The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of Otto Dietrich - Third Reich Press Chief | WWII Historical Account, Nazi Germany Insights for History Buffs & Researchers

The author states in the first few pages of the book that Hitler had a dual personality. He reiterates that time and time again throughout the course of the book. The one side of Hitler, according to the author, loved nature, animals, children, his people and his homeland. That was the man who oversaw the first few years of the reich and all the social programs that made Germany the most modern nation in the world with great public works, promotion of pride in nation and self, and a serious attempt to eradicate poverty and social class that later served as a role model for the socialized democracies of Western Europe and the European Union. That is where he gained the devotion of so many of the German people. This doesn’t make up more than a few pages of the book, though.What the book does, more than anything, is illustrate Hitler’s gradual descent into his other personality, the one dominated by his rage and hatred and the loss of anything even remotely compassionate.There are several good little nuggets of information in here that should ring a bell or stand out if you’re familiar with events that coincide with the gradual deterioration of Hitler’s mental state, the greatest of which came when he realized the Soviets were poised to destroy the oil fields of Romania in violation of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, the point where he knew he had been set up to fight an impossible war on two fronts.The book is well written, published after the author’s death in the early 1950’s.