Hitler

Adding to the enormous literature on Hitler, prolific British biographer and novelist Wilson (Dante in Love) focuses as much on the man and his relationships as on his actions and times, for instance, devoting as much attention to the Führer’s friendship with British aristocrat Diana Mitford as to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Similarly, Wilson devotes more space to the years 1924–1929, when the Nazi Party was in eclipse, than to the WWII years. Wilson engages in some facile comparative history that lends a measure of ordinariness to Hitler. In one case, he makes the untenable statement that Hitler “in his racial discrimination was simply being normal”—this because the U.S. and Britain were “racist through and through”—and that Hitler “was an embodiment, albeit an exaggerated embodiment, of the beliefs of the average modern person.” Wilson uses Hitler as an excuse for a backhanded slap at the Enlightenment—the godless age that gave birth to the “modern scientific” outlook that, Wilson believes, led in turn to Hitler. Given the monumental impact of Hitler on modern history, this far too short, superficial biography fails to measure up to its subject. (Apr.)