Customer Reviews

The Fuhrer: Hitler's Rise to Power

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I have read over 80 books on this subject. I rate this book just under William Shirers book(Rise & Fall of Third Reich)for its completeness--up to Hitlers ascention to power. Most of what is included in the book agrees with other smaller books that are more focused on narrower segents of the period. If you want an overview with plenty of the details but don't want to try your hand at Shirer's 1600 pages then this is a great work at about 600 pages.

The Fuhrer, by Konrad Heiden, is an intriguing analysis of Hitler's rise to power that was written by one of his contemporaries. Heiden, a Socialist, who nevertheless is more objective than one would expect, seeks to show the scheming, events, and popular sentiments that led to Hitler's rise to power while at the same time foreshadowing the danger of Hitler's rule. The only departures from objectivity are those places in which Hitler is called "the Antichrist" and is said to be the true follower of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The conventional belief is that it was "the Jewish enemy" that was carrying them out, in stark contrast to Heiden's views.
Although the book is an analysis of Hitler's rise to power, it is not a comprehensive biography. It starts with events that occured before his birth and ends during the Blood Purge of 1933, in which Hitler the chancellor, orders the systematic murder of his enemies. The book does not even go as far as the start of World War II or the Holocaust, as by then, Hitler had rose to power, and his achievements went downhill from there.
The book is written in ponderous scholarly language and takes effort to read. As a fulltime student, it took me about 20 days to finish the 600 odd pages. It is replete with reported anecdotes and excerpts from Hitler's speeches, correspondences, and correspondences relating to him, enhancing and lengthening the volume. If one can avoid falling asleep and really pay attention to what is being said, one will realize the clarity and relevance of the book.
I bought this book because it was the cheapest biography of Hitler I could find, and I was not disappointed. I recommend this book to all diligent readers who desire a greater understanding of how Hitler became the Fuhrer.

The Fuhrer, by Konrad Heiden, is an intriguing analysis of Hitler's rise to power that was written by one of his contemporaries. Heiden, a Socialist, who nevertheless is more objective than one would expect, seeks to show the scheming, events, and popular sentiments that led to Hitler's rise to power while at the same time foreshadowing the danger of Hitler's rule. The only departures from objectivity are those places in which Hitler is called "the Antichrist" and is said to be the true follower of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The conventional belief is that it was "the Jewish enemy" that was carrying them out, in stark contrast to Heiden's views.
Although the book is an analysis of Hitler's rise to power, it is not a comprehensive biography. It starts with events that occured before his birth and ends during the Blood Purge of 1933, in which Hitler the chancellor, orders the systematic murder of his enemies. The book does not even go as far as the start of World War II or the Holocaust, as by then, Hitler had rose to power, and his achievements went downhill from there.
The book is written in ponderous scholarly language and takes effort to read. As a fulltime student, it took me about 20 days to finish the 600 odd pages. It is replete with reported anecdotes and excerpts from Hitler's speeches, correspondences, and correspondences relating to him, enhancing and lengthening the volume. If one can avoid falling asleep and really pay attention to what is being said, one will realize the clarity and relevance of the book.
I bought this book because it was the cheapest biography of Hitler I could find, and I was not disappointed. I recommend this book to all diligent readers who desire a greater understanding of how Hitler became the Fuhrer.

The book is insightful and most interesting, the author was a young student at the time Hitler and his followers were rising to power. It was easy to read (2 nights) and reads almost like a novel..Unlike Pang, I did not find it scholarly and ponderous (though he recommends the book despite this objection).

Now largely forgotten, Konrad Heiden's "Der Fuehrer-Hitler's Rise to Power" (1944) will most likely be a hard slog for any current reader. I suspect that it was also quite a challenge for American readers at the time of its publication. My copy contains a Book-of-the-Month club receipt from January 1945; apparently some poor Atlanta woman paid $3.12 (including mailing expenses), tucked the receipt inside the book, and after an unsuccessful attempt to read the thing put it on her shelf never to be examined again. I assume that many club members shared her experience and felt it was their patriotic duty to keep the book.

Heiden, with a union organizer father and a Jewish mother, was a journalist and a member of the Social Democrats (Germany's main non-revolutionary left-wing party). He fled Germany in 1933 for obvious reasons and eventually ended up in the United States where, late in the war, he tapped into a gold mine by writing about just the subject a War Bond buying public was ready to purchase.

Unfortunately Heiden's writing had to be converted from German to English and in the translation lost any subtlety or nuance it may have once had. And Heiden was not a historian, he did not believe in footnotes, distanced perspective, or organized examination; to say he had an ideological axe to grind would be an extreme understatement. But none of this bothered his publishers who saw major dollar signs and probably encouraged the author to give the public the portrayal of Hitler that they wanted to read; something that completely supported the Allied propaganda efforts. And contemporary reviewers no doubt saw nothing to be gained by questioning the book's accuracy or fundamental objectivity.

One reviewer glowingly noted: "Here in this book is the whole story as it never before has been told, including the so-called lost years when Hitler, a jobless dreamer, was living in a Viennese flop-house with vagrants like himself, dressed often in a dirty Jewish caftan which someone had given him, the lowest of the low... he is a nonentity personally, who can escape from nonentity only by sudden flares into greatness".

The idea that this is: "a penetrating, firsthand portrayal of Hitler's developing career .... as incisive and compelling as it was when first published..." is a considerable stretch although this description does fit the propaganda tone of the book itself.

That said the book is useful as a window into what the public was consuming when the war was in progress. It actually reveals more about the national character of his anticipated readers than of the German nation. There is an abundance of details and most of Heiden's basic facts are accurate if you can strip away his hyperbole and puffery.

Still it is more a parody of historical writing than anything else and was a considerable grind for this reader.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.