubris is far from a simple rehearsal of "great man" history, impressively exploring the historical forces that transformed a shiftless Austrian daydreamer into a dictator with immense power.
In his forthright introduction, Kershaw acknowledges that, as a committed social historian, he did not include biography in his original intellectual plans. However, his "growing preoccupation" with the structures of Nazi domination pushed him toward questions about Hitler's place and considerable authority within that system. He argues that the sources for Hitler's power must be sought not only in the dictator's actions but also (and more importantly) in the social circumstances of a nation that allowed him to overstep all institutional and moral barriers. In a comprehensive treatment of Hitler's life and times up through the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, Kershaw draws from documents recently made available from Russian archives and benefits from a rigorous source criticism that has discredited many records formerly understood to be reliable. Hubris thus supplants Alan Bullock's classic Hitler: A Study in Tyranny as the definitive account of a man who, with characteristic smugness, indicated that it was a divinely inspired history that made him: "I go with the certainty of a sleep walker along a path laid out for me by Providence." Kershaw's penetrating analysis of how such a certain path could emerge from the dire circumstances of post World War I Germany is the abiding strength of Hubris. --James Highfill
