This book will be of great interest to those primarily interested in the First World War, but students of Hitler's life and career will also find it to be an excellent read. The book is not only filled with facts and statistics—the result of extremely meticulous and detailed research— but also convincingly shows that Hitler's experiences in WWI did not, contrary to a lot of popular conjecture, significantly form him into the monster he later turned out to be. Weber goes to great lengths to support this analysis and in so doing provides the reader with fascinating details about Hitler, his regiment, some of his comrades, and the life and movements of the German army in the sectors where Hitler served.
On reading Hitler's First War (Part 1 covers from 1 August 1914 to 11 November 1918, while Part 2 takes us up to Hitler's death in 1945) a lot of readers will find some of their assumptions about Hitler challenged. Some surprises for this reviewer were that Hitler never was a corporal, (he was made a Gefreiter early in the war, a sort of advanced private with no command over other soldiers); that by being a dispatch runner he managed to serve mostly behind the lines and avoid almost all the bloody combat his regiment saw, thus becoming one of the “rear area pigs” the men in the trenches scorned; that he was awarded his Iron Cross due to favoritism rather than valor; that he never exhibited any particularly anti-Semitic tendencies during his first war; and that much of what was written about his war service by his supporters in the 1920s and `30s—and what he wrote himself in Mein Kampf—was simply exaggerated or outright false. Weber aptly refers to many of these self-serving writings as hagiographies, traditional accounts of the lives of saints which often contain considerable myth, embellishment, and blind adoration.
For the reader wishing to gain insight into life in the German army during WWI and shortly thereafter, most of this book will be a fascinating and valuable resource. The author takes us from Hitler's enlistment at the outbreak of war in the List Regiment, named after its first commander and not the purely volunteer regiment filled with enthusiastic students and artists it was later claimed to be, up to 31 March 1920 when Private Hitler (as the author often stresses) was finally demobilized—he had declined earlier opportunities to return to civilian life after the Armistice. Hitler's biography during these years is interesting, but the real value of the book might be the view it gives us of the German army at this time. The author takes us with the regiment through Belgium, the First Battle of Ypres, to the Race for the Sea, the Christmas Truce, other battles and trench duty, to the Battle of the Somme, Third Ypres, and on to the final desperate 1918 German thrusts followed by failure and retreat. The Armistice by no means concluded the regiment's activity. They saw garrison duty in Belgium and finally made an organized march back to a suffering Germany which nevertheless gave them a heroes' welcome.
As we travel through the war with Hitler's regiment, we are given many interesting and often surprising details of the everyday attitudes of the men, the fairly lenient discipline of the German army and its desire to keep the fighting man as happy as possible, and the lack of any real hatred for the enemy. Nothing during this period seemed to indicate a radicalization of Hitler or of the German soldier in general that would eventually bring about the rise of fascism and the Holocaust. Atrocities did indeed take place in Belgium, but not to the extent that later reports would indicate, and there was frequently fair dealing and even friendship between the Germans and the populations of conquered territory. Battles inevitably resulted in carnage, of course, but it would seem the List Regiment usually saw piles of rotting British corpses, not German.
Hitler's First War is an exceptional work based on firm principles of research. Scholars will find much of value not only in the book's content and clarity but also in its over 1400 endnotes plus its extensive source bibliography of archives, publications, films, Websites, and newspapers. All that is missing is a map or two which could have been helpful in following the movements of the List Regiment. Nevertheless, readers will appreciate the informative insights into the war from the documented perspectives of the German soldier and civilian and will gain a deepened understanding of what Private Hitler was—and was not—in the First World War.
David F. Beer
ReplyDeleteThere is also Private Hitler's War: 1914-1919 by Bob Carruthers.