Joachim C. Fest was born in Berlin in 1926. After the Second World War, in which he served and was taken prisoner, he joined the radio station RIAS-Berlin, where he became the head of the Department of Contemporary History. In 1961 he became the Editor-in-Chief of TV for Norddeutscher Rundfunk. His important study, Hitler, was first published in England in 1974 and is also published by Penguin.