*UPDATE* Author Timothy Rybeck looks at 10 of Hitler’s favorite books in his post “Hitler’s Bedtime Reading,” over at Tina Brown’s new online mag The Daily Beast.
Later this month Alfred A. Knopf will publish Timothy W. Rybeck’s Hitler’s Private Library : The Books That Shaped His Life.
Though known more for his burning of books than for collecting them Hitler was a serious bibliophile and had amassed a huge personal library.
Upon his demise the library, which was found in salt mine near Berchtesgaden, was scattered- The Soviet army sent about 10,000 books from his library back to Moscow, some American officers bought some back to the States as souvenirs and fortunately, a big chunk ended up at the Library of Congress.
Many of the books in his library contained annotations and marginalia that provided Ryback the ability to trace “the path of the key phrases and ideas that Hitler incorporated into his writing, speeches, conversations, self-definition, and actions.”
We watch him embrace Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the works of Shakespeare. We see how an obscure treatise inspired his political career and a particular interpretation of Ibsen’s epic poem Peer Gynt helped mold his ruthless ambition. He admires Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and declares it required reading for fellow party members. We learn how his extensive readings on religion and the occult provide the blueprint for his notion of divine providence, how the words of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are reborn as infamous Nazi catchphrases, and, finally, how a biography of Frederick the Great fired the destructive fanaticism that compelled Hitler to continue fighting World War II when all hope of victory was lost.
Review of Hitler’s Private Library at The Economist