Bidspirit auction | Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to

Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. New York, 1944 - First English edition - Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power, by the German-Jewish journalist and historian Konrad Heiden - a comprehensive historical account of the violent methods employed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party on their path to seizing power - a firsthand account by an author who was closely acquainted with the senior leadership. Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1944 - First American edition. Rare. An important publication documenting, step by step, the rise of the Nazi Party - a detailed account of the sinister sequence of internal events, beginning with the adoption of the antisemitic conspiracy theory as presented in ”The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a foundational text, through the association of Ernst Röhm, Rosenberg, and Adolf Hitler in the formation of the Nazi Party, and culminating in the day of the bloody purge, with the elimination of Adolf Hitler's opponents and the Nazi Party's rise to power. The author witnessed the early developments within the Nazi movement at close range. As early as 1923, he headed a small democratic organization at the University of Munich and organized protest marches against Adolf Hitler. He and his associates were among the first to engage in street battles against the ”Brownshirts”, years before their power grew to unprecedented proportions. (The author describes himself as the ”oldest anti-Nazi in the United States”). Already in those early years, he describes the unprecedented brutality of the Nazis. In their struggles against their adversaries, even then they executed their opponents in various bizarre and brutal ways, which he describes horrifyingly in his book. The book focuses on events that took place in the streets of Germany itself, at the level of the rank-and-file operatives who terrorized and intimidated opponents of Nazism, those who were directly responsible for spreading terror long before the Nazi Party was transformed from a ”gang of criminals” into an organized political and military body. At the level of the organized party, Heiden traces Hitler's early years in Vienna and Munich and details the ideological influences that shaped his distorted worldview. He provides an extensive account of the party's early decades in Munich, the transformation of the SA into an instrument of street violence, and the failed attempt to overthrow the government in the Beer Hall Putsch. He also analyzes the propaganda tactics of Hitler and Joseph Goebbels - how they exploited the Great Depression of 1929, unemployment, and German resentment over the Treaty of Versailles in order to appeal to the masses. He exposes the intrigues, political deals, and interests of the conservative elites (industrialists, the military, and President Hindenburg), who mistakenly believed they could ”harness” Hitler and control him when they agreed to appoint him Chancellor in January 1933. He also documents the events behind the scenes, such as the Reichstag fire, the Enabling Act, and the ”Night of the Long Knives” (June 1934), during which Hitler eliminated his internal rivals (including Ernst Röhm) and consolidated his absolute rule. Heiden attended rallies, closely followed the leading figures in Munich and Berlin, and personally knew some of the movement's leaders and the journalists who covered them. In addition to his personal experience and proximity to the people and events, he based his book on rare archival material, original documents, and firsthand interviews with people who knew Hitler closely during the 1920s. His ability to combine unvarnished historical facts with a psychological understanding of the German public made the book the first analytical bible on the rise of the Third Reich. In his book, he succeeded in demonstrating how the Third Reich was, in fact, little more than a gang of gangsters that managed to seize control of a country. Following the Nazis' rise to power in 1933, Heiden was forced to flee Germany because of his Jewish origins and anti-Nazi views, and continued to write and expose the crimes of the regime in Switzerland, France, and later in the United States. Heiden is regarded as Hitler's first serious biographer and as the world's leading expert on the Nazi movement at the time. He was the one who coined and popularized the derogatory term ”Nazi” as a common abbreviation. The translator, Ralph Manheim, was also the authoritative English translator of Mein Kampf. This book became an international bestseller immediately upon its publication in 1944, as it provided the American and British public with the most thorough and reliable analysis of the question, ”How did the Third Reich arise?” Rare. Only a few copies listed in the WorldCat global library catalog. [10], 788 pages. Hardcover with the original dust jacket. Wear to the dust jacket. Good condition.