I'm John Bachelor visiting with Timothy Ryback, the author of the new book Takeover, Hitler's

Final Rise to Power.

This is August 32 to January 33.

The Players, we begin with Hitler's side of the fence. Hitler we know a man

named Gregor Strasser whom has put together the NSD AP, carefully managed it like a managing editor manages a newspaper.

What do we need to know about Strasser at this moment?

He's not in the room with Hitler when he's being

challenged by Hindenburg. Why not and where is he now?

Well, uh, Gregor Strasser, you mentioned the name of the party is the National Socialist Workers Party.

And there's those two words are key. One is nationalists and the other is socialists.

Hitler and Shkhasa were basically kind of ying and yang.

Hitler was the fanatic nationalists. Shkhasa was the fanatic nationalist.

Tossa was the committed socialist.

He really was pushing a national but a socialist agenda, meaning he was a man of the people he was this easygoing

gregarious guy he knew he was a coalition builder he was a baby holder, a baby kiss rag, he would sit with people and drink beer.

He just had a working man's kind of appeal that Hitler never did.

There was, you know, Hitler for all of this charisma was a distant figure.

He was inaccessible. Strasso was as I say more of a garious easygoing

type but Hitler needed him as much as strasso needed him as much as Hitler.

So he was absolutely key to building the National Socialist Party.

Hitler had basically, there came a point as the party was growing where Hitler

ended up running the southern part of the country and Krega Shrassa with his brother developed the party in the north of the country and was really a key force in organizing and turning the Nazi party into a national, not only a movement,

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