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"Using letters, diaries, and memoirs, Metcalfe distills the personalities, viewpoints, and day-to-day reactions of five alert and often directly involved witnesses to Hitler's consolidation of power. They are: U.S. Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, and his high-spirited daughter, Martha; Bella Fromm, a glamorous German society columnist who was Jewish and made no secret of it; Ernest Hanfstaengl, Hitler's somewhat buffoonish foreign-press chief; and Rudolf Diels, the first head of the Gestapo." -Publishers Weekly
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Reviews
"The book seeks to show the infancy of the Nazi movement; the time when it was a competitor for power instead of a monopolist and the time when even many decent people were uncertain as to its real intentions. The best way to describe this book, and incidentally of recommending it, is to say that it is an essay on the messiness of history."
Christopher Hitchens, Newsday
"There is a twofold lesson to be gained from this book: never predict that a fanatic cannot attain supreme power, and never think that the achievement of power will moderate him. Personal papers, memoirs, and news articles. Metcalfe fashions a novelistic narrative that makes for fluent reading. Metcalfe highlights the mechanisms people use to incorporate radical change, in this case radical evil,
Christian Science Monitor