In the book Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum travels the world to converse with historians, philosophers, filmmakers, and others who have attempted to make sense of Hitler’s actions, in an effort to try to find a cause for the Holocaust, He hopes to discover, he says, "if not the truth about Hitler, then some truths about what we talk about when we talk about Hitler. What it tells us about Hitler, what it tells us about ourselves." Various Hitlers emerge: Hitler as con man and brutal gangster, Hitler the unspeakable pervert, Hitler the ladies’ man, Hitler as an artist of evil. When will the hidden truth about Hitler, what Rosenbaum calls the "lost safe-deposit box," be found?
"I was ready to give up and go back,” Rosenbaum writes. He
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