See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/316287422

Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939: Ullrich, Volker, Trans. Jefferson Chase New York:
Alfred A. Knopf 998 pp., $40.00, ISBN 978-0-385-35438-7 Publication Date:
September 2016

Article  in  History Reviews of New Books · July 2017

DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2017.1311190

CITATIONS READS

0 828

1 author:

Roy G. Koepp
Eastern New Mexico University
5 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Conservative Radicals: Bavarian Paramilitaries and the Emergence of the Nazi Party, 1918-1928 View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Roy G. Koepp on 22 August 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 History: Reviews of New Books

ISSN: 0361-2759 (Print) 1930-8280 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vhis20

Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939

Roy G. Koepp

To cite this article: Roy G. Koepp (2017) Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939, History: Reviews of New
Books, 45:4, 102-103, DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2017.1311190

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2017.1311190

Published online: 20 Apr 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=vhis20

Download by: [Roy Koepp] Date: 23 April 2017, At: 18:44

102
an independent nation. From the victo-
rious Allies came expressions of good
will, but the Treaty of Versailles did
not mention the Wends. Stone urges us
not to be surprised by such an outcome,
because his own account of the preced-
ing century makes clear the insur-
mountable obstacle to national self-
determination the Wends faced: their
inability to attract one of the great
powers to serve as their patron. They
were simply not important enough;
they had nothing—neither numbers,
nor a strategic territory, nor natural
resources—to offer a prospective sup-
porter, and, thus, they had no bargain-
ing power at crucial moments such as
the Paris Peace Conference; they stood
alone and had to rely on the benevo-
lence of the great powers, which were
pursuing objectives of their own that
had no place for the Wends. Yet Stone
shows us how the Wends overcame
disappointment and, because of their
strong sense of identity, survived the
totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and,
then, of the Communists (here, Stone is
careful to note that the Wends were
accorded a degree of cultural support in
the German Democratic Republic).
In this thoroughly researched and
judiciously argued volume, we have an
indispensable contribution to Central
European history. Besides laying out in
admirable detail the history of the
Wends, Stone, more generally, adds
greatly to our understanding of how
national identities are formed and how
minorities are able to survive in
unfriendly climates. All those concerned
with the history of the region will wel-
come his work.
KEITH HITCHINS
University of Illinois, Urbana
Champaign
Copyright Ó 2017 Taylor & Francis
Ullrich, Volker
Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939
Trans. Jefferson Chase
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
998 pp., $40.00,
ISBN 978-0-385-35438-7
Publication Date: September 2016
Volker Ullrich’s latest biography of
Adolf Hitler seeks to follow in the
footsteps of four previous biographies
that the author states “have stood the
test of time” (2). These works, ranging
from Konrad Heiden’s mid-1930s
account of the Nazi leader’s rise to
power to Ian Kershaw’s masterful
two-volume study, published around
the turn of the century, are esteemed
by scholars and laymen because they
have placed Hitler’s rise to power and
dictatorship in the context of the time
in which it occurred. However, Ullrich
argues that, for all the insights these
biographies have given us, they often
present an incomplete picture of the
German F€ uhrer. Mostly, they over-
look or downplay Hitler’s private life
away from politics, preferring to see
him as something of a cipher in inter-
personal relationships or, more fre-
quently, as a figure who fused his
personal and public personas in ways
that make it difficult to separate man
from myth. It is this incomplete under-
standing of Hitler as a human being
that Ullrich, a historian and journalist
with the German weekly Die Zeit, who
has previously published studies on
Napoleon and Otto von Bismarck,
seeks to correct.
Overall, Ullrich’s biography suc-
ceeds in separating Hitler the man
from the “‘fascination with mon-
strosity’ that has so greatly influ-
enced historical literature and public
discussion” (11), while giving read-
ers a portrait the more terrifying
because it is more human. Chapters
written about Hitler’s relationships
with women, his humanity, and the
coterie (including Eva Braun) that
surrounded the Nazi leader at the
Obersalzberg give readers as close
an approximation of Hitler’s person-
ality as we are likely to get. Ullrich
does a very good job cross-referenc-
ing the sometimes scant source
material about Hitler’s private life,
as the Nazi dictator was not only
very secretive but also ordered one
of his assistants to burn his personal
documents in April 1945. Ullrich
intersperses these chapters through-
out the book. The portrait Ullrich
draws shows a man who put on dif-
ferent personas for the people with
whom he interacted, much like an
actor, and this, as much as the cir-
cumstances Germany found itself in
HISTORY: Reviews of New Books
the 1920s and 1930s, helps to
explain Hitler’s success.
The book’s main weakness is that
it does not offer a revolutionary new
take on the life of Adolf Hitler. Ull-
rich himself readily admits this say-
ing that, “to offer a fully new
interpretation . . . would be utterly
arrogant” (10). The chapters that
cover Hitler’s early political career,
rise to power, and dictatorship in
Germany owe much to the work of
other scholars, particularly the
works of Ian Kershaw, Joachim
Fest, Karl Dietrich Bracher, and
Robert Gellately. However, this lim-
itation does not weaken the force of
Ullrich’s narrative, as he combines
this previous research with his own
insights into Hitler’s character to
create a nice synthesis. Readers will
find some real gems among these
chapters. For example, Ullrich
includes a chapter discussing Hit-
ler’s complicated relationship to the
German churches during the early
years of the Third Reich, a topic
that remains a popular avenue of
research on the Nazi period, that
will fascinate readers.
Like all biographies of Hitler,
this is a lengthy book. It runs to 758
pages, with an additional 240 pages
