My Battle Against Hitler

How does a person become Hitler’s enemy number one? Not through espionage or violence, it turns out, but by striking fearlessly at the intellectual and spiritual roots of National Socialism. Dietrich von Hildebrand devoted the full force of his intellect to breaking the deadly spell of Nazism that ensnared so many of his beloved countrymen.

Through his love of truth and his brave opposition to a public culture of deception, he bore witness to values that we still share. Philosophy, for von Hildebrand, was a way of life and a commitment to freedom, in the face of ideologies that promise utopia while causing only destruction and death.
Sir Roger Scruton | From the Foreword to the book

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My Battle Against Hitler Book Launch

Hildebrand Project President and Founder John Henry Crosby is joined by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Eric Metaxas, Michael Novak, and Rabbi Meir Soloveichick to discuss the powerful witness of Dietrich von Hildebrand against the Nazi ideology.

Word on Fire Podcast

Tod Worner and John Henry Crosby discuss the importance of Hildebrand’s opposition to the Nazis on Word on Fire’s Evangelization and Culture podcast.

Reviews & Commentary

From scholars, students, and readers

Hildebrand gives us a model of phenomenological philosophy of history in actu exercitu, through a philosophical interpretation of a particular historical situation in which he was personally involved: the struggle with Hitler that was, at the same time, a battle for the dignity of man and a battle for the truth of the German Spirit.

Rocco Buttiglione

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

As the memoir unfolds, even von Hildebrand’s wistful monarchism evaporates under the force of his philosophical personalism and extraordinary faith. Here is a philosopher pushed into anti-Nazism precisely by the power of his new philosophical view. If Camus is counted as the father of political engagement, then he should be seen as the stepchild of von Hildebrand, who pioneered the place of the philosopher as a public and political nemesis to Nazism.

Charles R. Gallagher, SJ

America Magazine

We need witnesses like Hildebrand to keep us on track amid the many conflicting ideas that fill our world today.

Luke Arredondo

Ignitum Today

There is but one man who can stand with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both in intellectual brilliance and in bravery toward the Nazis; that man is Dietrich von Hildebrand. I am privileged to strongly recommend this important book as a superb introduction to this great hero of the faith.

Eric Metaxas

This memoir reveals the strength of character that von Hildebrand bravely displaced throughout his twenty-year battle against of the greatest evils of his age. Even amid significant personal danger, he never wavered in his commitment to the truth. We remember Dietrich von Hildebrand’s intellectual contributions, but let us also recall his witness to human dignity in the face of evil.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

It is an account filled with courage and determination as von Hildebrand fights the grave evils of the Nazis until the final days when he must flee Austria to avoid assassination.

Terrence Nollen

Southern Nebraska Register

Dietrich von Hildebrand was brave in his public writings against the Nazis, brave in his hair-raising escape from Vienna in 1938. He was also bold and uncompromising in his convictions about responsibility, love, and liberty. This book brings the bold von Hildebrand back into our midst.

Michael Novak

These writings are an essential witness to the power of a good conscience. Knowing he spoke the truth, Hildebrand possessed the rare freedom of those who know their cause will stand under the lens of the eternal.

Erna Albertz

Plough

One cannot help but be struck by the deep thoughtfulness that permeated in the dramatic life of von Hildebrand and his criticism of Nazism. Because of his love of truth, a love that came from his hopeful faith and faithful reason, he was able to suffer any consequences that was born from that love.

Apolonio Latar

Communion & Liberation