In The Life And Death of Adolf Hitler, biographer Robert Payne unravels the tangled threads of Hitler’s public and private life and looks behind the caricature with the Charlie Chaplin mustache and the unruly shock of hair to reveal a Hitler possessed of immense personal charm that impressed both men and women and brought followers and contributions to the burgeoning Nazi Party. Although he misread his strength and organized an ill-fated putsch, Hitler spent his months in prison writing Mein Kampf, which increased his following. Once in undisputed command of the Party, Hitler renounced the chastity of his youth and began a sordid affair with his niece, whose suicide prompted him to reject forever all conventional morality. He promised anything to prospective supporters, then cold-bloodedly murdered them before they could claim a share of the power he reserved for himself. Once he became Chancellor, Hitler step by step bent the powers of the state to his own purposes to satisfy his private fantasies, rearming Germany, slaughtering his real or imaginary enemies, blackmailing one by one the leaders of Europe, and plunging the world into the holocaust of World War II. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER is the story of not so much a man corrupted by power as a corrupt man who achieved absolute power and used it to an unprecedented degree, knowing at every moment exactly what he was doing and calculating his enemies’ weaknesses to a hair’s breadth. It is the story of a living man.

From one of the most prominent biographers of the Nazi period, a new and provocative portrait of the figure behind the century's worst crimes Acclaimed historian Peter Longerich, author of Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler now turns his attention to Adolf Hitler in this new biography. While many previous portraits have speculated about Hitler's formative years, Longerich focuses on his central role as the driving force of Nazism itself. You cannot separate the man from the monstrous movement he came to embody. From his ascendance through the party's ranks to his final hours as Führer in April 1945, Longerich shows just how ruthless Hitler was in his path to power. He emphasizes Hitler's political skills as Germany gained prominence on the world's stage. Hitler's rise to, and ultimate hold on, power was more than merely a matter of charisma; rather, it was due to his ability to control the structure he created. His was an image constructed by his regime - an essential piece self-created of propaganda. This comprehensive biography is the culmination of Longerich's life-long pursuit to understand the man behind the century's worst crimes.

Originally published: Germany: S. Fischer Verlag.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland’s classic, definitive biography of Adolf Hitler remains the most thorough, readable, accessible, and, as much as possible, objective account of the life of a man whose evil affect on the world in the twentieth century will always be felt. Toland’s research provided one of the final opportunities for a historian to conduct personal interviews with over two hundred individuals intimately associated with Hitler. At a certain distance yet still with access to many of the people who enabled and who opposed the führer and his Third Reich, Toland strove to treat this life as if Hitler lived and died a hundred years before instead of within his own memory. From childhood and obscurity to his desperate end, Adolf Hitler emerges , in Toland’s words, "far more complex and contradictory . . . obsessed by his dream of cleansing Europe Jews . . . a hybrid of Prometheus and Lucifer."

Traces Hitler's life from his childhood in Austria to his final days in Berlin, exploring how his promises of prosperity and power along with anti-Semitic rhetoric allowed him to lead the nation of Germany into World War II.