Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I am currently in the middle of this rather large book and am thoroughly fascinated with the both the historical and personal aspects of Mr. Toland's writing. I am recommending the book to others who, like me, may not appreciate all that Hitler represented to Germans and other Europeans and why his rise to power happened as it did. I see the book as a strong reminder of the need to involve oneself in the matters of civil life and the delicate balance between government and citizenry. I thank Mr. Toland for his detailed, yet objectively reported, inclusion of the personal details of Hitler's life. From these facts an individual can form their own thoughts about the evolution of this horrid piece of modern history. Hitler and the swastika are disturbing imagery in the current world yet, I feel it is by educating oneself on this dreadful history we are most able to protect ourselves from its reoccurrence. Mr. Toland makes this possible with a thoroughly human portrayal of the real Hitler.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is not a respectable piece of literature.
Review: Adolf by John Toland was one of the worst books that I have ever read. The books demeanor wrecks at the brain like a small child's screams. Reading this book was like being hit in the head with a baseball bat. To all the readers out there interested in reading this book, Be warned. Several hours of terrible reading will occupy your evening.
Rating:
Summary: Superlative history, well documentated, reads like a novel.
Review: Toland provides, as he always does, a remarkable look inside a dark and complex world. He interviewed participants from the highest to the lowest of levels. In many cases these were Nazis who had hidden themselves completely from the outside world. However, this book is far more than a history. It provides us with a look into Evil in one of its most massive displays in history. Anyone interested in Hitler and/or the nature of evil should read this. "Hitler" reads as a novel yet leaves one with tremendous knowledge and many keys to understanding the darkest side of human nature.
Rating:
Summary: National Socialists: The definitive biography
Review: Wow! John Toland's book "Adolf Hitler: the definitive biography" is a great read. Toland deals with the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from womb to tomb. The reader is shown much more than just the war-time National Socialists. The book is a blitzkrieg of information from various people within the inner circles. After reading this book it is easy to see parallels between the socialist leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million slaughtered) and the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million slaughtered) and the leader of the Peoples' Republic of China (35 million slaughtered). No wonder the socialist trio of atrocities caused the socialist Wholecaust (of which the Holocaust was a part). Socialists gain so much power that they come to believe that they are Gods to their people and that only they can lead them to glory, despite the shortages, poverty, misery, starvation, and atrocities that occur.
Toland's book lends support for the historian Rex Curry, who exposed the swastika as two "S" shapes overlapping to represent "socialism." On page 86 Toland writes "Drexler [Anton Drexler] suggested calling their group the German Socialist Party (the same name of a similarly motivated party founded a year earlier [1916?] in Bohemia [Czeckoslovakia], whose emblem incidentally, was the swastika). Toland provides no footnote or reference for his claim, and it is unfortunate that Toland died in 2004 and cannot be asked for details about the earlier Party, however another entry in the book (p 183) makes reference to Han Knirsch, founder of the National Socialist Workers Party in Czeckoslovakia.
Toland also notes that the swastika was long a symbol of the Teutonic Knights and had been used by Lanz Von Liebenfels, the Thule Society and a number of Free Corps units before it took on it socialist symbolism.
The author fails to explain the influence of National Socialists in the U.S. as far back as 1892. The author of the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag was Francis Bellamy, a self-proclaimed National Socialist. The original salute to the flag was a straight arm salute. If you're reading this sentence - there's a good chance you are - it is probably the first time you have read about the original salute to the U.S. flag. The book has no historic photo of the original straight-arm salute to the U.S. flag. The author's neglect in this area is one reason why he did not make the news-breaking discovery that the pledge of allegiance was the origin of the salute of the horrid National Socialist German Workers' Party, as exposed by the journalist Rex Curry. The common claim that it was an old Roman salute is a myth. It would make more sense to say that it was "Roman" in the sense that Francis Bellamy was from Rome, N.Y. and sometimes used the term "Roman" to refer to his hometown. More likely, it was a product of Hollywood in old movies that depicted ancient Rome and the salute, with no basis in reality.
