Takeover

Timothy W. 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.

How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but we 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 predicament.

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.

If you ever thought that history is moved only 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, Timothy Ryback makes it plain that simple luck, bald ambition, and fallible human hearts can be drivers of earth-changing events.

It is a brilliant, stunning achievement. I was absolutely thrilled, gripped, and horrified by what was unfolding before my eyes. And so much of it was new to me. Of course I knew the story but the detail is so vivid - the reader is swept along by every twist and turn - it's like being in the room, in the car, on the plane, at the meetings... And even though one knows the horrible outcome, right up to the very last pages of the final chapter, it seems impossible that the evil little man will ever become Chancellor. In the final row - with Hindenburg kept waiting - hope springs eternal, and is shouting 'don't do it. don't do it, don't do it! ' I feel completely wrung out. I shan't sleep tonight. I must go and make a sandwich as I find I'm starving. I am still in my pyjamas - having started this morning I could not ever break off to shave and dress. I cannot find words of praise sufficient - the clarity and drive of the text is astonishing.

Riveting ... Reading Timothy Ryback's excellent and forensic account of the complicated events in German politics in the six-month run-up to that fateful moment, I found myself willing the end result not to happen.