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The John Batchelor Show

CATASTROPHE: 2/8: Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power Hardcover – Deckle Edge, by Timothy W. Ryback (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

CATASTROPHE: 2/8: Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power Hardcover – Deckle Edge, by Timothy W. Ryback (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Takeover-Hitlers-Final-Rise-Power/dp/0593537424

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 facinating 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.

1930 REICHSTAG

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Bachelor visiting with Timothy Rybeck, the author of the new book

0:08.7

Takeover Hitler's Final Rise to Power. This is August 32 to January 33. We begin with Hitler's side of the fence. We begin with

0:18.8

Hitler's side of the fence. Hitler we know a man named Grigor Strasser the carefully managed it like a managing editor manages a newspaper.

0:34.0

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

0:36.0

He's not in the room with Hitler when he's being challenged by Hindenburg.

0:42.0

Why not? And where is he now?

0:45.0

Well, Gregorsdoss, you mentioned the name of the party is the National Socialist Workers Party and there's those two words

0:57.0

are key one is nationalists and the other is socialists. Hitler and Chasto were basically kind of yin and yang.

1:05.0

Hitler was the fanatic nationalist.

1:09.0

Trassa was the committed socialist.

1:11.0

He really was pushing a national but a

1:16.7

socialist agenda, meaning he was a man of the people. He was this easy-going gregarious guy.

1:25.0

He was a coalition builder.

1:27.3

He was a baby holder, a baby kiss,

1:30.3

he would sit with people and drink beer.

1:33.2

He just had a working man's kind of appeal

1:38.8

that Hitler never did.

1:40.6

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

1:47.4

inaccessible. And Strassa was, as I say, more of a garious easy-going type.

1:55.0

But Hitler needed him as much as Strassa needed Hitler.

2:00.6

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

2:07.0

You know, Hitler had basically, there came a point as the party was growing where Hitler ended up running the southern part of the country

...

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