Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to hear the youngAdolf Hitler's rousing orations and to recognize his political ingenuityand perverse, self-serving ideology. As a staff reporter onthe <em>Frankfurter Zeitung</em>, Heiden was one of the first writers to takea stand against Nazism, and his is the only contemporary documentto give the whole story of Hitler's rise to power from the verybeginning to the day in 1934 when the Blood Purge eliminatedthe last opposition, leaving him absolute dictator of Germany. AsHeiden states, “his path of murder and violence was, in accordancewith Hitler's beliefs, the right path to greatness.” <p>First published at the height of the Second World War, this newedition of Heiden's work, which the <em>New York Times Book Review</em>called “remorselessly, ruthlessly objective,” shows it to be not onlya profound and revealing narrative but also an important historicaldocument essential to both historian and layman for a greater understandingof the calamitous events that dominated the twentiethcentury.</p>