Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to hear the young Adolf Hitler's rousing orations and to recognize his political ingenuity and perverse, self-serving ideology. As a staff reporter on the Frankfurter Zeitung, Heiden was one of the first writers to take a stand against Nazism, and his is the only contemporary document to give the whole story of Hitler's rise to power from the very beginning to the day in 1934 when the Blood Purge eliminated the last opposition, leaving him absolute dictator of Germany. As Heiden states, "his path of murder and violence was, in accordance with Hitler's beliefs, the right path to greatness." First published at the height of the Second World War, this new edition of Heiden's work, which the New York Times Book Review called "remorselessly, ruthlessly objective," shows it to be not only a profound and revealing narrative but also an important historical document essential to both historian and layman for a greater understanding of the calamitous events that dominated the twentieth century.

Translated by: Ralph Manheim
Foreword by: Richard Overy