Takeover

Hitler's Final Rise to Power

By: Timothy W. Ryback

Narrated by: Richard Attlee

From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler’s Private Library, a dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler seized power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin

In the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler’s National Socialists surged at the polls. Paul von Hindenburg, an aging war hero and avowed monarchist, was a reluctant president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the prospect of a Reichstag majority and the path to political power. But instead, the Nazis lost two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany.

In fascinating detail and with previously un-accessed archival materials, Timothy W. Ryback tells the remarkable story of Hitler’s dismantling of democracy through democratic process. He provides fresh perspective and insights into Hitler’s personal and professional lives in these months, in all their complexity and uncertainty—backroom deals, unlikely alliances, stunning betrayals, an ill-timed tax audit, and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever. Above all, Ryback details why a wearied Hindenburg, who disdained the “Bohemian corporal,” ultimately decided to appoint Hitler chancellor in January 1933. Within weeks, Germany was no longer a democracy.

©2024 Timothy W. Ryback (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but think too little about how it began. This admirable account shows us how fragile and avoidable were those beginnings, and helps us to reflect upon our own predicaments." –Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

"An expert account of the dizzying months when Hitler solidified his power in Germany... A masterfully narrated story of how a democracy committed suicide, with lessons for today." –Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, Takeover... an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election... Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light... Precise circumstances [in history] never repeat, yet shapes and patterns so often recur." –Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Not Inevitable

Hitler could have been stopped. Ryback makes it very clear that Hitler could have been kept from power.

how even those from whom so little could be expected can mold history

If the reader isn't a scholar of modern German history, this book probably strays too far into the weeds of historical detail.

The Perfect Storm

A lot of the times people think dictators sneak in our break down doors but truly often we open the front door and usher them in…

America repeats history.

This account may be a teaching moment for the present era in the USA political landscape!

Scary

This book was very intriguing and scary because of the parallels to what is going on now in the U.S., politically. When we think there’s no chance of someone like Hitler coming to power again, look around and you’ll see a current politician using these same strategies and “tricks” to gain power. It happened once and it could happen again. I took this book as a warning to what can happen when you sit idly by, not vote, or believe the propaganda that non-centrists push.

Scary Gistory

It feels to uncomfortably familiar to the current political situation in the United States and some European countries.

"Takeover" WAS BORING!!!

"Takeover" was very difficult to listen to. It got more boring every hour. It was simply a poorly narrated audiobook with an even worse story. I never finished this audiobook. I just put it aside.