Author: By Thomas Childers

Date: SUNDAY, January 31, 1999

Page: F1

Section: Books

Hitler
1889-1936: Hubris
By Ian Kershaw. Norton. 845 pp. Illustrated. $35.

Fifty years after the collapse of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler's death in his Berlin bunker, interest in this wicked man, the troubled political culture from which he sprang, and the criminal regime he created shows no signs of waning. Biographies of Hitler, in particular, continue to excite public interest. Indeed, Hitler and the National Socialist phenomenon are the most heavily researched and widely written about phenomena of this brutal century. Although many Hitler biographies have appeared over the years on both sides of the Atlantic, Alan Bullock's 1952 classic, ``Hitler: A Study in Tyranny,'' has remained the standard work for both scholars and the broader reading public. With the publication of Ian Kershaw's ``Hitler,'' that is about to change.

A British historian who has written extensively and intelligently on Nazi Germany over the years, Kershaw has delivered a massive and highly readable account of Hitler's life that is based on both his unsurpassed knowledge of the German archival sources and his mastery of the most recent historical literature. In this first installment of what will be a two-volume biography, Kershaw examines Hitler's early life in prewar Austria, his wartime experiences on the Western Front, his political awakening in Munich in 1919, his stunning rise to power in the turbulent Weimar era, and his assumption and consolidation of power between 1933 and 1936.

The great strength of Kershaw's book is the dexterous weaving of his biographic account into the intricate fabric of Germany's larger political history in this century. Although he examines the various psychoanalytic interpretations of Hitler's deep-seated insecurities and his seething hatred and aggression -- his difficulties with women, his troubled relationship with his distant, authoritarian father, his slavish devotion to his mother -- Kershaw is less concerned with psychological speculation on how Hitler became the man he was than how it was that such a man was able to project his own inner conflicts, ruthless ambitions, and murderous ideas onto a cultured and powerful nation.

It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the richness of detail or the breadth of Kershaw's treatment of Hitler's career. Whether describing Hitler's role in the early Nazi party, his political strategies during his dramatic rise to power, or his brutal use of that power to crush the opposition and establish the foundations of a state with totalitarian aspirations, Kershaw's analysis is filled with new detail and fresh insights.

This can perhaps best be illustrated here by the picture that emerges of Hitler and his decision-making style. While ceaselessly portraying himself to the public as a daring man of action driven by grandiose world historical ideas, a political leader whose decisions were an immutable expression of his unshakable resolve, Hitler was frequently anything but resolute. Faced with difficult decisions, whether in internal Nazi party affairs or later in domestic or foreign policy, Hitler vacillated, avoiding for as long as possible uncomfortable situations where he would have to take action, or simply waiting, hoping the problem would resolve itself. He did not like to disappoint his old party paladins, and he resolutely resisted involvement in the actual details of policy. Whether as chief of the Nazi party before his assumption of power in 1933 or as the head of state thereafter, Hitler was content to define the broad ideological parameters of policy, to set the general course, but he showed little interest in just how his ideas would be translated into reality. Even on matters of the highest importance he issued only vague directives, leaving his subordinates to interpret his wishes and often entrusting several individuals or organizations with the same task.

This style of leadership, Kershaw argues, ultimately produced a cumulative radicalization of the regime, as different Nazi agencies competed to interpret the will of the Fuhrer. Whether this was a conscious political stratagem (Hitler often spoke in social Darwinist terms, suggesting that if several organizations were given the same task, the strongest one would prevail) or simply a personal trait, it prevented the accumulation of too much power in any one agency or individual and left him as the sole arbiter of policy. In addition, if a policy proved unsuccessful or unpopular -- and Hitler was quite sensitive to public opinion -- he could distance himself from its repercussions. ``If the Fuhrer only knew . . .'' became a commonplace lament in the Third Reich. Germans might grumble about particular policies or complain about little fuhrers in their midst, but Hitler remained insulated from criticism.

Hitler's real talent and his only abiding interest during his rise to power in the first years of the regime was propaganda. From the earliest days of his political career in 1919 in Munich, it was his remarkable talent for public speaking and his uncanny knack for the organization of propaganda -- how to project a political image, how to package propaganda, and how to organize for political mobilization -- that was the source of political success. Before 1933, the Nazi party was not organized to press for a legislative agenda; its sole objective was political mobilization and propaganda.

The dramatic rise of Hitler and his party, however, cannot be attributed simply to these political gifts. It was instead the instability of the Weimar Republic and especially the utter collapse of the German economy after 1929 that set the stage for Nazi radicalism and paved the way for Hitler's ascension to power. Without the Great Depression, which reached its nadir in the summer of 1932 when, not coincidentally, the Nazis reached the apex of their electoral popularity in free elections, Adolf Hitler, Kershaw insists, would have continued to wander on the fringes of German politics as he had between his ill-fated beer hall Putsch of 1923 and his appointment as chancellor 10 years later. Even that appointment, as Kershaw notes, was hardly the result of an irresistible wave of popular sentiment but was the product of intrigue and miscalculation by conservative forces who grievously underestimated Hitler. They would not be the last.

Since this first volume traces Hitler's career only to 1936, Kershaw does not address foreign policy issues with the same intensity or care that he does domestic politics. Some who find his treatment of Hitler's decision-making in party or domestic politics convincing may have difficulty accepting this view when it comes to Hitler's conduct of foreign or racial policy, and one can only look forward to the second volume and his treatment of the climactic events of 1936-'45. Yet even if one disagrees with an interpretive point or with the broader characterization of Hitler found in these pages, this new biography is of profound importance and will, I feel certain, quickly establish itself as the standard work on Hitler and his regime.