Despite 75 years of historical research following his death by suicide on April 30, 1945, in Berlin, certain things about Hitler remain far from understood. Not only was he of secretive nature, but he was also an inveterate liar, a constant actor and professional deceiver.

He wrote a book – “Mein Kampf” – a sort of mixture of autobiography and political manifesto – which was published in two volumes 1925 and 1926. Literally thousands of articles and have been written about it, and the gist of the analysis is that while it is full of half-truths and some outright lies in personal matters, his thoughts are fairly well represented – no one could say he beat around the bush. Literature concerning “Mein Kampf” is liberally and freely available on the internet and it shall not be the subject of this selection of Hitler’s own documents. We shall concentrate – as best as we may – on documents of what we believe may be of illuminating importance or depicting decisive events.

Source-wise, the two classic collections of Hitler documents, handwriting and speeches are:

Eberhard Jäckel/Axel Kuhn – Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ISBN-10: 3421019975 ISBN-13: 978-3421019974 (Amazon.com-Link),

Werner Maser – Hitlers Briefe und Notizen: Sein Weltbild in handschriftlichen Dokumenten (Handwritings only), ISBN-10: 3702009507 ISBN-13: 978-3702009502 (Amazon.de-Link)

[Both collections must be approached carefully: Jäckel/Kuhn have become to a small degree (less than 4%) victim to Konrad Kujau’s forgeries (see “Hitler’s Diaries“), (please check their corrections here, PDF), and Werner Maser (who was somewhat controversial as a revisionist historian) has misinterpreted some of Hitler’s cursive handwriting (an essay on the mistakes here as PDF)]

Not in the form of a collection, but interspersed in his various works, Anton Joachimsthaler has found many important documents especially relating to Hitler’s youth and early days (see article it this blog).

… with Eva Braun on a holiday celebration …

Updates and a list of subsequent articles and documents will be published in this post or may be found in our Facebook Group “History of the West“. Please bookmark!


(© John Vincent Palatine 2020)

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