Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to recognize the young Adolf Hitler's political ingenuity and his potential. In this eyewitness account of his rise to power, the author shows how the unsophisticated, but dangerously charismatic, Hitler turned a volatile situation in Europe to his own advantage. A contemporary interpretation of why and how, by 1934, Germany was in the thrall of Hitler's perverse and self-serving ideology.