[A_C_Slater]

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But now that the topic of fiction has arisen, how do you feel about claims that your favorite biography, Life and Death of Adolf Hitler is itself largely fiction? I quote from one (typical) Amazon review:

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Mr. Payne is not out to lie or deceive. But there are many parts of his book which, we now know (and he could have known when he wrote his book) that are based not on actual fact, but on bogus, sensational "biographies" of Hitler which have nothing to do with the truth.

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Some of these reviews go on to tear Mr. Payne's book to absolute shreds when it comes to accuracy.

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Payne writes well, but entire chapters are completely fabricated, thus making the book worthless. A salient example is chapter 6 where Hitler makes a year-long visit to Liverpool to visit his brother. This is the most embarrassing idiocy to ever appear in a Hitler biography (and there's loads of competition for this dubious distinction).
Hitler was never in England, as his apartment records clearly show from Vienna.

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I'm not hating on you, this has been a great thread, I just thought you'd like to know.

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Payne never states Hitler was in England for a year. It was four or five months. And one can leave an apartment for that amount of time and still be listed as living there if you give no notice of a change of address.

At my old apt I used to get calls and mail from people looking for the previous tenant the entire year I lived there.

All I know is that Robert Payne wrote many bios. He did a Life and Death of Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, and probably a few others. So I figure he is a prominent Historian, unless he would have the balls to just make all this stuff up about everyone he ever wrote about.

And any biographer could be claimed to not really know what was going on? How could they unless they witness events in the flesh or have an offical government record of such events? Only Speer is able to acheive that, but even in that case he is Hitler's underling and could be trying to save face in many instances.

No one ever has a complete view of History. Any History teacher will tell you that.