Hitler's First War Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War

by Weber, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780199233205
• ISBN10: 0199233209
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Perhaps no individual in modern history has received more intensive study than Adolf Hitler. His many biographers have provided countless conflicting interpretations of his dark life, but virtually all agree on one thing: Hitler's formative experience was his service in World War I. Unfortunately, historians have found little to illuminate this critical period. Until now. In Hitler's First War , award-winning author Thomas Weber delivers a master work of history--a major revision of our understanding of Hitler's life. Weber paints a group portrait of the List Regiment, Hitler's unit during World War I, to rewrite the story of his military service. Drawing on deep and imaginative research, Weber refutes the story crafted by Hitler himself, and so challenges the historical argument that the war led naturally to Nazism. Contrary to myth, the regiment consisted largely of conscripts, not enthusiastic volunteers. Hitler served with scores of Jews, including noted artist Albert Weisberger, who proved more heroic, and popular, than the future Führer. Indeed, Weber finds that the men shunned Private Hitler as a "rear area pig," and that Hitler himself was still unsure of his political views when the war ended in 1918. Through the stories of such comrades as a soldier-turned-concentration camp commandant, veterans who fell victim to the Holocaust, an officer who became Hitler's personal adjutant in the 1930s but then cooperated with British intelligence, and the veterans who simply went back to their Bavarian farms and never joined the Nazi ranks, Weber demonstrates how and why Hitler aggressively policed the myth of his wartime experience. Underlying all Hitler studies is a seemingly unanswerable question: Was he simply a product of his times, or an anomaly beyond all calculation? Weber's groundbreaking work sheds light on this puzzle and offers a profound challenge to the idea that World War I served as the perfect crucible for Hitler's subsequent rise.

Author Biography

Thomas Weber is Lecturer in Modern European, International, and Global Political History at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. His first book, The Lodz Ghetto Album, won the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography and the Golden Light Award. His second book, Our Friend "The Enemy", won the Duc d'Arenberg History Prize.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xv
Prelude	p. 1
A Crowd in Odeonsplatz: 1 August-20 October 1914	p. 11
Baptism of Fire: 21 October-Early November 1914	p. 28
Two Tales of One Christmas: Early November 1914-31 December 1914	p. 51
Dreams of a New World: 1 January-May 1915	p. 68
Of Front-Line Soldiers and 'Rear Area Pigs': May 1915-31 December 1915	p. 91
Occupation: January-July 1916	p. 122
Collapse: July-October 1916	p. 145
In the Shadow of the Somme: October 1916-31 July 1917	p. 160
Blinded: August 1917-11 November 1918	p. 199
Revolution: 11 November 1918-Early 1919	p. 227
Hitler's Kampf against the List Veterans: Early 1919-1933	p. 255
Private Hitler's Reich: 1933-1939	p. 288
Hitler's Second War: 1939-1945	p. 315
Epilogue	p. 340
Postscript: Hugo Gutmann's Story	p. 348
Notes	p. 354
Bibliography	p. 413
Index	p. 435
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