Hitler's First War

Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-922638-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 480 Seiten, Format (B × H): 137 mm x 215 mm, Gewicht: 606 g

The story of Hitler's formative experiences as a soldier on the Western Front - now told in full for the first time - Presents a radical revision of the Private Hitler portrayed in Mein Kampf - a period of his life that Hitler claimed had made him into the person he later became Uses a wealth of material never before seen, including the stories of Hitler's fellow soldiers, from people who later became convinced Nazis to Jewish veterans of the regiment Challenges the commonly accepted notion that the First World War was a seminal catastrophe in German history

Hitler claimed that his years as a soldier in the First World War were the most formative years of his life. However, for the six decades since his death in the ruins of Berlin, Hitler's time as a soldier on the Western Front has, remarkably, remained a blank spot. Until now, all that we knew about Hitler's life in these years and the regiment in which he served came from his own account in Mein Kampf and the equally mythical accounts of his comrades.

Hitler's First War for the first time looks at what really happened to Private Hitler and the men of the Bavarian List Regiment of which he was a member. It is a radical revision of the period of Hitler's life that is said to have made him. Looking at the stories of his fellow regimental veterans - an officer who became Hitler's personal adjutant in the 1930s but then offered himself to British intelligence, a soldier-turned-Concentration Camp Commander, Jewish veterans who fell victim to the Holocaust, and others who simply returned to their lives in Bavaria - Thomas Weber presents a Private Hitler very different from the one portrayed in his own self-mythologizing account. Instead, we find a man who was shunned by the frontline soldiers of his regiment as a 'rear area pig' and who was still unsure of his political ideology even at the end of the war in 1918.

In looking at the post-war lives of Hitler's fellow veterans back in Bavaria, Thomas Weber also challenges the commonly accepted notion that the First World War was somehow a 'seminal catastrophe' in twentieth century German history - and even questions just how deep-seated Nazi ideology really was in ist home state.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in Hitler, the rise of the Nazis, and Germany during the First World War

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weber, Thomas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I
1: A Crowd in Odeonsplatz
2: Baptism of Fire
3: Two Tales of One Christmas
4: Dreams About a New World
5: Of Frontline Soldiers and 'Rear Area Pigs'
6: Occupation
7: Collapse
8: In the Shadow of the Somme
9: Blinded
Part II
10: Revolution
11: Hitler's Kampf against the List Veterans
12: Private Hitler's Reich
13: Hitler's Second War
Epilogue
Postscript: Hugo Gutmann's Story
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Weber, Thomas
Thomas Weber teaches European and international history at the University of Aberdeen and directs the Centre for Global Security and Governance. Since earning his DPhil from the University of Oxford, he has held fellowships or has taught at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the University of Glasgow. His first book, The Lodz Ghetto Album, won a 2004 Golden Light Award and a 2005 Infinity Award. His second book, Our Friend "The Enemy" is the recipient of the 2008 Duc d'Arenberg History Prize for the best book of a general nature, intended for a wide public, on the history and culture of the European continent.