Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

It is 1864. An obscure French lawyer, writing a satire against NapoleonIII, proclaims the coming of an Anti-Christ who shall dominate theworld. He even lays down the principles of domination. 'We shall createunrest, struggle and hate. ... In our arsenal we carry a boundlessambition, relentless hatred. . . . If any state dares to resist us; if itsneighbors make common cause with it against us, we shall unleash aworld war.'This book, entitled 'A Dialogue in Hell,' was suppressed and the authorforgotten. Many years later copies fell into the hands of a group ofunscrupulous Russian officials, who rewrote it, making its satire appearas a Jewish plot for world domination, renamed it 'The Protocols of theWise Men of Zion,' and published it as a weapon in a palace conspiracy.As the final step in this strange chain of events, a copy of the forgeryfell into the hands of Alfred Rosenberg, who brought it, in 1919, toMunich, where officers of the broken German Army were conspiringagainst the democratic government, and were looking for a man whocould successfully betray the workers and for a philosophy with whichto seduce them.Thus came together by chance the ingredients that were later to shatterthe Old World into chaos — Ernst Roehm, the brilliant butunscrupulous leader of the officers, Rosenberg, with a formula for worlddomination, and Hitler, the proletarian with the raging voice who couldput that formula into effect.This dramatic story is told for the first time by Konrad Heiden in 'DerFuehrer.' Step by step, he shows the fatal sequence of events leading,with diabolic logic, from that point to the present World War. Behindthe figures of Hitler and the men around him, we see a sick Europe,creating, feeding, and maturing the Nazi growth.As a member of the staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung Konrad Heiden wasone of the first writers to take a stand against Naziism. He is the authorof The History of National Socialism.'Konrad Heiden has supplemented his first-hand observations with a fileof early Hitler material, most of it never before translated. His is theonly book to give the whole story of Hitler's rise to power from the verybeginning to the day when the blood purge eliminated the lastopposition and left him absolute dictator of Germany.'Der Fuehrer' is not only a profound and revealing narrative, but a greathistoric document essential for an understanding of the history that isbeing created before our eyes.