The Secret Journals of Adolf Hitler: Volume 1 – The Anointed goes where no other novel I’ve read has gone before: inside the head of the most notorious monster in the history of the human race, a man who either directly or indirecty led to the deaths of an estimated 50 and 80 million people.

A.G. Morgan introduces us to the four-year-old Hitler the day he is rescued from drowning, after he fell though the ice of a frozen river. It was impossible not wonder what terrors might have been avoided had Hitler the child perished that day.

That the boy is troubled is obvious. He paints his father as a sadistic brute and his mother as a saint. He is self-centered, devoid of empathy, and, as he grows older, his delusions of grandeur and the belief that he is anointed to save Germany become overwhelming.

Those around the young Hitler simply laugh off his grandiose claims and bizzarre behavior. Today, such a child would be sent to therapy in order to sort out their deranged and sometimes violent actions. What’s clear is that Hitler, a puny boy who felt bullied and betrayed by most everyone he came in contact with, would carry rage and insecurity throughout the course of his life.

I have studied a great deal about Hitler’s rise and fall and, as a teacher, have had the opportunity to share my findings with my students. I am also a former reporter. I mention these facts because I am extremely impressed with Morgan’s extensive research on the dictator and his times.

It must have been difficult for Morgan to insert herself inside the mind of such a repugnant individual. Hitler’s thoughts on race issues are noxious, and are rendered even more obscene when he shares them publically, giving voice to his dream of racial purity and his belief in the superiority of the Aryan people.

In a different time and place, Hitler might have died a homeless beggar, muttering to himself in the streets. In fact, for several years after his dream of becoming a famous painter dissolved when he was not accepted into art school, Hitler was starving and destitute. But he lived in post-World War I Germany, beaten to a pulp by the unyielding Treaty of Versailles, which left the country in tatters.  Germany was the perfect breeding ground for Hitler. A nation of desperate people, distrusting of the establishment they blamed for losing the war, and eager for scapegoats they could condemn for their own failures.

The Secret Journals of Adolf Hitler: Volume 1 – The Anointed paints a chilling portrait of the molding of a megalomaniac. The book ends with Hitler in prison, following the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Book two in the series is The Struggle. I plan on reading that one, as well.

Here’s a look at my novel A Light in the Desert which is set for release on

November 6, 2018.

Mystery/Suspense

Blank Slate Press/Amphorae Publishing Group

298 Pages

Price: $16.95 Paperback, $9.99 eBook

http://www.midpointtrade.com/book_detail.php?book_id=261955

As a Vietnam veteran and former Special Forces sniper descends into the throes of mental illness, he latches onto a lonely pregnant teenager and a group of Pentecostal zealots – the Children of Light – who have been waiting over thirty years in the Arizona desert for Armageddon. When the Amtrak Sunset Limited, a passenger train en route to Los Angeles, is derailed in their midst in a deadly act of sabotage, their lives are thrown into turmoil. As the search for the saboteurs heats up, the authorities uncover more questions than answers. And then the girl vanishes. As the sniper struggles to maintain his sanity, a child is about to be born in the wilderness.