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Hermann Beck, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi, German History, Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2018, Pages 474–476, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy023
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Extract
This is one of those rare consistently interesting books that captivates the reader throughout. In his study on Hitler’s formative years as a politician in Munich between November 1919 and the publication of Mein Kampf in the mid-1920s, Thomas Weber authoritatively revises standard interpretations of Hitler’s early years that have maintained their place in the literature. Weber’s arguments are based not only on private papers, interviews and a careful reading of the secondary literature, but also on meticulous archival research in well over a dozen archives in Germany, the United States, Israel, South Africa, Ireland and the UK. Becoming Hitler succeeds in bringing to life Hitler’s Munich years while capturing the broader Zeitgeist that informed his actions. The author displays a detailed familiarity with those who exerted an influence on Hitler in the years between Kurt Eisner’s revolution and the Beer Hall Putsch, including lesser known but important figures such as Karl Mayr, the head of the Intelligence Department at Munich army headquarters under whose supervision Hitler received his first formal political education and for whom he subsequently worked as an army informant, Dietrich Eckart, Hitler’s friend and mentor who died of a heart attack in December 1923, and Max-Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who later helped to shape Hitler’s views on Russia and Bolshevism, and who was killed during the Beer Hall Putsch.
