Night: Hitler

The Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler has come to be seen, by almost universal affirmation, as the personification of evil. Indeed, he has more than earned his reputation as perhaps the most infamous villain in history. In a riveting narrative, supported by numerous primary source documents, a noted historian surveys the twisted life and deeds of the false messiah that plunged the world into the most destructive war in history.

World War II was in its early days when brutal German dictator Adolf Hitler paid a visit to Paris, the capital of France. Only days before, on June 14, 1940, German soldiers had overrun the city, shocking the world. Hitler now viewed the city's cultural treasures as his own. He posed for a photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, the beloved symbol of France and the country's free, democratic people. The photo, taken by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, would show the world that Nazi Germany had triumphed over its bitter enemy. Many who viewed the photo in newspapers around the globe would draw a second conclusion--that Germany would almost certainly invade Britain next. And if Britain fell, Hitler would be a huge step closer to his ultimate goal of world domination.

There is nothing in recent history that comes close to the cataclysmic events of the spring of 1945. Never before has the defeat of a nation been accompanied by such monumental loss of life, such utter destruction. Author Joachim Fest shows that the devastation was the result of Hitler's determination to take the entire country down with him; he would make sure that his enemies would find only a wasteland, where once there was a thriving civilization. Fest describes in riveting detail the final weeks of the war, from the desperate battles that raged night and day in the ruins of Berlin, fought by boys and old men, to the growing paranoia that marked Hitler's mental state--his utter disregard for the well being of both soldiers and civilians-- to his suicide and the efforts of his loyal aides to destroy his body before the advancing Russian armies reached Berlin.

Many people believe Hitler was the personification of evil. In this Sibert Medal-winning biography, James Cross Giblin penetrates this facade and presents a picture of a complex person--at once a brilliant, influential politician and a deeply disturbed man.In a straightforward and nonsensational manner, the author explores the forces that shaped the man as well as the social conditions that furthered his rapid rise to power. Against a background of crucial historical events, Giblin traces the arc of Hitler's life from 1889 to 1945: his childhood, his years as a frustrated artist in Vienna, his extraordinary rise as dictator of Germany, his final days in an embattled bunker under Berlin.

The monumental losses of World War II and the horror of the Holocaust are the terrible world legacy of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. In the mid-1920s a young, imprisoned Hitler set down in writing his racial hatreds, his skewed view of European history, and his plans for extermination of the Jews and for world domination. This is the story of the "book behind the man."