by Miriam Garvi
For the inquisitive soul who seeks to understand what leads people to make fatal choices, Swedish writer and historian Bengt Liljegren’s recent biography comes as a most welcome surprise.
Wondering what another book might add to the by now extensive list of Hitler biographies, I needed to read no further than the prologue for my interest to be awakened:
«My interest was triggered during the summer holidays in 1974. I had just finished sixth grade and rode my bicycle down to Gleerup’s bookstore in Lund and invested … in Mark-Arnold Forster’s The World at War 1939-1945. The book made a deep impression on me. I was even more taken by the British television series The World at War… (…). Adolf Hitler obviously played a big role in the book and the series, yet he remained strangely diffuse, it was as if there were no real person behind the figure of terror who started WWII and murdered Jews. As a thirteen year old I was given the impression that Hitler was a monster - not a human being. (…) I hope to make Hitler more understandable, to generate a truer image of his personality and private life as the background for his evil deeds… It is about time Adolf Hitler is undemonized. Knowledge about him as a person is an effective vaccine against his sick ideology.» (Liljegren 2008, pp. 8-11; own translation).
Bengt Liljegren (2008) Adolf Hitler, Historiska Media.
However comforting it may be to look back on people as monsters or idols, we need the human stories that make us reflect on the consequences of what may at first seem to be harmless actions and choices. The uncanny truth is that anyone can become a Hitler at heart, but not everyone is endowed with his kind of charisma and brilliance that will charm a nation.
Only by seeing people as the you and mes that we really are can we truly learn from history.