Publishers Weekly
★ 01/22/2024
Historian Ryback (Hitler’s First Victims) presents a riveting blow-by-blow account of the six months leading up to Adolf Hitler’s January 1933 appointment as Germany’s chancellor. Describing a nation in disarray, Ryback notes an “epidemic of murder sweeping the country” at the hands of partisan paramilitaries. Meanwhile the Nazi party, though it had just claimed the largest share of votes in July 1932 elections, was short of an overall majority. The tempered win led to Hitler entering the “rarefied” orbit of Kurt von Schleicher, “the ultimate Berlin power broker” who worked toward securing Hitler the chancellorship, convinced it would “lure the National Socialist leader away from the ‘all or nothing’ faction of his movement.” As Ryback illustrates, this scheme faced multiple obstacles. Germany’s president Paul von Hindenburg, concerned for democracy, refused to appoint Hitler. Then, November elections saw the Nazis lose two million votes from July, causing “fissures in party leadership.” By the end of the year, Hitler was viewed by some as “a man with a great future behind him.” In Ryback’s propulsive narrative, the quick turnaround—brought about by multiple small compounding vagaries of breaking news, personality quirks, and political horse-trading—that resulted in Hitler being appointed chancellor by Hindenburg at the end of January makes for a chilling climax. It’s a dire and remarkably astute depiction of how fickle and contingent the forces of history can be. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
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
"Timothy Ryback has written an engrossing clock-ticker of a narrative about the behind-the-scenes machinations and open politicking that vaulted Hitler and the Nazi party to power. Nothing was inevitable about their triumph, and plenty of contemporary observers were caught off-guard by it, as Ryback shows to chilling effect. The relevance to authoritarianism today is urgent and unmistakable.Takeover is a vital read for anyone who cares about the future of democracy." –Margaret Talbot, staff writer, The New Yorker
"If you ever thought that history is only moved by big, sweeping forces, whether of economics or creed or nature itself, think again. In this riveting, intimate account of the final months in Hitler's rise to power, Tim Ryback makes it plain that simple luck, bald ambition and fallible human hearts can be drivers of earth-changing events. Focusing on the crucial personalities at the pinnacle of politics in the very twilight of Weimar Germany, and drawing on a wealth of primary sources, from diaries to gossip columns to newsreels, he shows that Hitler's capture of the German state did indeed in large part represent a triumph of the Führer's own perverse will. But Ryback also reveals the extent to which the petty scheming, petty jealousies, petty prejudices and sheer exhaustion of the other 'men in the room' opened a path to calamity." –Max Rodenbeck, Berlin bureau chief, The Economist
“Tim Ryback tells a grippingly important tale. His meticulous detailing of the dramatic days before Hitler assumed power make for salutary reading in our times. Will the tragic failure of civil courage and political will be repeated – Germany, 1933, America 2024? It’s hard not to imagine.” – Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-12-06
An expert account of the dizzying months when Hitler solidified his power in Germany.
Some readers may be shocked when Ryback, author of Hitler’s Private Library and The Last Survivor, points out that Hitler’s assumption of absolute power was executed legally. His failed 1923 coup made him famous as a hypernationalistic right-wing fanatic, one of many in post–World War I Germany. His brown shirts were thugs, and his rhetoric was hateful, but the National Socialists became a legitimate political party, participating in elections throughout the 1920s and winning a few seats until the devastating Depression, after which membership exploded. Ryback begins his riveting account in July 1932, when the party won 37% of the vote, making Hitler a legitimate candidate for chancellor. Germany’s conservative establishment included national icon Paul von Hindenburg, who was president, a position that held the power to appoint the chancellor. All shared Hitler’s hatred of communism, the Treaty of Versailles, and the “haggling and compromise” essential to “weak-kneed democracies.” Hitler enjoyed scattered conservative support, but most were put off by his fanaticism and his followers’ savagery. Hindenburg disliked him and, in a painful August interview, announced that he would not be appointed. Of course, this infuriated Hitler, and readers curious to learn his ultimately successful tactics may be shocked that he simply went on as before, with equal fanaticism. His Nazis did not tone down their violence, and the times worked in his favor. Germany was a mess, with rampant unemployment and a wildly unpopular government. The fear of a communist revolution, far more than right-wing vulgarity, obsessed conservatives. No more rational than Hitler, in early 1933, they convinced themselves that they were clever enough to control Hitler as chancellor. Everyone knows how that turned out.
A masterfully narrated story of how a democracy committed suicide, with lessons for today.
