The Castle in the Forest

There are those that suggest merely to look at a childhood photograph of Adolf Hitler is sacrilege. It is to search for innocence within the pale blue eyes, and from that comes a journey of reasoning and justification for later events.

Norman Mailer isn't a subscriber to such censorship, having entered Hitler's bloodline two generations before young Adi was born in 1889, and then sticking with the future Nazi leader's formative childhood years, in the narrative of his new book. What we find is a stinking cess pool of incest, petty thuggery, piety and rage - and that's well before the cataclysmic events described when Adolf is conceived by Alois Hitler and his wife, 'daughter' and niece, Klara.
The book begins with narrator DT introducing himself as an SS officer in 1930s Germany, but later identifying himself as a spirit agent of the Devil. Inspired by faded photographs and an extensive bibliography, Mailer lets his incredible, base imagination run wild from the 19th century Austrian `farmhouse trash' through to Adolf's adolescence.
However, Mailer, and DT, are far too cute to exaggerate any particular experiences that sealed Adolf's fate, and there is nothing to suggest he is the son of the Devil, as others have interpreted.
Adolf's early childhood is very normal, but he is skilfully manipulated by the devil in his mind to take the very worst from each incident - whether that be a beating, a slur from his parents, his pompous father's worries over being down in a deal or a school lesson on the Teutonic knights.