Adolf Hitler loved to read. This may not surprise you. What he read, however, surely will. The shelves of Hitler’s private library were burdened with more than 16,000 books. Military history was well represented alongside nationalist and anti-Semitic literature. But there were romance novelettes too, which he is said to have covered with plain paper to obscure them. His popular fiction collection, hundreds strong, also included cowboy-and-Indian tales, British thrillers, and detective stories. There were studies of the Catholic Church and the paranormal. There were the works of philosophers and playwrights. Hitler was well—or at least widely—read, and that is troubling.

In an essay for the New York Review of Books, John Gross considers Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, a new book by Timothy W. Ryback, and searches for new light in Hitler’s library. Ultimately he fails, and you can hardly blame him. He explains:

“Life for historians would be a lot easier if the Nazi’s had been barbaric in every respect—if their only reaction to the word 'culture' had been to reach for their guns. Often, of course, they were worse than barbaric; but they also represented a hideous distortion of culture rather than just a flat turning away from it. And this is as true of Hitler as of any of his followers. Cruelty, resentment, and the lust for power weren’t the only things driving him. He needed to believe in himself as a thinker as well.”

Source: New York Review of Books