Why Did Hitler Hate the Jews?: The Origins of Adolf Hitler's Anti-Semitism and its Outcome - Peter den Hertog - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Peter den Hertog
GENRE: Nonfiction. History.
PUBLICATION DATE: October 14, 2020
RATING: 3.5 stars.


I opted for this book because of the intriguing title. After all, whoever focuses on Hitler only talks about the what, never about the why. This book does help answer the query it raises: Why did Hitler kill the Jews? But the process of discovering this answer isn't easy.

The book explains how Hitler had many of the symptoms of paranoia visible in his behaviour. In addition, it also covers the political and cultural atmosphere during Hitler's life that led to the genocide of millions of Jews.

The chapters about Hitler's personal life and the actual genocide are very well written. It is in the rest of the content that the book somewhat loses its track.

Sometimes the narrative switches between the two world wars and this needlessly adds to the complexity of the point being made. A linear narrative would have been better, especially as it is a historical topic.

Additionally, it would help to have a background of world wars 1 and 2 because this book presumes you know all the main history related to the wars. The biggest problem is that the book presumes you to be conversant in German history and hence gives only a superficial explanation of historical occurrences in the country.

The language of the book is a bit stilted. Certain parts of this book read like a student's over-enthusiastic attempt at writing a thesis by copy-pasting whatever he found online. The narrative flow is totally missing in these chapters.

But I'm not sure if this is because of the author or the translator. While reading a translated book, one can never be sure about who got it wrong.

This book is a good example of fabulous content with a flawed implementation. I would still say that it is a good book, but it would have been far, far better had the writing style had been different.

Thank you NetGalley and Frontline Books for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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