Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: There're no insights, no relevations on the Reich. Only recycled hash dresse up as new findings. The book fully reveals the shallow and inconsequential scholarship, if any, of Ian Kershaw as an academic historian. More suited as an agitator or propagandist.
Rating: 
Summary: A good read but a few problems.......
Review: This book has a lot to recommend it, and to get this clear from the start, I do recommend it.However there are some small gripes on the format and flow. For example in the "Abyss" chapter the author jumps from historical event to another, there is no coherent structure of events based dates they occured. For those with no or limited knowledge of this period in the history of the Third Reich they can easily get lost. Maybe a timeline would be of help to the reader ? The chapters read as though they are actually lectures, and I suggest that maybe the basis of the book was such a series of lectures. This is not a bad thing, it just does not flow as well as other authors covering the same subject. With regards to content a major point for me is the lack of real discussion of parts of the characther of Hitler. There is discussion, but it is repeative and tries to cover all parts of this complex character. For example, I was intrigued to learn that Hitler hardly spoke to the German public for most of 1944-45. Why ? This was a man who had great oratory skills and entranced a nation. Goebbels himself could not understand why ? When he did it was pretty mundane stuff compared to the years 33-43. Hitler never toured the cities that were bombed by the Allies - again why ? The explanations are pretty light in this area. I was also intrigued by the lack of a desire to push Germany to a "Total war" scenerio, again that Goebbels wanted. Why was Hitler so against freeing up all the labour tied up in bureaucracies ? I also found the military narrative extremely light and would recommend David Irvings "Hitlers War" for those who want to get a better picture. If you avoid the general sympathy for Hitler himself, the description of the military fortunes of Germany seen from the German side is excellant. But, after all of this I constantly found new things of interest that I had not known before and also the book painted a great feeling for the complete mess that was termed "government" in the Third Reich. This is a book that stands well on its own for those with some knowledge of the period. It stands better if read alongside a good military history and a history of the occupied countries in the same perod. This will give the readers a greater understanding of the pure misery and disaster this regime inlicted upn the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new
Review: This book is not only the definitive biography of Hitler but also an excellent history text of this time period. Few, if any books on Hitler are readable--this one will keep your interest from the first page to the last. The documentation is beyond belief--over 200 pages of footnotes--this is truly the "Bible" on Hitler. Read it--you won't regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Kershaw's Bunker
Review: This book, promising to be a novel account of the twilight of the Fuhrer's momentous struggle against the menace of judeo-bolshevism, is full of what Hitler himself would call talmudistic pettifoggery but says nothing new. Indeed, the only good parts seem lifted directly from the brilliant David Irving's pathbreaking, revisionist "Hitler's War." The rest is just plain uneventful. For example, there still is NO repeat NO evidence of a written order concerning the necessary internment camps, a fact that must horrify the hysterical Ms. Lipstadt no end. Save your time for the Fuhrer's own fascinating "Mein Kampf" and "Table Talk."
Rating: 
Summary: "Working towards the Fuhrer"
Review: This could be the sub-title of Kershaw's biography because he mentions it so many times and sees it as the driving force and the motivation that explains the relationship Hitler had with his generals, the army, the implementors of Nazi policy, and the German people in general. All were seeking to do their Fuhrer's will; to be in accord with his ideas and to help fulfill his goals - 'working towards the Fuhrer'. Kershaw quickly puts his biography into context. Among the numerous Hitler biographies we can detect three trends (1) revisionists and apologists (David Irving), (2) Hitler as 'modern' 'great' or 'revolutionary' leader (Fest, Lukacs, Zeitelmann) and (3) Hitler and the use of power (Bullock and Kershaw). Kershaw is not in the least bit interested in exploring Hitler's leadership style in the context of a 'great' nor is he much interested in the man's personality. Kershaw defines his job as Hitler biographer. "It is a task which has to focus not upon the personality of Hitler, but squarely and directly upon the character of his power - the power of the Fuhrer". He achieves this admirably and does not lose this focus throughout. As such this biography can justifiably be referred to as 'definitive'. This is even moreso since along with his earlier 'Volume 1' HUBRIS, these are the first major Hitler biographies in some time. One final note on this historiography of biographies. I am sure that John Lukacs now probably wishes that he had delayed publishing his study of Hitler biographies - THE HITLER OF HISTORY until after HUBRIS and NEMESIS came out. How can you write 'authoritatively' on a subject when two authoritative sources have yet to be published? Bottom line - we can expect more works. Has Kershaw made others still to come redundant? Has he answered all the questions about Hitler? Obviously not, but where the focus lies on the nature of the power that Hitler wielded and how he got it, and why the German people gave it to him and allowed him to use it, Kershaw is without equal in his descriptions and explanations. Points which Kershaw elucidates are: > The paradox between "the emptiness of the private person" and the power wielded by this person. This power was "derived only in part from Hitler himself...