Hitler: The Memoir of a Nazi Insider Who Turned Against Hitler; Ernst Hanfstaengl; 1957; Arcade Publishing; 300 pgs; no index

EH was a member of the upper crust. He was born in Germany, educated in the USA (at Harvard), and returned to Germany to cozy up to Hitler before the Beer Hall Putsch. He was drawn to his oratory style and  like his political ideas.

Germany was a mess at the time (in 1923, a beer cost 3 billion marks), and Hitler seemed like the way out.

He is not all that smart, from what I could tell, but he played the piano the way Hitler liked, and he became Hitler's foreign press secretary.  He was a Nazi, but not like the others, or so we are to believe. He was very close to Hitler until 1937, when he and his son fled just ahead of the bad guys. EH had mouthed off one too many times. His insights are self serving to a large extent, but there is no denying that he got to know Hitler and his moods quite well. He saw the politics spinning out of control after the Night of the Long Knives.

He had this to say of Hitler:

"He thought if you talked long enough and vehemently enough, repeated your arguments a dozen times in a dozen forms, there was no obstacle, human or technical, that could not be overcome."

Shirer (author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)  thought him a bit of a dim bulb. The writing is OK. The subject matter is interesting to me but, I suspect, few others.

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