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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
From Publishers Weekly
We surely need books like Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners that examine German society as a whole in an effort to understand how Hitler came to power and held it for so long. But we also need classic, political biographies that focus on the dictator himself. Kershaw's book, the first volume of a projected two-part biography, pays some attention to how ripe a demoralized Germany was for demagoguery after the Treaty of Versailles, but the author's focus is on Hitler and his political career?the decisions he made as he rose to power and those he made once he attained it. What distinguishes this effort is the extent of documentation as Kershaw, a professor of history at the University of Sheffield, exploits the full Goebbels diaries and texts of early Hitler speeches only recently made accessible. Also notable is the portrait Kershaw draws of Hitler as surprisingly remote from the thuggery, greed and corruption of his followers, high and low, even as he actively encouraged the development of a cult of personality. Kershaw closes with an examination of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland, a fait accompli made possible by the timidity and disarray of Germany's supine neighbors. Had the French marched, Hitler said later, "we would have had to withdraw... with our tails between our legs." By 1936, Kershaw writes, events had substantiated Hitler's hubris. A "nemesis" (subtitle of the next volume) would in reality not emerge before 1941. Kershaw's massive work (made somewhat too massive by some repetition) is valuable for the rigor with which it portrays Hitler not as some supernatural evil force ejected into history from beyond but as a thoroughly natural figure?evil, surely, but historically evil. Photos. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The first of two volumes from a British biographer.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New Yorker feature review, Jane Kramer, 8 March 1999
[I]t will arguably become the standard, as close to definitive as anything we are ever likely to see.
David Cesarani, The Independent, 19 September 1998
Kershaw, one of the foremost chroniclers of the Nazi era, brings to his subject a deep familiarity with the milieu which formed Hitler. But he never loses sight of the man....Whereas other biographers began with the assumption that Hitler was extraordinary, falling prey to his mythology, it is the very ordinariness of this Hitler that is so awful. The tragic message of this superb biography is that it could have easily gone the other way.
Wall Street Journal, Evan Burr Bukey, 21 January 1999
Kershaw's great strength is his explanation of the symbiotic relationship between Hitler and his followers....Kershaw's biography provides the most astute assessment of Hitler's bond with the German people yet written.
Washington Post, Richard Breitman, 17 January 1999
Kershaw...offers a much-needed, readable, up-to-date biography.
Thomas Childers, Boston Globe
[A] biography of profound importance.
From Booklist
Despite numerous interpretations, a horrible ineffability surrounds Hitler and his motivations. To be sure, historians have pinned down the Hitlerian personality, its cold contempt for any human value, its closemindedness, its demonic hatreds; but explaining how he came by his attitudes (and appraising the genuineness of his belief in them) is a controversial exercise. The Hitler of History by John Lukacs , a survey of historiographical disputes, hedged its conclusions in anticipation of Kershaw's biography. Although no biography may ever be definitive (thanks to Hitler's secretiveness), Kershaw's approaches that status. Obfuscation about his life began once Hitler became a beer-hall demagogue--his viscious memoir, though revealing, concealed more about his youth. Kershaw's reconstruction of this period effectively handles the biased or faulty source material. But the events that pulled Hitler to prominence and power seem so improbable, even in Kershaw's exhaustively documented but compellingly readable narrative, that Hitler's self-image as a great national savior establishes itself as an explanatory mechanism for his releasing himself--chillingly avowed in his 1934 speech justifying the murder of hundreds of political opponents--from the bindings of law or ordinary morality. The consequences of such an amoral figure at large await Kershaw's second volume, subtitled Nemesis and slated for 2000 publication. Hubris joins--might even supplant--works by Joachim Fest and Alan Bullock as first-rate biographies of Hitler. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
A monumental biography that seeks to be the final word (at least for this century) on the subject. British historian Kershaw (Univ. of Sheffield) has spent an academic career thinking judiciously and writing clearly about Hitler, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany. This massive work, which will consist of two volumes, promises to be the most comprehensive biography of Hitler to date. And although the writing is clear and mercifully free of far-fetched theories attempting to fathom Hitler's evil, it still takes some dedication to historical truth to finish such a work and realize that the story is only half told. This is epic history on a grand scale; from rural Austria and Vienna to Munich and cosmopolitan Berlin; from the battlefields of the Great War to the exaggerations of the beer hall; from Hitlers rejection by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna to his election as chancellor of Germany. As narrative biography, Kershaw account clearly portrays how Hitler evolved from a rejected artist to a political novice and then to messianic illusion. Besides the use of Goebbelss diaries, recently discovered in Moscow, there is little that is new here; Kershaw's achievement lies in his retelling the tale in greater detail and avoiding some of the more outlandish theories concerning Hitler. No one writing on Hitler, though, can avoid some attempt at explanation. Kershaw writesand few would arguethat ``the First World War made Hitler possible,'' but goes on to argue against the interpretation that Hitler was somehow the logical outcome of German history's ``special path.'' Kershaws Hitler is no psychopathic god but deeply rooted in the history and vulture of Vienna, the Great War, and German racial nationalism. Thus, what emerges is a fascinating dialectic between the socioeconomic causes of Hitlers rise and the responsibility of the German people for his reign of terror. (32 pages b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books, Gordon A. Craig, 18 March 1999
There can be little doubt that this will become the classic Hitler biography of our time.
Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram, Jeff Gunn, 31 January 1999
[A]n exceptional literary achievement. Its scholarship is undeniable...but its reading rhythm is near-hypnotic. We probably never will understand Adolf Hitler fully, but Ian Kershaw provides as many important clues as any author who has attempted to explain him.
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