Hitler's Private Library

Hitler was a passionate reader, his education and worldview formed largely by the books he read. Recently, Timothy Ryback uncovered in the Library of Congress hundreds of volumes from Hitler's forgotten private collection, complete with Hitler's marginalia-underlines, question marks, exclamation points, questions, and comments. Now Ryback traces key phrases and ideas from Hitler's personal books into his writing, speeches, conversations, thinking, and actions.

Ryback shows us how Hitler urged his fellow party members to read Henry Ford's anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and how Hitler's own notions of Aryan superiority were shaped by a specific interpretation of the Nordic epic Peer Gynt. We come to understand the particulars of his admiration for The Merchant of Venice and Don Quixote and the German philosophers who provided the basis for his anti-Semitism. We see how Hitler's readings on religion and the occult provided a blueprint for his notion of "divine providence," and how a British biography of Frederick the Great fired the destructive fanaticism that compelled him to continue the war when all hope of victory was lost.

Hitler's Private Library provides us with a remarkable view of Hitler's evolution-and unparalleled insights into his emotional and intellectual world. A landmark in the study of the Third Reich.