HITLER'S FIRST WAR ADOLF HITLER, THE MEN OF THE LIST REGIMENT AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Book Type: C

by Thomas Weber

In Hitler's First War, award-winning author Thomas Weber delivers a master work of history--a major revision of our understanding of Hitler's life. Weber paints a group portrait of the List Regiment, Hitler's unit during World War I, to rewrite the story of his military service. Drawing on deep and imaginative research, Weber refutes the story crafted by Hitler himself, and so challenges the historical argument that the war led naturally to Nazism. Contrary to myth, the regiment consisted largely of conscripts, not enthusiastic volunteers. Hitler served with scores of Jews, including noted artist Albert Weisberger, who proved more heroic, and popular, than the future Fuhrer. Indeed, Weber finds that the men shunned Private Hitler as a "rear area pig," and that Hitler himself was still unsure of his political views when the war ended in 1918. Through the stories of such comrades as a soldier-turned-concentration camp commandant, veterans who fell victim to the Holocaust, an officer who became Hitler's personal adjutant in the 1930s but then cooperated with British intelligence, and the veterans who simply went back to their Bavarian farms and never joined the Nazi ranks, Weber demonstrates how and why Hitler aggressively policed the myth of his wartime experience.

Features
The story of Hitler's formative experiences as a soldier on the Western Front - now told in full for the first time
Presents a radical revision of the Private Hitler portrayed in Mein Kampf - a period of his life that Hitler claimed had made him into the person he later became
Uses a wealth of material never before seen, including the stories of Hitler's fellow soldiers, from people who later became convinced Nazis to Jewish veterans of the regiment

416 pages; 8pp b/w plates;