The author is weak in explicating how Francis Bellamy and his cousin and cohort, Edward Bellamy, wanted government to take over all schools as a socialist monopoly, end all of the better alternatives, and use government schools to produce an "industrial army" (a Bellamy term) explicitly modeled upon the military in order to nationalize the economy and create a society of totalitarian socialism as described in the book "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy. It explains the modern Military-Socialist complex. The Bellamy boys actively promoted what they called "military socialism" (another Bellamy term).
The government forced children to attend segregated schools where they recited the Pledge using it's original straight-arm salute. The practice began three decades before it was adopted by the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and the government school racism continued through WWII and beyond, and the government schools still exist to this day.
If the government had taken over all churches then the same horror would have resulted, with government-mandated racism in government churches. The libertarian solution would have been to end socialized churches. It is fortunate that the Constitution prevented government churches. It is unfortunate that the Constitution did not prevent government schools, though they are no where authorized.
During World War II, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed an alliance with the National Socialist German Workers' Party to invade Poland and divide up Europe. The National Socialist German Workers' Party invaded Poland first (Sept. 1), followed shortly thereafter (Sept. 17) by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Rating:
Summary: Gargantuanly Great Adolf Hitler Biography
Review: John Toland accomplished one of the all-time masterpieces of biographical scholarship in this massively detailed biography of Adolf Hitler. It describes the political tyranny of an individual who was obsessed with acquiring more land in order to expand what he believed was an overly-dense populated Germany. If one does not purchase land one has to take it by force. Hitler morbidly developed negative prejudicial views toward various sets of people. Irony lies in the fact that although Adolf Hitler hated the Jewish race he was partially a Jew himself.
Never assume any presuppositional historical stance. Expect the unexpected... Although John Toland recounts in this Hitler biography some alleged evidence that Adolf Hitler died at the end of World War II do not assume this is necessarily so. The book entitled "Bariloche Nazi" by Abel Basti may soon be translated into English. This book recounts alternate evidence that Adolf Hitler survived World War II and hid in Bariloche, Argentina. This is a plausible claim. My deceased uncle Boston Fear McKenna ( birth-given name: Sebastian McKenna ) several times told me a true incident when he was in the Army during the conclusion of World War II. My uncle was in Berlin guarding some prisoners in a cell. My uncle could speak the German language fluently. He had a strong interest in studying the German language when he was young because my uncle's maternal grandfather ( my great-grandfather ) Boston Fear and Boston Fear's mother Maria ( Mary ) and sister Elizabeth emigrated from the Saxony area of Germany ( very near to and southwest of Berlin ) and entered the United States in 1850. My uncle told me that he was guarding a German officer in a cell in Berlin who was steaming mad about Adolf Hitler. The German officer said that Hitler always swore he would never betray Germany and that he would fight to his very death to honor Germany. The vehemently mad German officer told my uncle that Adolf Hitler was a traitor and a coward. This German officer told my uncle that he personally saw Adolf Hitler fly out of Berlin at the very conclusion of World War II. It was very probable that Hitler may have flown to a designated area to embark on a submarine to Argentina where he would have been welcomed by dictator Juan Peron. Hitler would in all likelihood have had his physical features altered in order to elude capture. If he was indeed a physically sick man at the end of World War II he may have straggled on healthwise and died in Bariloche, Argentina in 1960 ( as some witnesses have purported ).
Rating:
Summary: Best account of Hitler's life available
Review: This is surely the best book written about the life of Adolph Hitler. John Toland simply tells the story of Adolph Hitler's rise and fall without an attempt to vilify him (nor to illicit any sympathy). It is utterly amazing to read how this man who was so given over to hatred and such warped ideas about humanity could become the leader of a large nation and then plunge it and the world into a senseless war that took so many lives. This corporal/painter changed the world forever. Could there be a more fascinating story as this? I simply could not put this book down.
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Summary: A Realistic View of Hitler
Review: Historian John Toland attempts what few have successfully managed to do with this difficult subject; to write a truthful and fairly unbiased biography of Hitler.
Toland conducted interviews with people who personally knew Hitler, several of them opening up for the first
time on the subject.
Toland acknowledges when any of his sources, such as personal interviewees, may be biased.
Prior to this the most thorough and readable work on the subject was William Shirer's RISE & FALL OF THE THIRD REICH.
William Shirer had a very personal style of writing, unlike dry historians such as Trevor-Roper.
