Ever wondered what an evil dictator reads. Would you burn your books if you found out they were Hitler’s favourites.
“He ranked Don Quixote, along with Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gulliver’s Travels, among the great works of world literature. “Each of them is a grandiose idea unto itself,” he said. In Robinson Crusoe he perceived “the development of the entire history of mankind”. Don Quixote captured “ingeniously” the end of an era. He was especially impressed by Gustave Doré’s depictions of Cervantes’s delusion-plagued hero.”…
He was versed in the Holy Scriptures and owned a particularly handsome tome with “Worte Christi” (Words of Christ) embossed in gold on a cream-coloured calfskin cover that even today remains as smooth as silk. He also owned a German translation of Henry Ford’s anti-semitic tract The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem and a 1931 handbook on poison gas, with a chapter detailing the qualities and effects of prussic acid, the homicidal asphyxiant marketed commercially as Zyklon B. On his bedstand, he kept a well-thumbed copy of Wilhelm Busch’s mischievous cartoon duo Max and Moritz.