It is impossible to take this defiantly revisionist biography of Hitler seriously. Stolfi, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and former military historian at the U.S. Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, CA, begins with the outlandish claim that “After half a century no biographer or historian has put together an adequate interpretation of Adolf Hitler” (p. 9). Among the historians he sarcastically belittles as the “great biographers” and the allegedly biased representatives of “conventional wisdom” are Alan Bullock, Werner Maser, Joachim Fest, John Toland, and Ian Kershaw, whose two-volume work, subtitled Hubris (1998) and Nemesis (2000), respectively, are regarded as the definitive biography of Hitler by most historians today. Because the works of the “great biographers” have been based, according to Stolfi, on “antipathy” and “a common revulsion for the man,” their interpretations of Hitler have “left the world with a dangerously inaccurate portrait” (p. 54) that supposedly requires a “counterbalancing portrait” (p. 11). “The time has come,” Stolfi proclaims in his prolix way, “for some hero to save the world of Hitler interpretation by attempting comprehension rather than reveling in denigration and alleging hopeless complexity in achieving interpretation of the phenomenon” (p. 34). Taking Hitler entirely on his own self-estimation and quoting liberally from Mein Kampf, Stolfi portrays Hitler as a “precocious genius” gifted with an “inerasable artistic temperament” (p. 62), a “messiah dedicated to a vision of German salvation” (p. 41) comparable to the prophet Mohammed as an inspirational leader obsessed with the salvation of his people. Even if his perpetration of evil, including the destruction of the Jews, cannot be denied, Hitler's belief that he was doing good by murdering Germany's enemies exonerates him in Stolfi's eyes.

In his efforts to at least partially rehabilitate Nazism as a movement of well-intentioned nationalism, Stolfi seems to be following the example of the German revisionist historian Ernst Nolte, who rationalized fascism as a countermovement to the supposedly greater evil of communism. Stolfi, however, takes a more apolitical approach, touting Hitler's personal gifts, his overlooked musical, architectural, and artistic talents; his “ambition to genius” (p. 64); and his “extraordinary personal courage” (p. 156). Moreover, Stolfi finds Hitler's intense nationalism well justified by the German experience of defeat in World War I, the Allies' imposition of the Versailles Treaty, and their allegedly punitive policies toward Germany in the interwar years.

The book contributes nothing new to the scholarship on Hitler. Indeed it represents a regression to the point of view of the most shameless apologists for German nationalism in the postwar era. The question it raises in the mind of this reviewer is, what accounts for the revival of such a discredited historical interpretation in the United States at this time? It certainly reinforces the impression that the relentless rightward drift of politics in this country has not yet run its course. And it helps to explain why Marine units in Afghanistan have no scruples about openly displaying SS insignia in their group portraits. The significance of apparently inconsequential books such as this one as indicators of a militarism perversely festering in our political culture should not be underestimated.