Hitler: Volume I: Ascent 1889-1939

Selected as a Book of the Year by the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement and The TimesDespite his status as the most despised political figure in history, there have only been four serious biographies of Hitler since the 1930s.Even more surprisingly, his biographers have been more interested in his rise to power and his methods of leadership than in Hitler the person: some have even declared that the Führer had no private life.Yet to render Hitler as a political animal with no personality to speak of, as a man of limited intelligence and poor social skills, fails to explain the spell that he cast not only on those close to him but on the German people as a whole.In the first volume of this monumental biography, Volker Ullrich sets out to correct our perception of the Führer.While charting in detail Hitler’s life from his childhood to the eve of the Second World War against the politics of the times, Ullrich unveils the man behind the public persona: his charming and repulsive tr