Hitler's Thirty Days to Power
January 1933
(amazon)Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (View Bio)
Hardcover: Addison Wesley, 1996; Paperback: Addison Wesley, 1997.
This masterful work by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.—the late Stillé Professor of History at Yale University—is a riveting, definitive, moment by moment account of the thirty days preceding Hitler's rise to power. It was not foreordained. You will not find airy theorizing about ineluctable social forces here. You will read the terrifying story of how Hitler's brinksmanship, his nerve, luck, and his opponents' weakness at key moments changed history. As a study of Machiavellian tactics and critical details, this book shows how timing, strategy, individual nerve and individual character are decisive to history. Character does count, and this book is a case study of what can happen when it is lacking.
"[T]he best and fullest account of the 'make or break' month of January 1933, which, against the odds, and at the last moment, saw Hitler emerge as German Chancellor." — Sir Alan Bullock
"Turner's blow-by-blow account ...is first-rate. A gripping, foreboding narrative." — Booklist
"Turner presents a compelling day-by-day account of the final month of unlikely parliamentary maneuvers that led to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Germany's chancellor in January 1933.... Turner gives a chilling account of how the failure of democratic processes can give rise to dictatorship." — Kirkus Reviews
"[HITLER'S THIRTY DAYS TO POWER] represents powerful confirmation of the value of conventional political history and, more specifically, of the study of high politics." — Times Literary Supplement
