From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler’s Private Library a dramatic recounting of
the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power when the Nazi leader teetered between
triumph and ruin In the summer of 1932 the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One
in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler’s National Socialists surged at
the polls. Paul von Hindenburg an aging war hero and avowed monarchist was a reluctant
president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the
prospect of a Reichstag majority and the path to political power. But instead the Nazis lost
two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and financial backers withdrew the Nazi Party
threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished.
Yet somehow in a few brief weeks he was chancellor of Germany. In facinating detail and with
previously un-accessed archival materials Timothy W. Ryback tells the remarkable story of
Hitler’s dismantling of democracy through democratic process. He provides fresh perspective and
insights into Hitler’s personal and professional lives in these months in all their complexity
and uncertainty—backroom deals unlikely alliances stunning betrayals an ill-timed tax audit
and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever. Above all Ryback details why a wearied
Hindenburg who disdained the Bohemian corporal ” ultimately decided to appoint Hitler
chancellor in January 1933. Within weeks Germany was no longer a democracy.
