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The despicable little tyrant will not leave us alone. And for good reason. Hitler haunts our century like no other individual and historical explanation, if not exorcism, is more necessary than ever. As we learn more about the Holocaust and the Third Reich, the more important it is as well to understand the evil man who started—and ended—it all.
Psychiatrist Fritz Redlich offers three reasons for his contribution to the continuing flood of literature on Adolf Hitler. First is his conviction that “physical illness or mental disorder could contribute to an understanding of his behavior” (p. xi). Second is his concern about “the politically motivated effort to rehabilitate Hitler” and in particular “the medical aspects of revisionism—the so-called medical stab-in-the-back thesis” (pp. xi-xii). Third is his own personal history. A native of Vienna who earned his MD at the university there in 1935, Redlich was forced to emigrate to the United States following the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938: “As a young socialist, I was deeply opposed to National Socialism. I discovered as an adult that I had Jewish ancestors and was forced to leave” (p. xii).
The result is what Redlich calls a “pathography … the study of the life and character of an individual, as influenced by disease” (p. xii). He distinguishes his approach and findings from those governed by psychoanalysis, expressing skepticism about the findings of such psychoanalytic and psychohistorical studies though acknowledging the importance to his pathography of the more general insights won by Freud, Jung, Adler, Erikson, and other psychoanalysts. Redlich is properly modest about the contribution he is making, noting that it is the job of historians to “integrate it into a comprehensive picture” (p. xv). Redlich emphasizes four areas