the “Maestro,” is as intense as his contempt for his chief opponent, God, whom he labels the “Dummkopf.” For D.T., the angels in God’s employ are a persistent annoyance; he terms them “Cudgels.” Those readers who might object to Mailer’s approach to his subject will have to contend with the effectiveness with which he carries it out. Even when examining the early life of Hitler, it is immensely difficult to separate the child from the man: One is tempted to view every small event in his childhood as a pattern for the twisted ideology of the adult. By creating D.T., Mailer apparently displaces the evil of the adult Hitler upon an outside agent. The text suggests that Dieter plays a crucial role in Hitler’s formative years. Mailer is treading a very dangerous line here. If evil were merely viewed as a matter of intervention from a third party at opportune moments, then individuals such as Hitler would be bereft of free will. Perpetrators would be seen as passive victims of circumstances rather than as active participants. What ultimately allows Mailer’s approach to work is the fact that he is not trying to explain the evil deeds of the real man. Rather, the medium of fiction allows Mailer the freedom to explore what is ultimately a mystery. Mailer, moreover, takes pains to highlight the fictional nature of his text. If one can fault him for the device of an outside agency in the incubation of evil, a close reading suggests that Dieter’s might not be the most reliable account of Hitler’s life. When D.T. begins his narrative of the Hitler family, he likens himself to “a conventional novelist of the old school.” Mailer, of course, is indulging in a sly wink to the reader regarding the author’s relationship to his character, but his more serious purpose is to put the reader on notice regarding Dieter’s reliability. If one is forced to rely upon a narrator who prides himself upon deception and whose master is the very embodiment of deceit, then the story itself must be called into question.

The reliability of the narrator also calls into question the very premise of this fictional account of Hitler. That premise is concerned with the role of incest in the generation of the Hitler family tree. Dieter clearly states that it was Heinrich Himmler, his superior in the SS, who was obsessed with proving that Hitler’s strength as a leader sprang from the incest in his family lineage. The narrator never bothers to articulate the differenceif anybetween the stories he creates for his military superior and the tale he ultimately weaves for the reader. It is a masterpiece of obfuscation, a wry and subtle means of deconstructing the very tale it purports to tell.

That tale begins with the birth of Hitler’s father, Alois Schicklgruber, in 1838 into a life of wretched rural poverty in Austria. By the standards of the time, it was an outwardly successful life, for Alois manages to find his way into the imperial customs service and gradually works his way into a position of great power and high rank without the benefit of patronage. On the surface, this typical nineteenth century rags-to-riches story embodies what is surely the most enduring economic myth of the Western consciousness. It is a tale that charts the population shift from farms to cities at the inception of the industrial revolution. However, Mailer’s tale performs a reversal of this classic success story, for D.T. constructs a Hitler family tree that is undermined by the taint of incest. Alois has sexual relations with his sisters, and his third and final marriagethe one that produces Adolfis to Klara, who could be his niece or his daughter.

Again, one must keep in mind that Dieter is an unreliable narrator and that this incestuous history is invented. Mailer, ever the master storyteller, blurs the historical record in order to exploit the warped Nazi mind-set to which Dieter himself is pandering. If the classic pose of a novelist is to lie in order to tell a more fundamental truth, then Mailer complicates the process by having the presumptive liar, Dieter, affirm the truth to the reader by lying to his superiors. The net effect at the immediate level of Alois’s character is a profusion of deceits, both great and small, in a bitterly ironic life: While he conceals his incestuous relationships, he nevertheless excels in his career in the customs service, a career that rests upon his ability to detect deceit as practiced by smugglers. If one can quibble with Mailer regarding some of the invented details in his tale, one can only admire the skill with which the deception he invests in Alois becomes a pattern for the young Adolf and the adult führer. The immoral and criminal behavior of this minor government official, who consistently places Emperor Franz Joseph above God, foreshadows the depraved son who will be responsible for the Holocaust.

Then there is Mailer’s vision of the young Hitler himself, a portrait that captures the essence of the future dictator. The violent, childish outbursts of the adult chancellor are suggested in the arrested infantile behavior of Mailer’s Adolf, with his insatiable desire for sweets and his fascination with his own excrement. When Hitler feels that his parents pay too much attention to his younger brother Edmund, Mailer has him dispatching the little boy by infecting him with measles. It is an invented detail, but this crucial insight into Adolf’s character harkens back to the biblical tale of Cain’s slaying of Abel. In Hitler’s case, this fictitious murder cleverly anticipates the criminal actions of the adult. The implications are obvious: If one is willing to kill one’s brother, then one has no scruples regarding the annihilation of others. It is an act that goes to the core of Mailer’s book, which has to do with the nature of power in general and how Adolf Hitler came to acquire it. Mailer reinforces this idea by portraying young Adolf as a budding military strategist in his scraps with local urchins. The fact that Adolf realizes that he caused his brother’s demise functions as a fundamental shift in his zeal for power. If Alois could claim that the emperor was more important than God, Mailer’s young Hitler creates a psyche that views itself as a god. With chilling effectiveness, The Castle in the Forest presents a monster in the making.