THE YOUNG HITLER I KNEW (298 pp.) —August Kubizek—Houghton Mifflin ($4). The pale young man stood on a hilltop under the night sky, ranting at the stars. He had just seen a performance of Wagner’s ...

Much of Adolf Hitlers early life especially his late teenage years in the Austrian cities of Linz and Vienna remains shrouded in obscurity. For decades, Hitler biographers have relied on the memoirs ...