Journalist Konrad Heiden was one of the first to hear the youngAdolf Hitlerâ__s rousing orations and to recognize his political ingenuityand perverse, self-serving ideology. As a staff reporter onthe Frankfurter Zeitung, Heiden was one of the first writers to takea stand against Nazism, and his is the only contemporary documentto give the whole story of Hitlerâ__s rise to power from the verybeginning to the day in 1934 when the Blood Purge eliminatedthe last opposition, leaving him absolute dictator of Germany. AsHeiden states, â__his path of murder and violence was, in accordancewith Hitlerâ__s beliefs, the right path to greatness.â__  First published at the height of the Second World War, this newedition of Heidenâ__s work, which the New York Times Book Reviewcalled â__remorselessly, ruthlessly objective,â__ shows it to be not onlya profound and revealing narrative but also an important historicaldocument essential to both historian and layman for a greater understandingof the calamitous events that dominated the twentiethcentury.