1924: The Year That Made Hitler

by Peter Ross Range

Overview

The dark story of Adolf Hitler's life in 1924 — the year that made a monster.

Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany's historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich.

Everything that would come — the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea — all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in prison and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It was a year of deep reading and intensive writing, a year of courtroom speeches and a treason trial, a year of slowly walking gravel paths and spouting ideology while working feverishly on the book that became his manifesto: Mein Kampf.

Until now, no one has fully examined this single and pivotal period of Hitler's life. In 1924, Peter Ross Range richly depicts the stories and scenes of a year vital to understanding the man and the brutality he wrought in a war that changed the world forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316384032
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Peter Ross Range is a world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, he has written extensively for Time, the New York Times, National Geographic, the London Sunday Times Magazine, Playboy, and U.S. News & World Report, where he was a White House correspondent.

He has also been an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, and a Distinguished International Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina Journalism School. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Unfathomable Ascent 1

Chapter 1 Discovering the Mission 7

Chapter 2 The Charmed Circle 26

Chapter 3 The Mounting Pressure 40

Chapter 4 A Hot Autumn 53

Chapter 5 The Putsch 71

Chapter 6 Hitting Bottom 97

Chapter 7 A Trial for Treason 123

Chapter 8 The Judgment of History 146

Chapter 9 Rearranging the World 184

Chapter 10 The Boss 198

Chapter 11 The Holy Book 214

Chapter 12 A Second Chance 239

Chapter 13 Starting Over 251

Epilogue: What Finally Happened 257

Acknowledgments 271

Notes 275

Bibliography 295

Index 305

Editorial Reviews

01/01/2016
Journalist Range (A Killer in the Family) provides a detailed account of Adolf Hitler's career and the evolution of his ideology prior to the ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and through his subsequent trial and imprisonment, during which he wrote Mein Kampf, published in 1925. The year 1924 was, according to Range, when Hitler transformed himself from a local rabble rouser into a national politician. The author's recounting of the treason trial, and how Hitler turned it into a publicity forum for his own ideas—while destroying the careers of some of the mainstream Bavarian politicians who opposed him—are well argued, interesting reading, and are the strongest chapters in the book. The author's claim that he is breaking new historical ground, however, is less convincing as he doesn't utilize new sources, nor does he provide fresh interpretations; he often makes sweeping generalizations about the mind-set of the people who came to listen and who sometimes supported Hitler. VERDICT Despite the aforementioned issues, Range provides an informative narrative for those unfamiliar with the significance of the Bavarian debacle to Hitler's career. Recommended for general library collections.—Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll.

Library Journal

2015-11-18
Following the current trend of focusing a work of history on a single year, a journalist and academic examines the year that Hitler spent in Landsberg Prison for his failed putsch of 1923. Range (Murder in the Yoga Store, 2013, etc.)—a former correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and a visiting scholar who's sojourned at several prestigious institutions, including Harvard and the University of North Carolina—takes some time escorting us through 1923, and even earlier, before arriving at 1924 nearly 125 pages in. He rehearses the life of Hitler, the German defeat in World War I, and the horrible postwar economy that was one of the factors enabling a fiery ex-corporal from Austria to rise in Germany's extreme right-wing political world. Range seems simultaneously disgusted and dazzled by his subject. Hitler's political and cultural views were, of course, repellant and murderous, but the man could deliver a stemwinder and could somehow attract to his cause all sorts of adherents, from the thugs who pounded on his enemies to the wealthy folks who kept him financially afloat. One society woman bought for him the typewriter that he used to pound out the first volume of Mein Kampf during his yearlong incarceration. (He wrote the second volume shortly after his release.) Range shows us Hitler's despair after his failed putsch late in 1923 and his hunger strike and other behavior in Landsberg. It was, the author demonstrates, his trial that re-energized the future dictator and drew even more Germans to his cause. He had a steady stream of visitors, and one fellow prisoner, Rudolf Hess, became a key figure in the Third Reich. Range's style is generally fluid and journalistic; his deep knowledge of the figures and events enables him to narrate clearly without being sucked into excessive explication. A lucid description of a year that made all the horror possible, even inevitable.

Kirkus Reviews

"This book could not be more necessary, as Germany prepares to re-publish Mein Kampf for the first time in 70 years. Range gives us a fluent narrative of Hitler's 13 months in prison, where he wrote his political testament. Eminently readable."—Ronald Rosbottom, author of When Paris Went Dark

"Hundreds of historians, perhaps thousands, have set out to explain how Hitler became Hitler — but none have succeeded nearly so well, or so brilliantly, as Peter Ross Range. 1924: The Year That MadeHitler now stands front-and-center among those great works that, through a narrative that is both granular and compelling, finally explains one of the great mysteries of our era. Range's deft portrait clicks into place the final necessary nugget in one of our time's darkest eras and provides us with a biographical portrait that is chilling to read — but that we dare not ignore."—Mark Perry, author of The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur


"How did it happen? That's the fateful question that veteran journalist Peter Ross Range asks. With verve, he takes us into the diabolical rise of Adolf Hitler in the pivotal year of 1924, by turns a horrifying yet important story."—Jay Winik, author of 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History and April 1865


"Descriptive and portentous, Range's is an excellent account of perhaps the critical period in the Hitler saga."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist


"Occasionally, a year draped in defeat becomes a year of personal triumph that alters the course of history. Peter Ross Range deftly argues that 1924 was such a year for Adolf Hitler, with catastrophic results for the world."—Walter R. Borneman, author of The Admirals and MacArthur at War


"Range's deep knowledge of the figures and events enables him to narrate clearly without being sucked into excessive explication. A lucid description of a year that made all the horror possible, even inevitable."—Kirkus Reviews


"Range deserves credit for brilliantly and concisely bringing this important slice of history to visibility."—Bill Hughes, Baltimore Post-Examiner


"A lively account... Range tells his story well, offering choice details."—Andrew Nagorski, Washington Post


Range "let[s] this all-too-human but unique story tell itself... Successfully recreates the atmosphere of postwar Bavaria that helped to "make" Hitler, and charts the unprecedented impact this engineering, enigmatic figure was making."—Anthony Mostrom, The Los Angeles Review of Books

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