Thomas Weber
Thomas Weber is the author of Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi. From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: Why did you decide to focus on Hitler's life between 1918 and 1926 in your new book?--Marshal Zeringue
A: Despite all the books written on Hitler, I felt that we still didn’t understand how Hitler became Hitler. So I decided that I would try and look with fresh eyes at the year that followed World War I. I would dig deeper than other scholars before, and I would dig at different places.
Once I had found what I was looking for, I realized that I had been wrong in my previous assumptions about how Hitler had become Hitler and that I had to take my story forward to the mid-1920s.
Q: What influences shaped his ideas during that period?
A: The starting point of his politicization and radicalization was to figure out why Germany had lost World War I and, more importantly, how Germany had to be recast to survive for all times in a rapidly changing world.
He was shaped here by...[read on]
