The Man Who Invented Hitler: The Making of the Fuhrer

As a soldier in the first World War, Adolf Hitler never rose above the rank of lance corporal, and before that, he had been an impoverished drifter. Yet within months of the war’s end, he had embarked on a path that was to lead Europe into years of conflict, terror, and the Holocaust. In The Man Who Invented Hitler, David Lewis pinpoints what he believes were the key events in his transformation. He documents the fact that Hitler emerged from the war with hysterical blindness, not blindness from mustard gas poisoning, as commonly believed. Hitler was treated by the controversial psychiatrist Edmund Forster, whose methods included telling patients that only the strength of their will and personality could bring them recovery. Once Hitler found that by sheer will he could cure his own blindness, the next step was obvious to him.