Hitler: The Missing Years

This highly personal memoir by one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates during the Nazi rise to power delves into the mind and character of the man responsible for more death and destruction than any person in history. Hanfstaengl graduated from Harvard and ran the family business in New York for a dozen years before returning to Germany in 1921. There by chance he heard Adolf Hitler. Hanfstaengl befriended Hitler and welcomed him into his home. He saw himself as a civilizing influence on the volatile politician, and for a time he was. But later, after Hitler was jailed in Landsberg, their relationship began to change. It was there Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, honing his fanatical theories and ideas - especially his growing anti-Semitism - and surrounding himself with rabid extremists like Goering, Hess, Rosenberg, and Goebbels.