How did a young man who wanted to be an artist end up one of the most reviled, evil men of recent history? As a mother, I have often wondered what horrible mistakes his family must have made to raise a son that ordered the deaths of millions of people. It turns out the answer really isn't as simple as a bad childhood or abuse or whatever go-to reason we might ascribe to it today. Paul Ham's book on the youth and young adulthood of Adolph Hitler is well researched and points out some pivotal times in the creation of a monster.

The book not only includes information about Hitler's upbringing and young life, but also the history of politics and social upheaval in Germany, Austria and Europe at the time. All of those historical elements set the scene for Hitler to develop into the dictator he became. His life moving from soldier to revolutionary to political leader to dictator is fascinating and sad at the same time. I wonder what would have become of Hitler had he been accepted into art school as a young man, instead of being rejected? In the end, I guess it really doesn't matter what "might have been'' as history can't be changed. But it is thought provoking to think that one or two small changes in this man's life might have prevented the deaths of millions across Europe.

Ham obviously put much research and thought into his book. He did say that tracing facts about family lineage and youth of the Fuhrer is difficult because many of the records were destroyed by the Nazi party so they could build him up as a perfect leader. They created lies and propaganda to cover up the illegitimacy and questionable background of one of his parents and anything deemed less than stellar in his background. The author does not present Hitler in a totally negative light. He shares the good and bad that he discovered about Hitler as a young man. He was not born totally evil. He morphed into it over years. And, as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

All in all, a very interesting book and I learned a lot that I didn't know. It is a hard subject to read about as I had family members who fought in the war, and extended family in Germany who were killed. I read the book in small doses....when it got to be too much, I would take a break and come back after a rest from it. As a mother I'm glad I read this book. It shows that the sum of a man's adult decisions do not necessarily stem from his upbringing, but as a total of his life experiences, environment, outside influences and other factors. I can't imagine what it would be like to be the parent of a evil, murderous person. Hitler's mother died in 1907 way before her son killed anyone. I'm glad that she never knew what her little boy would grow up to become. And, I'm sorry that little boy ended up the way he did. Nobody is born evil. It's unfortunate that he made the life choices that he did. Not out of concern for him.....but for the millions of people that he had murdered. My family members....and the family of so many, many others. Sad.

Great book! Very well documented. The facts are presented in an interesting fashion without becoming dry, tedious or repetitive as some non-fiction books can be. I'm definitely going to read more non-fiction by this author!

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Pegasus Books/W.W. Norton via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** ( )

I had hoped this would be more about Hitler's early years; these are dealt with quite rapidly, and the focus is on his formative experiences in WW1 and how he got into politics and rose in the ranks. It ends in 1924, as 35-yr old Hitler is releasedon the world from jail after a derisorily short sentence for the violent Beer Hall Putsch.
Well researched history; the author highlights the stand-out inconsistencies and stupidity of Hitler's manifesto (the fact that Aryans were a Vedic deity-worshipping Indo-Iranian people being one. The ridiculous scapegoating of the Jews- less than 1`% of population- for Germany's every ill, another.) He notes how Hiter's early feelings for Jews werent particularly hate-driven at all; and puts the whole evil mess down to the trashed economy of post WW1 Germany.
In the epilogue, Ham tries to bring in modern day politics, arguing that an unequal society is a breeding ground for further such characters to rise in power.
Not a bad book, though one feels a sense of relief at shutting it and getting away from this evil character. ( )

Honestly, I was expecting to rate this book higher than I did. I don't feel like there's a lot out there about Hitler's formative years and the environment that shaped him into a genocidal megalomaniac; or, if there is, I haven't found it yet (part of this is due to Nazi censors, who went through and tried to get rid of all evidence that contracted the man and myth that Hitler portrayed to the German people). And the author did present a good deal of information that was new to me.

My main problem with the book was that the author editorialized way too much in the text. I never felt like I could immerse myself in the history that the book covered; instead, the author insisted upon injecting his own thoughts about things, some only tangentially related to Hitler, in what felt like every other paragraph. One example: the author felt the need to denigrate Hitler's vegetarianism and made an aside comment about how poor Hitler's plate must have looked compared to his dining companions', which were loaded with slabs of meat (gross). I was much more interested in learning how Hitler could reconcile the beliefs that he obviously held that influenced him to becoming a vegetarian with the ones that made him think exterminating the Jewish people was acceptable (not to be found in this book, unfortunately).

The epilogue tries to tie Hitler's early life to the current political environment. He's obviously trying to make the book relevant to today's interests, but it automatically puts the book into a more "current events" position than an enduring historical text. In ten years, this book is going to feel incredibly dated and old.

If you can get through the author's attempts to continually insert himself and his opinions and beliefs into the book, it's a decent book. ( )