Adolf Hitler

Children's Literature

How could a failed painter go from sleeping on the streets to leading a nation into war, madness and the horrifying Final Solution? This readable new biography, part of the "Twentieth-Century History Makers" series, is a well-researched look at how Hitler survived an abusive childhood and dreamed of becoming a great artist despite the fact that his talent was middling. His eventual bottoming-out on the streets of Vienna put him touch with a lot of other bankrupt, demoralized Germans, the author points out, and gave him something to offer: the Jews as scapegoats. Gogerly offers no new insights—what hasn't already been said?—but provides a lot of information for young readers struggling to understand why Hitler got as far as he did. "Can we ever understand such a man?" she asks in her introduction, and then answers her own question. "As long as we keep trying, then there is always hope that history will not repeat itself, and that never again will the world be torn apart by the dreams and blind hatred of a single person." 2003 (orig. 2002), Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers/Harcourt, Ages 11 up.
—Donna Freedman