This approach is not without its advantages, but the life of Hitler which we are finally left with is, in its own way, as incomplete and misleading as earlier versions. Toland concentrates almost exclusively on the details of Hitler’s life, major and minor, while ignoring the social, political, and cultural matrix of Nazism. John Toland’s biography of Hitler takes just the opposite tack. Thus, most “biographies” of Hitler are, in fact, either social histories of the Weimar Republic or extended investigations of the “German mind.” By defining Hitler as a socio-cultural phenomenon, historians are spared the difficult and painful task of actually coming to grips with the man himself. Understand those, and you have understood him. Hitler, they say, represented the summation of his times, he was the necessary consequence of profound social, economic, and cultural trends. How did a semi-educated ex-corporal, whose ideas verged on the insane, become the absolute ruler of one of the most advanced countries in Europe? An easy way to answer this question is simply to dismiss it, and that is precisely what many biographers of Hitler have done. The disparity between Adolf Hitler’s enormous power and influence, on the one hand, and the repellent character of his life, on the other, poses a peculiarly difficult problem for the biographer.
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