Customer Reviews

Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power.

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Der Fuehrer, by Konrad Heiden, published in 1944 by Houghton-Mifflin, is one of the best, if not the absolute best book I have read on Hitlers rise to power. From chapter one, "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion", the only history of this nefarious document's origin that I have found, Heiden gives the most detailed background history of Germany and the surrounding nations. His ability to take you from the end of WWI into the turmoil and chaos of post-war Europe is unparalleled. Being German and having lived through that time, he is able to impart an understanding and a grasp of the forces pulling the German people into this malestrom of uncertainty, desperation and chaos that brought the German people to such a level of anxiety that they could readily embrace such a figure as Hitler. For anyone interested in how one of the high cultures in Europe could degenerate into madness in such a short time, this is a "must read".

Very few books that I have read about Hitler go into this level of detail.

He was an uneducated loner, born in Austria. He was desperate to be a part of Germany and ran to fight for Germany in the first world war. He was brave under fire. He couldn't get over Germany's defeat and blamed the Social Democratic Liberals, the Unions, the Marxists and of course the Jews. He hated organised labour and never held a job.

When he was homeless and living in a men's shelter in Vienna, he wore a long raincoat and looked like the dirt poor Jewish immigrants roaming the streets of Vienna. Strangely his closest friends in the men's shelter were Jewish fellows who helped him out. While the other men in the men's shelter were out in the streets doing mundane jobs to bring in a few extra pennies, Hitler stayed indoors at the mens shelter and read up to 3 newspapers everyday, studying them in depth.

When his "Movement" (ie National Socialism) started to take off in 1929, he was an insomniac and worked right through the night. He loved eating candy and never drank, smoked or socialised much with woman. He was a small little nothing who couldn't look anyone in the eyes, until you spoke to him about race or politics. Then the man was transformed, became loud, aggressive and obnoxious. He loved to lecture people about race and National Socialism.

The book is long (700 + pages)...it goes into immense detail regarding Napoleon Bonaparte, the depression, the collapse of the German government and why the Germans of that era loved marching and military-like functions.

Strangely, prior to becoming chancellor of Germany, Hitler was terrified of the German police and of getting deported, because he was an Austrian foreigner. After the Putsch, he kept a low profile to avoid getting arrested again. As his fame grew and more and more of the ultra rich (especially in big industry like mining), financed him, he started getting into the habit of having his chaffeur drive him around Berlin aimlessly. People would get excited when they saw him and he loved the attention.

The book maintains that it was the war that transformed Hitler from a homeless nobody into a mesmerizing and charasmatic speaker. He was supposedly a political genius. He had a very low regard for all other people (from his experiences gathered in his homeless years). He loathed the German intellectuals and peasantry whether they had blonde hair and blue eyes or not. He saw no value in the life of individual people but only cared about the group value in the survival of the German volk.

It was a tough book to read. But there are not too many books written by people who actual saw Hitler rise from a nothing and a nobody to a dictator. The book was written PRIOR to the world becoming aware of the holocaust. So except for the numerous speaches of Hitler where he constantly says that "The Jew is to blame for EVERYTHING", there is not much reference to the cataclysm that occurred when this animal came to power.

I concur with the 4 other reviews here, especially the first note about the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. This book, written before the end of WWII, offers unique insights that aren't covered in most history books. I found this book on a bin of books that my college library was giving away. After a year on the shelf, my wife picked it up and brought it to my attention. It goes beyond the same cookie-cutter Hitler book that you might find in the history section. It offers a plausible narrative on the roots of the revolutions that replaced one tyrant with another. I'm not yet finished reading it and I already recommend it.