Ian Kershaw does what every other historian of the Nazi period has wanted to, but fallen short of, he gets somewhere inside the man.
Delving under the complex myth of the Fuhrer Cult, we see the young Adolph, bullied by his father, lazy but convinced he is pre-destined to something special.
From reading this text you suddenly realise that this demon from history was a real flesh and bones person, he had a loving mother, family, friends, a past and a place in the scheme of things.
The book skillfully changes from this search for the person behind the image, to the way the image was thought up, contrived, turned into an ideology in it's own right.
We get into Hitlers party and Hitlers Germany, and find that it wasn't the perfect, trains always running on time system we grew up hearing about. Government was haphazard at best, conflicting almost constantly as Hitler played off all his undelings against each other.
The war years are presented as they happened, the reasons for the final defeat brings the tale back to the story of the man, and his sad, deserved, end.