Toland's style is nearly as personal, yet isn't as caught up in the moment as Shirer, and with a strong ability to connect leads he is able to clarify previously sketchy accounts such as who really started the Reichstag fire.
Though more documents have been declassified since the writing of this book, Toland had a better time sorting through information perhaps than Shirer, who had to wade through mountains of unsorted papers in a limited time frame.
Toland often refers to Shirer's incisive personal observations of Hitler at key moments (when Shirer was a foriegn correspondant in Germany).
Toland assembles many vivid on the scene descriptions to give us a realistic portrait of the actual man, with all his flaws and facets that I had not grasped from Shirer.
Many of the commonly held myths are dispelled, and one comes away with a better understanding of who Hitler really was rather than a false impression based on rumors.
If we're going to argue with revisionists, or discuss intelligently with those who know a great deal or very little about nazism, then this tome is an excellent crash course.
Rating:
Summary: Of the ones I've read this is the DEFINITIVE one!
Review: As an amateur student of WWII history I have tried hard to understand more about how the major "players" came to be, thought, and operated before, during, and after (when applicable) the war. John Toland's biography of Hitler is an amazing piece of historical literature!! If you've ever read any of Toland's books (I've read "Battle: The Story of the Bulge" and "The Last 100 Days" - both excellent) you know he can convey a story that makes the words feel alive. He does that here equally as well in a 900 page masterpiece. He starts with a historical background of the Hitler lineage (and possible Jewish blood!) and ends in with various Nazi elites and their capture, deaths, etc after the fall of Berlin and Hitler's suicide. In between we get a marvelous picture of a child Adolf - his closeness to his mother and estrangement from his father; a young man searching for his place - time spent in Vienna flop houses struggling to survive, failing to acheive and finding his place in the political upheaval leading to the Great War; his time at the front - from runner to gassed Iron cross winner; his "Time of Struggle" in forming the NADSP and leading a failed putsch, prison, and release to a country ready to embrace him; to his rise to Chancellor, dictator, statesman, warlord, self-proclaimed Christ, mass murderer; to a broken, pre-aged, sickly man how ultimately takes his own life to avoid paying the butchers bill. Toland weaves a story that is both easy to read and historically engaging. I learned a lot and had fun doing it - just the way I love history!!!Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Good first biography
Review: I read this book behind Mein Kampf (MK) in 1991. I was 16 then, and much of what was in MK was confusing and hard to understand. Hitler meant MK to be read by adherents to the Nazi party and, therefore, those people would know the history behind what was written in the book. John Toland does a wonderful job in writing an easily accessible and understandable biography for the person who is just beginning to study this complex era in our world's history. His research is well documented throughout the book, and one can get a good sense of what Hitler was like and how life was under his rule from 1933-1945. Also, this book gives a good insight into the men and women who supported the National Socialist movement and how their influence dictated the rise and fall of the Third Reich. One can easily find themselves studying other influential people in Hitler's circle as well as Hitler himself. Toland does a very good job of not painting a judgemental picture of the subject of which he is writing about.
I would highly recommend this tome for anyone who is interested in learning the basic information regarding Hitler and the Third Reich. (Of course, it should be no substitute for Mein Kampf. If you want to know what Hitler was thinking....why not read his own words for yourself?)
Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Hitler
Review: Historian John Toland's "Adolf Hitler" stands as the greatest of the many works that have been published about the 20th Century's most fascinating and diabolical leader. Toland doesn't content himself by merely reporting the facts, rather he makes a real effort to get inside the man's head and determine how he came to be such an explosive package of brilliance and insanity. The story of Hitler the man is so improbable that had this been a work of fiction, no one would have found it plausible. He was a self-man who, against all odds, seized absolute power in a Europe in which until his own adulthood, heredity usually dictated one's station in life. Though daunting at over 100 pages, Toland has a good stroytelling touch, making the book quite readble. Toland thoroughly chronicles Hitler's life, from his abused upbrining, through his service in the First World War, to his rise as a young politician, and finally his seizure of power and all the evil that followed. The book is generously sprinkled with photographs and other illustratins to help the reader. Overall, an outstanding historical biography that is as monumental as its subject.
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