devoted to endnotes, the index, and
a comprehensive bibliography. Ull-
rich has done an impressive amount
of research and used materials not
available to previous scholars. These
include, in addition to studies on
Hitler published after the year 2000
(when Kershaw’s second volume
was published), Hitler’s notes and
speeches through 1933, official
Reich Chancellery documents from
the Third Reich, and the published
complete diaries of Nazi propaganda
minister Joseph Goebbels. The book
is divided into twenty-one chapters
and ends in March 1939 with the
German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Jefferson Chase has translated this
first volume into English, crafting an
eminently readable text. One hopes
that the author and publisher will
use him for the second volume
when that is ready for publication.
Written for both a scholarly audi-
ence and the general public, Volker
Ullrich’s Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939
 July 2017, Volume 45, Number 4
seems certain to take its place as
one of the very best biographies of
the Nazi dictator.
ROY G. KOEPP
University of Nebraska at Kearney
Copyright Ó 2017 Taylor & Francis
Vickers, Emma
Queen and Country: Same-Sex
Desire in the British Armed Forces,
1939–45
Manchester: Manchester University
Press
218 pp., $25.95,
ISBN 978-1-78499-118-0
Publication Date: November 2015
The history of same-sex desire in
the British military is an underdevel-
oped field, with much of the work to
date written as journal articles, or as
passing arguments in books primar-
ily focused on other topics. Whereas
the first monograph on same-sex
desire in the United States military
during the Second World War was
written in 1990—Allan B
erub
e’s
landmark Coming Out Under Fire:
The History of Gay Men and Women
in World War Two (Plume)—it is
only just now that a similar study
has been conducted for Britain.
Written by Emma Vickers, a
senior lecturer in history at Liver-
pool John Moores University, Queen
and Country: Same-Sex Desire in
the British Armed Forces, 1939–45
analyzes how same-sex desire inter-
sected with military discipline, both
for the men and women who inden-
tified with such feelings and for
those who did not while still engag-
ing in “homosex” (16). Vickers
argues that there were many queer
men and women in the British
armed services during the Second
World War, because there was no
effort to exclude them from mass
conscription. Medical boards did not
screen new recruits for mental sta-
bility until mid-1942, and, even
then, congenital homosexuality was
not something that physicians were
instructed to look for. In addition, a
prevailing attitude of the time was
that the rigor and discipline of mili-
tary life would straighten out an
View publication stats
effeminate young man. According to
the surviving records, the screeners
of female recruits were primarily
concerned about pregnancy, not
lesbianism.
Vickers has collected oral testi-
monies and combined these with
military and civilian records to ana-
lyze how men and women known to
be queer functioned effectively
within military units. Acceptance
within a unit, for both male and
female queer personnel, was often
contingent on an individual’s ability
to perform his or her duties well.
Openly queer enlisted men could be
accepted as “good fellows” within
their units when they displayed
other respected attributes of military
masculinity, such as bravery (86).
Examples are used to show how
such queer enlisted men could bol-
ster group cohesion, whereas queer
officers who used their rank to pres-
sure subordinates into sex were seen
as detrimental to such cohesion.
Place also mattered in the accep-
tance of queer soldiers and queer
sex, and Vickers documents the var-
ious locations where such encoun-
ters would not cause controversy,
either on base or while on leave.
London offered multiple queer ven-
ues for military men, from the Arts
and Battledress Club, patronized pri-
marily by officers, to hostels for
common soldiers that were known
for queer sexual encounters, such as
the Union Jack Club. Vickers also
demonstrates the multiple ways in
which sexual acts might shade into
the continuum of intimate nonsexual
contact between members of the
same sex that were accepted as a
part of wartime military culture.
The most significant disappoint-
ment of the book is the small num-
ber of self-identified queer veterans
that Vickers was able to interview.
The author addresses this directly in
the introduction, discussing the
many steps taken over several years
to try and find such individuals,
including approaching hundreds of
newspapers, retirement homes, and
veterans’ groups to solicit partici-
pants. In the end, Vickers was able
to connect with ten men who shared
their stories with her.
103
The evidence of ten oral inter-
views alone would not be sufficient
to counter the assessment by some
scholars that sex between men or
between women was extremely rare
within the military. However, Vick-
ers places the evidence of these oral
interviews into a framework of mili-
tary and civilian state records, per-
sonal papers, and other traditional
sources that inform the analysis,
with the oral interviews both corrob-
orating the other records and provid-
ing critical details related to
personal feelings and motivations.
Vickers’s efforts have captured, per-
haps at the last moment possible,
the perspective of individuals who
lived within a military culture that
did not seek to identify or persecute
queer men, an institutional stance
that would change radically immedi-
ately after the end of the war. Her
work not only records a more accu-
rate understanding of these aspects
of the Second World War, but also
suggests answers to questions of
same-sex desire and military culture
in earlier periods, where state
records tell a similar story but oral
interviews are impossible to obtain.
Engaging and accessible, this
book is built on vivid and unex-
pected examples, concisely pre-
sented. Academic researchers,
undergraduate and graduate students,
and broader audiences interested in
military history or LGBTQ history
will find this an original, informa-
tive, and important book.
CHARLES UPCHURCH
Florida State University
Copyright Ó 2017 Taylor & Francis
Lipscomb, Suzannah
The King is Dead: The Last Will
and Testament of Henry VIII
New York: Pegasus Books
192 pp., $26.95,
ISBN 978-1-68177-254-X
Publication Date: December 2016
Suzannah Lipscomb’s The King is
Dead: The Last Will and Testament of
Henry VIII takes some of Tudor histo-
ry’s most eminent historians to task
regarding one of the most intriguing