[it]...was a social product - a creation of social expectations and motivations vested in Hitler by his followers" > Hitler's power was charismatic and led to the pseudo-religious, heroic, mythic, status of Hitler; the development of a Hitler cult. Hitler's extreme, personalized style of ledership fed this and encouraged followers 'to work towards him'. > The Final Solution for the Jews is seen in this context. It was developed with a high degree of consensus that it was the necessary approach to help realize the Fuhrer's mission. Perhaps equally as interesting as how Hitler used his power is Kershaw's analysis of how he held on to it. Kershaw convincingly argues that following the defeat at Stalingrad, the German people lost faith in the 'heroic' image of Hitler. There was a growing awareness and acceptance that the war was lost and yet people continued with support for Hitler. He remained fully in control, soldiers continued to fight, and people continued to sacrifice and die for his cause. The July 1944 bomb-plot, planned in the belief that there was support for his removal, we know, failed. Kershaw shows that this brought about an immediate reversal of fortunes for Hitler. His popularity once again surged. Puzzling. A notion which is all too frequent when we investigate any aspect of Hitler's life and his relationship with the German people. Perhaps the greatest puzzle remains, even after this biography. How could a man so patently evil be afforded so much power and be so venerated? Indeed it remains a mystery and a question for others to answer as it is an issue that Kershaw does not tackle.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: This is a wonderful biography of Hitler. Very detailed-perhaps too much for some-it reads fairly easily and each section can be read alone. As someone has already said, it is almost a compendium of college level lectures put together, but in my opinion it seems more coherant and fluid than that. In any case, this is a great book that is highly recommended. The photos included are amazing to say the least.
Rating:
Summary: 1000 masterful pages but little about Hitler
Review: This is an excellent history of the Third Reich, with the focus being on the actions, and sometimes the words of the Führer. Sometimes we even get to examine his thoughts. But this book really isn't about Hitler in the way that other books have been about him. It does not study in any detail his psyche or the attitudes of others to him in any kind of detail. The book does hint at these things, but rather than providing any kind of detailed or complex look at Hitler, the man, it is instead a telling of the history of his domain from 1936-1945.
At that, it is a masterful telling. Kershaw is an excellent historian, and there is much of substance in this volume, focussing on Hitler's decisions and their effect on the German people, their economy, and their war machine. Hitler's relations with others are only briefly sketched out - important figures in his life like Eva Braun and Albert Speer are hardly mentioned, or only referred to in passing.
This is not a biography, but a history, and readers are advised to take it for what it is. It is riveting, informative, chilling and suspenseful, and above all, gives a masterful feel for what it was like to be living in the Third Reich at the time. There is no revisionist tone and no feeling of hindsight - as the pages go by, Kershaw gives a real sense of what Germans as a whole were feeling, from euphoria in May 1940 to abject defeat in February 1943, to ambivalence to life itself in April 1945. But it is really not a detailed look at Hitler personally.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive
Review: This is the culmination of a magisterial and masterful biography. I am overwhelmed by what a good job Kershaw has done. Reading this volume was somewhat more satisfying than reading the first one, because more bad things happen to Hitler in this volume, which cannot help but please anyone. The book spends a lot of time showing that Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution, and while I was convinced long before Kershaw finished the book, the documentation is valuable--right up to Hitler's final Testament. The book is well worth reading, and is not as formidable as it looks since there is an index and 194 pages of footnotes and 37 pages of bibliography. I started it March 26 and finished it April 1. It is a great and important book, and is much more definitive than Fest's biography, which I until now thought was the best Hitler bio
Rating:
Summary: Good book but not fun to read
Review: This is the second and concluding volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler. It takes up the story in 1936 when Hitler started a policy of rearmament followed by territorial expansion. The major problem in reading this book is nothing to do with the author who writes with considerable skill. It has nothing to do with the material in the book that includes updated material and a perspective, which is more in line with reality than earlier books. The problem is that Hitler was such a boring self centered and self-pitying person. After 1943 when Germany started to suffer defeat after defeat he withdrew from most social intercourse with other people. He suffered paranoid delusions that he was being continually betrayed and would eat by himself and bore anyone senseless about what a raw deal he was getting. By this time Hitler spent most of his time directing the German military. He was not involved as was Stalin with day to day control of his part or directing industrial production. The others dealt with in the book are generally military commanders. Most of them have the moral depth of a dried out puddle and their main complaint with Hitler was that he seemed a bit common and low class. Early biographies of Hitler were influenced by the memoirs of German Generals. In addition early histories of Nazism were influenced by the times. After Hitler had gone the west faced a far more serious opponent in Joseph Stalin. There was an urgent need to incorporate West Germany into European Defence. It thus became convenient to shelve off responsibilities for what had happened in the war to Hitler and the SS. Books written by German Generals had the aim of white washing thier reputations and placing the blame on Hitler for the defeat of Germany and its racist policies. These memoirs led to earlier histories of Germany absolving Germans for crimes of the time. More recent books such as Hitler's Willing Executioners