"Hitler's War" by David Irving

“What Hitler did not order, or did not learn, does not figure in this book,” explains the author.

The first that the reader knows of a plot against Hitler's life is when Count von Stauffenberg's bomb explodes beneath the table at the Führer's headquarters. It is an unusual technique, but it works. The book sold 25,000 copies in its first UK hardback edition, and it was often reprinted and translated. It became an approved reference point at West Point and Sandhurst, and it figures prominently in university libraries around the world, because it quotes documents that other historians have failed to find.

Reviews:

Hugh Trevor-Roper

"No praise can be too high for [Mr. Irving's ] indefatigable scholarly industry: he has sought and found scores of new sources, including many private diaries. He has also tested hitherto accepted documents and discarded many of them as forgeries. His portrait of Hitler is thus, he claims, firmly based on solid primary evidence. An exact and scrupulous historian."

The Times

"The reader is gripped at once, because the writer is so obviously in his element; he is there...For he is presenting the events of 1939-45 'as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk.' In this it seems to me he is brilliantly successful..."

Publishers Weekly

"This massive volume is a model of careful scholarship, historical objectivity and readability...Irving could scarcelty be described as a Hitler fan, but he does enable us to understand why the German leader held such absolute power for so long."