The Trial of Adolf Hitler
David King
14 June 2018
9781447251156Synopsis
Longlisted for the JQ Wingate Prize
On the evening of November 8, 1923, the thirty-four-year-old Adolf Hitler stormed into a beer hall in Munich, fired his pistol in the air, and proclaimed a revolution. Seventeen hours later, all that remained of his bold move was a trail of destruction. Hitler was on the run from the police. His career seemed to be over.
In The Trial of Adolf Hitler, the acclaimed historian David King tells the true story of the monumental criminal proceeding that followed when Hitler and nine other suspects were charged with high treason. Reporters from as far away as Argentina and Australia flocked to Munich for the sensational four-week spectacle. By its end, Hitler would transform the fiasco of the beer hall putsch into a stunning victory for the fledgling Nazi Party. It was this trial that thrust Hitler into the limelight, provided him with an unprecedented stage for his demagoguery, and set him on his improbable path to power.
Based on trial transcripts, police files, and many other new sources, including some five hundred documents recently discovered from the Landsberg Prison record office, The Trial of Adolf Hitler is a gripping true story of crime and punishment - and a haunting failure of justice with catastrophic consequences.
In The Trial of Adolf Hitler, David King tracks the progression of Hitler’s failed coup, arrest, and subsequent trial, which threw Hitler into the public spotlight and gave him a platform on which to introduce his demagogic powers to the German people. A story that drew interest across the globe at the time, but which has been largely forgotten in the annals of World War II history, this narrative is brought to our renewed attention by a book that is as captivating as it is well researched and scholastically precise.The New Criterion
An almost minute-by-minute narrative of events . . . impeccably researched and engagingly written.Roger Moorhouse, The Times
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.Frederick Taylor, Wall Street Journal