have sought to show that the crimes of the regime were broadly embraced. That every little village in Germany was willing to put up signs insulting Jews and to force them out. Kershaw's book spares no punches and shows how the German military totally embraced Hitler's plans for the destruction of Russia reducing it to a rural appendage of Germany. Since the war has become more distant the phenomena of revisionism has come into being. That is suggestions that the genocide of the Jews did not take place and that Hitler had a limited role in it. Kershaw's tries to rebuff these theories and discusses the Holocaust in the light of there allegations. The book clearly shows that the destruction of the Jew's was Hitler's responsibility. It does however suggest that the policy was arrived at in a different way than normally was thought to be the case. That is that rather than they're being a specific order at a certain point that the Jews be eliminated the policy evolved. The background to the policy was Hitler who never seemed to make a speech that did not centre on racial hatred. He continually spoke out against "Jewish Bolshevism" portraying communism as the work of Jews. The killing of Jews in a systematic way seems to have started on the Eastern Front and grew out of the killing of Communist Officials. The police units who had the responsibility of killing communists started to routinely kill Jews at the same time. This led in turn to the establishment of the extermination camps. Kershaw shows that the decision clearly would have been referred to Hitler. The way that he does this is to show how all other decisions involving the execution of significant numbers of people were referred to Hitler. Hitler made decisions about the continuation and ceasing of the euthanasia programs for instance. At the same time Hitler was eager for such decisions to be verbal ones rather than written decrees to avoid the repercussions of such decisions. One is continually struck by the degree to which there was sympathy for Hitler's program in every part of German society. Racism was deeply part of German life and there was never any trouble getting Germans out to beat up some innocent Jewish people or to break their shop windows and to steal from them. Courts, police, the army and all other instruments of government embraced the Nazis with excitement and passion. There was never a moments hesitation or sympathy for the Jews, Poles Russians or any of the victims of the regime. With regard to the military history of the period he demonstrates that the German Army were generally supportive of Hitler and his strategy up to 1944. This support not only included his strategy by the means by which it was to be achieved. Prior to the invasion of Russia Hitler had decided to destroy Russia as an entity. He wanted to kill all members of the communist party and to reduce Russia to a nation of peasants. He aimed at not only shooting all communist officials but he wanted to destroy the major cities of Leningrad and Moscow. The higher ranks of the German Army were totally behind this policy as shown by another recent book Hitler's War in the East by Muller and Uebershar. They lectured to their soldiers on the need to kill Russian officials and that the war was one of extermination. Hitler's Generals and large numbers of Germans were believers in a racist nationalism. As a book this two-volume study is no doubt the definitive biography of Hitler and has incorporated recent developments. It is however not a pleasant read.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive book about Hitler
Review: This review is about both "Hubris" and "Nemesis" as no sane person would attempt reading the second without reading the first.
This book has it all. Ian Kershaw approaches the subject from a scholarly perspective, but although you have to suffer from at times somewhat too scientific forms of expression, his narrative talents, and especially his vocabulary, are excellent. His use of the British English is masterly. But on the whole, the scholarly approach is beneficial, enabling Kershaw to ask the right questions about Hitler, his rise to power and his finally complete and utter domination of the German Reich, and also to provide us with the right answers. The conclusions are very well-founded, and convincingly supported by the facts in the book.
This is not to say that this book will never be superseded. New research will inevitably reveal new and interesting interpretations of the Hitler issue and some day there will be enough new material and enough of new analyses, to enable us to draw partially new conclusions about Hitler, his life and his role in history. However, it is very difficult to view this book as merely another part of an ongoing scholarly debate, some day to be proved wrong by superior evidence. Rather, this is a reference work about Hitler. The text of the two books, complete with abbreviations, notes, literature and register spans nearly 2,000 pages. It is in that perspective this book should be viewed: a huge, enormous chronicle over Hitler's life and deeds. The analysis, the conclusions, which are central to any scientific work of history, are of course indispensable to the overall impression of the book - after all, the reason why Kershaw wrote the book is of course his attempt to prove that Hitler's influence on the course of events in the Weimar Republic and the German Reich was a mix both of his own qualities, and of the peculiar circumstances surrounding Hitler - the time, the place, the people. But an equally large part of the impressions which you as the reader are left with is of course the sheer mass of text, a dictionary, a chronicle of Hitler.
So why does this book not recieve more than four stars? A simple answer: the epilogue is too short. It may seem like nitpicking, but the truth is that although Kershaw has baked in his conclusions and the answer to his questions in the text - which is good, since it continuously proves to the reader the correctness in his hypothesis - you need something of an abstract of these 2,000 pages, which, let's be frank, take months to be read. That would probably leave the conclusions higher up among the impressions of the reader, which would most probably be entirely in line with Kershaw's purpose of the book in the first place.
| 
