Takeover
Hitler's Final Rise to Power
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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.
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Historian Ryback (Hitler's First Victims) presents a riveting blow-by-blow account of the six months leading up to Adolf Hitler's January 1933 appointment as Germany's chancellor. Describing a nation in disarray, Ryback notes an "epidemic of murder sweeping the country" at the hands of partisan paramilitaries. Meanwhile the Nazi party, though it had just claimed the largest share of votes in July 1932 elections, was short of an overall majority. The tempered win led to Hitler entering the "rarefied" orbit of Kurt von Schleicher, "the ultimate Berlin power broker" who worked toward securing Hitler the chancellorship, convinced it would "lure the National Socialist leader away from the ‘all or nothing' faction of his movement." As Ryback illustrates, this scheme faced multiple obstacles. Germany's president Paul von Hindenburg, concerned for democracy, refused to appoint Hitler. Then, November elections saw the Nazis lose two million votes from July, causing "fissures in party leadership." By the end of the year, Hitler was viewed by some as "a man with a great future behind him." In Ryback's propulsive narrative, the quick turnaround—brought about by multiple small compounding vagaries of breaking news, personality quirks, and political horse-trading—that resulted in Hitler being appointed chancellor by Hindenburg at the end of January makes for a chilling climax. It's a dire and remarkably astute depiction of how fickle and contingent the forces of history can be.
