The National Book Review
"The early criminal trial that could have stopped Hitler’s rise… New York Times best-selling author King brings that early trial vividly to life. He shows in this deeply insightful, compellingly written narrative how Hitler turned an early legal setback into a platform for his vicious demagoguery—and a short prison sentence into a political launching pad."
History Revealed
"This sobering book reveals what happened, what went wrong, and how it paved the way for the cataclysms that were to follow."
Wall Street Journal - Frederick Taylor
"Gripping....The Trial of Adolf Hitler provides a textbook example of how a determined demagogue can turn defeat into victory. It is also a disturbing portrait of how an advanced country can descend into chaos and of the human cost that this chaos entails."
The Times (London) - Roger Moorhouse
"A gripping, almost minute-by-minute narrative… The Trial of Adolf Hitler is impeccably researched and engagingly written, and succeeds in bringing the fraught, chaotic nature of the event to life."
The Catholic Herald - Robin Aitken
"The casual student of history might think that we already know all we usefully can about Adolf Hitler, his rise and fall, but… here is another contribution to Führer studies."
Christian Science Monitor
"Engrossing and well-researched… makes an important contribution to the understanding of modern totalitarianism."
The Spectator - Nigel Jones
"Vivid… offer[s] startling insights into aspects of Hitler and Nazism that have been previously under-reported."
Peter Ross Range
"This is the definitive book on the Hitler trial in the English, German, or any language."
The New Criterion
"As captivating as it is well researched and scholastically precise."
Joseph Kanon
"A courtroom drama both farcical and ominous. An absorbing, detailed account of a crucial—but often overlooked—chapter in Hitler’s rise."
Exame (Brazil) - Joel Pinheiro da Fonseca
"King's research is exquisite.… It is difficult to think of a book accessible to the general public like this that presents such a rich and detailed work of unpublished research."
Bookpage
"A powerful work that underlines what a pivot point the trial was—and how badly it went awry."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-04-02
A highly detailed study of Hitler's failed putsch of Nov. 8, 1923, in Munich and the trial that "catapulted this relatively minor local leader onto the national stage."In an astute work of scholarship and vivid narrative of vying personalities and power, Kentucky-based historian King (Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, 2011, etc.) chronicles the ill-planned, audacious attempt by a small but growing right-wing party of disaffected thugs to seize the reins of Bavarian government. Harnessing the postwar disillusionment with the "peace of shame," crippling reparations, hyperinflation, fall of the monarchy, and rise of a Socialist republic for the first time in German history, a number of right-wing groups emerged in the early 1920s, specifically Munich's "anti-republic, anti-parliament, anti-Communist, and anti-Semitic" National Socialist Party. Hitler was known as "a speaker who could fill the beer halls and whip the throngs into a frenzy." Seizing the moment—and backed by the party's paramilitary wing, the well-regarded war hero Gen. Erich Ludendorff, and Hitler's own band of murderous bodyguards—he did just that at Munich's Bürgerbräukeller. In three parts, King illuminates this dark saga: first, the actual putsch, which entailed the party's taking of Bavarian government officials as hostages and storming the war ministry only to be removed by the Munich police when no real plan for a march on Berlin emerged; second, the monthlong Munich trial itself, which largely tapped into public sympathy for Hitler and his theories, resulting in a conviction for "high treason" yet a jail sentence that allowed him to be released on parole after eight and a half months; and finally, his incarceration in a fairly luxurious cell in Landsberg Prison, where he was celebrated as a hero and managed to write the propaganda tome that would launch the Nazi Party's apotheosis, Mein Kampf. A meticulously researched, deeply instructive work with great relevance for our current era of right-wing resurgence.
