Nothing in this audiobook's title tells you what it is. The listing reads Adolf Hitler, files the entry under biography with a Historical tag, and stops there. The description then supplies the rest of the sentence: Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall, "written and read by Spike Milligan," a comic account of a gunner who spent the war being conspicuously unsuited to soldiering. Three hours and twenty-four minutes of it, spoken by the man who lived through it.
He Wasn't on the Train, the Joke Goes
Milligan's method shows up in the first line the description quotes, and it is not a joke about Hitler at all. At Victoria station a railway officer hands the new recruit a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". The recruit then searches every compartment of the train, "but he wasn't on the train . . ." The gag runs entirely on literalism. A man is told who his enemy is and takes the instruction at face value, which is more or less what the army did to him for the duration.
Comedy of that shape survives being spoken better than almost any other prose. The description samples four more of them: the outbreak of war in 1939 ("it must have been something we said"), the attempt to dodge enlistment ("time for my appendicitus, I thought"), gunner training in Bexhill ("There was one drawback. No ammunition"), and the landing at Algiers in 1943 ("I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway"). Each of those is a timing joke. Timing is the one thing a page cannot supply and a voice can.
Three hours and twenty-four minutes is short enough to finish in an afternoon and long enough to register the second register underneath the first. James Rathbun, writing in November 2023, put it neatly: it was "refreshing to see war from the perspective of a less than enthusiastic soldier." The book is funny about the army and it is not funny about the war, and the gap between those two positions is where the writing actually lives.
Milligan Wrote It and Read It Himself
Penguin states the case in the description with unusual directness, calling this "the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall written and read by Spike Milligan." Written and read. For a book whose humor is assembled out of pauses and understatement, having the writer deliver it removes the largest variable in comic audio: a hired reader guessing where the beat is supposed to fall.
Performance is the whole point with this particular author. The description identifies him as "most famous as writer and star of The Goon Show," which locates his reputation in performance, well away from the page. A memoir by somebody whose living was made in front of a microphone, delivered by that same somebody, sits considerably closer to the original than any printed edition could manage.
Writing in July 2020, a reviewer signing as Phred makes the case for the recording without intending to. Phred reports that the drawings running through the book "do not show well on a Kindle Viewer," and compares them unfavorably with a paperback of the fourth volume, where the photographs come out crisper. That is a genuine loss, and it is a loss no recording can repair. Anyone who wants the pictures will need a print copy open beside the listening.
Two Reviews Signed Kindle Customer, Opposite Verdicts
Two of the five responses are signed Kindle Customer, and between them they hold both ends of the column. One awarded five stars, describing an uncle handing over these books at eleven or twelve, discovering the show years afterward, and rereading them several times since. The other awarded three, headed the entry "Past its sell-by date?" and reported writing that produced "mild smiles with a minimum of guffaws." Identical display names, opposite verdicts, and no way for a browser to tell one from the other.
Titles matter more than usual on this page. The description renders the full one as Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall, with a lowercase his, while Phred writes it with a capital His. Neither version reaches the title field, which stops after the first two words. A catalog entry reading Adolf Hitler under a Historical tag will be found by people hunting a biography of Hitler and missed by everybody hunting for what this book actually is.
The Humor Was Dated, One Fan Admits
Sales figures in the copy cover the whole sequence, not this volume alone. "They have sold over 4.5 million copies," the description says of the war memoirs collectively. Reviewers confirm the shape from the other direction: one is already "interested in book two," another compares this against a paperback of Book 4, and a third bought "'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?'" and pronounced it "Not as good." The series field says Milligan Memoirs, number one, so the running order at least is legible from the page. Penguin brought the recording out in February 2016 and the earliest response here dates from March 2017, so this column has been filling slowly across years, with no launch wave behind it at all.
Dissent in the column deserves taking seriously. The three-star response comes from a reader who admires the author's other work, names the show and the novel Puckoon as things enjoyed, and still found this first volume thin. "Maybe the humor was dated," it offers, alongside a suspicion that much of it belonged to the "you had to be there" category. That is the most useful warning on the page precisely because it is not written by a hostile reader, and it is the only response here that engages with whether the comedy still works, the question a buyer most wants answered.
Read the Title Literally, Then Read It Twice
Followers of the show are the natural constituency and they have clearly arrived already, judging by the column. Past them, this suits anyone who wants a war book that refuses the register war books normally adopt, and anyone with a free afternoon who has never encountered this kind of service comedy. It also functions as an entry point, since this is volume one and the reviewers confirm that more of them are waiting.
Anyone who reads the title literally should read it twice. The recording holds three hours and twenty-four minutes of a gunner failing at soldiering, not a study of the man named in it, and the biography shelf under this entry is going to mislead somebody. Come for the war history and you will leave annoyed.
Key Details
- Read by: The credit is confirmed in the copy itself, where Spike Milligan is named as writer and reader, which for comedy assembled out of timing removes the biggest variable.
- At its heart: army incompetence, the Second World War at a reluctant gunner's eye level, understatement used as a survival tactic
- Vibe: Deadpan and quick, with the war going on just outside the frame
- Short version: Three hours and change of first-rate service comedy, badly disguised by a title field that stops too early.
