The Women Who Knew Hitler: The Private Life of Adolf Hitler by Ian Sayer, Douglas Botting Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Women Who Knew Hitler: The Private Life of Adolf Hitler
Book Review: Adolph Hitler: A Monster . . . A Man
Summary: 4 Stars
Adolph Hitler was a monster. Anyone in the last near-century knows this. How he came to be a monster is the stuff of countless books, articles, and essays. That such a make-up of tissue, bones, and organs could become a part of humanity, nonetheless history, is often beyond comprehension.
Because a persona became known into eternity not for good, but for horrors delivered upon untold numbers, it's considered that such a person could not have had a single iota of heart-felt humanity. So how is it that such a man as Hitler was loved, literally, by woman after woman? That no less than three committed suicide because they couldn't spend their life with him? And one of them, Eva Braun, committed suicide for him? How is it that he could smile upon children and be kind to them, then turn around and send thousands to death? That he could be loved, literally, by women, and men, who worked for him, cared for by him through money and emotional support?
I can't answer these questions. I can't even comprehend how it's possible. Yet to read what these authors succinctly put together, I believe it all. I believe Adolph Hitler garnered trust, empathy, positive emotion . . . even love . . . from those who lived with him day in and day out, knew him as a living, breathing body mass. I somehow believe it after reading this book.
It doesn't make him less of a monster to acknowledge this. In my eyes, somehow, it makes him sadder. It was fact that Adolph Hitler was a monster, he wasted an enigma of personality, of some brilliance that surpassed book smarts, and he seemed literally incapable of understanding that all he did with his adult life was wrong.
This book that needs to be read for its humanity, and the quagmire of what this means . . . humanity is real. It may not be pretty but it's real, and to even attempt to understand this as fact, one must be willing to look into the other side and try to "get" it.
Book Review: worth reading
Summary: 5 Stars
the writer tells the story of a man to me was afriad of women all his life.the women who give a twisted evil man power over their lives.Book Review: a serious identity crisis
Summary: 2 Stars
The book purports to talk about the women who knew Hitler. That would include his mother, his sisters, his girlfriends, the wives of close Nazi associates, Leni Riefenstahl, Hanna Reitsch, his secretaries, and of course Eva Braun. From the title, and coming from experienced writers of history, I was expecting a focused in-depth discussion of the Hitler that women saw.
Instead, I mainly got Hitler & Eva, and Walter Wagner. Wagner, it turns out, was the Nazi functionary who did the honours in the Fuehrerbunker before Adolf and Eva put themselves out of the world's misery. The book's Big Revelation is some detective work that establishes Wagner's final fate (after performing the nuptials, he went back out and died defending Berlin with the Volkssturm). Wagner was not a woman, so this reads like the tidbit to which the authors decided to anchor a book. Nearly half of the pages cover the 1945 days in the Bunker; besides Eva, the main viewpoint we get on a woman is secretary Traudl Junge--something, yes, but it leaves one wanting to know more about the rest, as the title proclaimed.
Most of the women besides Eva make relatively brief appearances; even Geli Raubal only rates a couple dozen salacious pages. Hardly anything about Klara Poelzl (mom) and Adolf's sisters, though there's a pretty good analysis of Hitler's sexuality. Which would be fine, except the book isn't titled _Hitler's Sexuality._
The photos are uninspiring, except that you can see why he was attracted to Geli Raubal. In my edition, the first set appear in complete duplicate--some editor's head should roll for that one. Some repetitiveness here and there, and proofreading errors mystifying in a work by trained historians, suggest to me that I got a messed-up version the publisher didn't intend to release; perhaps they caught the mistake halfway through the print run, fixed it, finished the run then dumped the error-laden edition on the market. That happened to Allen Barra with his great Wyatt Earp book, and I suspect it occurred here as well. Shoddy practice one way or another.
The authors can't be faulted for the publisher's errors, but they should stand accountable for a misleadingly titled book that doesn't give you what you paid for. Can't recommend it.
Book Review: Kinky Adolf
Summary: 3 Stars
The title is a bit of a misnomer. It is only partially about Hitler's women and goes on too long about the functionary who married Adolf and Eva in 1945 - a mere footnote in history at best. The authors are fascinating when they concentrate on the women themselves and their relationship with him.
For the first half of the book. I thought this could be that rarity - a work which treats Hitler in an unbiased way. But, as with all Hitler biographers, eventually they cannot resist telling us what to think about their subject. But even then the humanity of the man comes through the propaganda.
For instance, one of the witnesses in the bunker said that she saw Hitler cry just twice: once when Eva Braun returned to Berlin to share his fate; and once after the wedding. This would demonstrate to most people that he clearly loved the girl, but the authors unconvincingly try to show that it is yet more evidence of his evil nature.
Even with the obligatory biased asides, I would still recommend the book to anyone interested in the subject, the most interesting man of the twentieth century and a man still awaiting an honest historian.
Book Review: These are historians?
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this based on the reviews and the general subject matter. It is supposed to be based on previously unknown information, etc. A book that says it is a history and does not darken one page with a foot note that specifies where they got the information to make that statement is not a history. It is a gossip column.
For a man who was "married to Germany" he sure did get around and apparently, for reasons not clear, a lot of people knew about it. That little whispers of his activities did not get around is even more interesting. An explanation of how he kept his social activities so quiet would be appropriate for a book like this.
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