'Putzi', a vacilón in the court of Hitler

Gallimard's first French edition of this book was titled

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Now that it is going to be published in the paperback collection, this interesting narrative biography written by the journalist and historian Thomas Snégaroff adds a subtitle:

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It is already known that including the last name Hitler in a title (and in a review) has its hook.

It is not a forced case.

Son of a good German family dedicated to the art trade, Ernst Hanfstaengl had spent part of his youth in the United States.

He studied at Harvard and fraternized with circuits of New York's cultural elite.

But shocked by the death of his brother in the First World War, in 1921 he returned to his country.

"It was a world of desolation, ruins and uncertainties."

The following year he attends a Hitler rally in a beer hall and upon hearing his rhetoric is trapped by that racist and radical nationalism.

He is already one of them.

He is invited to a wedding of Nazi party bigwigs.

There are only a few days left until the Munich Putsch.

The giant Hanfstaengl—whom everyone calls Putzi—plays Wagner on a piano, and the boss is spellbound.

It is one of the best scenes in the book.

For a few years he was in Hitler's favour, or he thought he was part of his circle of trust, but basically Hitler took advantage of him.

From his money, from his hospitality after a few months in jail and especially from his network of contacts with well-placed people in the United Kingdom or the United States.

A network, by the way, in which anti-Semitism was commonplace.

Putzi was happy to stage a closeness to the boss that allowed him to enjoy worldly glory.

It is true that he served as press officer for a while, but although he gave off the power of influence, there were not a few who sensed that he was basically a scheming jester capable of anything so that his name appeared on the list of guests at a luxurious party. and on the page of history that would one day be written to narrate the glory of the new empire.

It seems that he lost track of how he was seen and that tragicomic split between who he was and how he was perceived ended up being the most fascinating and pathetic trait of his personality.

Until, scorned and sunk, crazy and humiliated, he ended up collaborating with American espionage during World War II.

Sometimes it seems that Snégaroff realizes that he has a megalomaniac rogue on his hands, but in others the narrator does not distance himself from his protagonist's delusions of grandeur.

In the Spanish edition the book has gained a new subtitle:

The back cover reads that it was "the symbol of a century as grandiose as it was dramatic."

Let's not go overboard!

It is one thing to sneak Hitler's name and a photograph of a swastika on the cover, and it is true that Putzi was in court when the dictator seized power, and it is true that he was a testimony and part of a certain fascination with Nazism in the United States. United, but let's not overdo it.

This non-fiction novel promises the discovery of a hidden and influential protagonist of history when, in reality, it is the biography of a quirky vacilón.

Sometimes it seems that Snégaroff realizes that he has a megalomaniac rogue on his hands, but in others the narrator does not distance himself from his protagonist's delusions of grandeur.

That misunderstanding has not been fully resolved, addressing it would invalidate the significance that is intended to be given to history.

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